What about Africa and corona ?
Their health systems are terrible and Corona will loom a long time.
Good to fly ?
Brussels Airlines in 2020
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Re: Brussels Airlines in 2020
If Lufthansa is so bad, why die the previous majority shareholders not invested and their patriotic CEO shwon bis capabilities to rocket the company's valuation and make Lufthansas' call option very expensive?
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Re: Brussels Airlines in 2020
Luc Martin, représentant CNE chez Brussels Airlines confirme. "Les conditions sont pires que ce qu'on imaginait. C'est un véritable hold-up sur nos salaires.Ils sont tous revus à la baisse, au premier barème. Il y a une prime à la fin de l'année, mais elle est taxée davantage. Et de toute façon on y perd au niveau des congés maladies par exemple, puisque qu'on est payé par rapport à notre salaire mensuel. On y perd aussi par rapport à la pension. C'est une vraie catastrophe. C'est une machine de guerre qui est mise contre nous", affirme-t-il.
https://www.lalibre.be/economie/entrepr ... 0f8bb0d024
https://www.lalibre.be/economie/entrepr ... 0f8bb0d024
Re: Brussels Airlines in 2020
1. First of all, the previous shareholders invested more in Brussels Airlines than LH in their 12 years. They built the airline from the ashes of Sabena, it was almost a start-up, and it was in the post 9-11 era. Much of the money was lost in the start-up phase.oldblueeyes wrote: ↑15 May 2020, 20:59 If Lufthansa is so bad, why die the previous majority shareholders not invested and their patriotic CEO shwon bis capabilities to rocket the company's valuation and make Lufthansas' call option very expensive?
If I recall correctly the start-up investment was around 350 Million-ish (somebody can correct me on that). Once LH had 45% and the call options in 2009, they had no interest in investing in it because LH would benefit from their investments more than they would.
Most of the non-LH investors got into trouble during the Global Financial Crisis and really had other priorities do deal with. I wasn't happy about that, but it is what it is.
2. The patriotic CEO had idea's to make money but they were shot down by Lufthansa, because Lufthansa's agenda seems to have been to buy it for pennies to integrate it into Eurowings.
When he was newly appointed as co-CEO, he didn't do that good a job. He was suspicious and rather stubborn towards the workforce. His idea's were shaky and lacked of insight. He was managing reactively rather than proactively.
However, with time, he got to learn the people behind the flying aircraft and developed a sense of pride. He made time for everyone and didn't shy away from an input.
Starting around 2014, he managed to grow the airline organically despite resistance from right and left.
As one of his strongest critics on this forum in his early days, I'm saying today that he is now the best man to lead this airline forward. Not because of how my perception changed, but because he has embraced the airline as if it was his family, his attitude changed completely and he started making smart decisions based on insight. The way he protected his "family" from the Ryanair attack was a masterpiece.
He may not be a good CEO option for a Lufthansa looking to roll over Brussels Airlines into Eurowings. For that you want a puppet like Vranckx who does whatever he's told to do.
But he is the best option for a CEO to lead a national airline through a crisis and make it prosper afterwards, there is no doubt about this in my mind.
Last edited by Flanker2 on 15 May 2020, 22:09, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Brussels Airlines in 2020
ZRH is a much higher yield market than BRU (as one can see the margin they make). It's telling that LX can support First class easily whilst even LH is struggling with First. Blaming it on unwillingness is ignoring the high yield market which Switzerland still is. Moreover, I recall that costs of operation to ZRH are the problem, the aviation treaty with the EU is very extensive.Ansett wrote: ↑15 May 2020, 20:11For those who wander why SN cannot achieve what LX can, the answer is, imho, that there was no willingness from LH/CS. And the Swiss government did all it could to prevent LCCs to fly to ZRH, which is possible for Switzerland since it not a member of the EU or even the EEA.
LHs strategy is to funnel the low(er) yield customer through BRU/VIE in order to ensure that there is enough space for the local O&D and high(er) yield passengers. BRU and VIE must take away the pressure from FRA/MUC/ZRH. In the meantime you keep your competitors as far away from your domestic market as you can.
You mean EUR 1 + takeover of debt and liabilities. LH has a responsibility towards its shareholders and invested millions in SN. They need to ensure that they get as much out of it as possible or LH risks a revolt of its shareholders, thus they aren't going to give SN away and take on its debts.
Re: Brussels Airlines in 2020
ZRH is definitely higher yielding but this is like deciding the value of a painting based on its frame.LJ wrote: ↑15 May 2020, 22:09ZRH is a much higher yield market than BRU (as one can see the margin they make). It's telling that LX can support First class easily whilst even LH is struggling with First. Blaming it on unwillingness is ignoring the high yield market which Switzerland still is. Moreover, I recall that costs of operation to ZRH are the problem, the aviation treaty with the EU is very extensive.Ansett wrote: ↑15 May 2020, 20:11For those who wander why SN cannot achieve what LX can, the answer is, imho, that there was no willingness from LH/CS. And the Swiss government did all it could to prevent LCCs to fly to ZRH, which is possible for Switzerland since it not a member of the EU or even the EEA.
