Currently there are just two African destinations left that get the A319LR's of Air France fitted with 82 seats (28C and 54Y). Malabo and N'Djamena are currently both served daily with the A319LR. But this is about to end in April. Flights will be operated with Airbus A330-200 and frequency reduced from daily to 3 weekly. This results in a capacity increase of about 50 seats, but the loss of flexibility (3 weekly compared to daily).
A319LR DEDICATE service began in January 2004 to focus on small niche markets, mainly oil destinations. But in these years some destinations were suspended or in the better case upgraded to bigger aircraft (often resulting in lower frequency). Currently no A319LR flights are loaded in the GDS anymore after April 16.
MR_Boeing wrote:Currently there are just two African destinations left that get the A319LR's of Air France fitted with 82 seats (28C and 54Y). Malabo and N'Djamena are currently both served daily with the A319LR. But this is about to end in April. Flights will be operated with Airbus A330-200 and frequency reduced from daily to 3 weekly. This results in a capacity increase of about 50 seats, but the loss of flexibility (3 weekly compared to daily).
A319LR DEDICATE service began in January 2004 to focus on small niche markets, mainly oil destinations. But in these years some destinations were suspended or in the better case upgraded to bigger aircraft (often resulting in lower frequency). Currently no A319LR flights are loaded in the GDS anymore after April 16.
AF is making a strategic retreat.
This isn't of any significance considering the small scale of the service compared to the bigger network.
Dedicate has always been a closed-circuit corporate operation. Operation wise, it's viable as a core business model, not very much in the Dedicated operating model.
However, the narrowbody operating model will soon dominate Africa to Europe travel, that is certain.
Despite all its efforts in Africa, SN is losing market share and revenues in Africa and operating costs are going up year after year. Margins are shrinking, and as I predict, if they can make it beyond 2012 as a company, they will probably stall in Africa by 2015.
It's a growing but small market, any extra competition can void entire route margins.
They hardly did any Oil markets with these, Qatar And Saudi Arabia got them, Qatar was suspended in a short while, Uzbekistan also got this service, some African routes I guess thats about it.
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