LHs strategy is to funnel the low(er) yield customer through BRU/VIE in order to ensure that there is enough space for the local O&D and high(er) yield passengers. BRU and VIE must take away the pressure from FRA/MUC/ZRH. In the meantime you keep your competitors as far away from your domestic market as you can.
You mean EUR 1 + takeover of debt and liabilities. LH has a responsibility towards its shareholders and invested millions in SN. They need to ensure that they get as much out of it as possible or LH risks a revolt of its shareholders, thus they aren't going to give SN away and take on its debts.
ZRH has many issues too:
-the O&D market is very high yielding but low volume, so they are still reliant on selling cheap tickets to connecting pax in the aft cabin.
-their cost base is very high. Do you want to compare staff costs with SN's? I don't think so.
About funneling low yield pax through BRU/VIE.
Funnel to where exactly? SN doesn't have the long haul network that LH or LX have to funnel any amount of low-yield pax. Heck, SN would be happy to play funnel for low-yield pax but even that is not possible when you don't fly to anywhere worth connecting to.
JFK and YUL/YYZ perhaps, but without at least a dozen more dots, it's pretty meaningless.
The SN lounges and M&M did however help to funnel pax to FRA/MUC/ZRH.
About LH's responsibility to its shareholders.
At this point, with an airline being threatened by cash-flow insolvency and even balance sheet insolvency if you consider aircraft valuations, or a major government dilution, only speculators would keep shares in a company like Lufthansa. All the long-time loyal investors already cashed out.
Day-traders, market makers and some suicidal funds is all you would have left. That's why you see all these big swings in its stock valuations.
You heard Warren Buffett, screw the airlines, I'm not gambling, we sold everything.
Plus, Lufthansa investors would have been better off investing in index ETF's, the ROI on Lufthansa wasn't exactly worth calling an investment.
So the question is: is LH's management's responsibility towards a bunch of speculators or are there bigger social responsibilities that they should worry about?
Re: Brussels Airlines in 2020
Yeh a fleet of 5. With tails painted with LH, Austrian, Swiss and even an academy plane in Eurowings colors. But none in SN colors. See: SN is treated as being lesser...oldblueeyes wrote: ↑15 May 2020, 14:54This is one of the jets the training academy of Lufthansa is using, thus part of the hours flight by pilot trainees.
By the way there are 5 of them in the fleet.
How frustrated can you be ?
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Re: Brussels Airlines in 2020
Again, perception vs reality...PttU wrote: ↑15 May 2020, 23:49Yeh a fleet of 5. With tails painted with LH, Austrian, Swiss and even an academy plane in Eurowings colors. But none in SN colors. See: SN is treated as being lesser...oldblueeyes wrote: ↑15 May 2020, 14:54This is one of the jets the training academy of Lufthansa is using, thus part of the hours flight by pilot trainees.
By the way there are 5 of them in the fleet.
How frustrated can you be ?
2015 ( at that time Brussels Airlines was still a minority participation for the group), LH consolidated the 3 flight schools of Lufthansa, Swiss and Austrian in the European flight academy. Thus the tails symbolized the origins of the school as everything was rebranded.
Today, at least on the home page the logo of Brussels is there https://www.european-flight-academy.com/
What you see there is the fleet based in Arizona, not the European one.
You might admit that aicraft painting is not happening every month.
Furthermore, there are external clients as well, as you can see on the fleet of the German academy.
D-ILHA has an All Nippon tail
D-ILHB Austrian
D-ILHC.D ad E Lufthansa - they are operating the Lufthana private jet service product as well
Swiss has its own program with Swiss tail aircraft done together with the Swiss military.
The first question might be - how integrated is Brussels Airlines in this scheme? All the other 3 companies came into the struture with their own flight academies, structures, planes etc. What would the Belgian contribution?
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Re: Brussels Airlines in 2020
Ge203 wrote: ↑15 May 2020, 09:25ACE, BLL, BRS, CHQ, CLY, PMO,CTA, FNC,FSC, HAJ, HRG, SNI, KGS, KRK, LED, LEI, RAK, RHO, SVO, SVQ, VLC, ZAD, ZAG and ZTH for the short/medium-haullongwings wrote: ↑14 May 2020, 22:03 When do we expect to see an official list of destinations being dropped? There are two ways to draw such a list. Either do a profitability analysis of each destination and cut the ones deemed not viable in the short-to-mid term then make changes to the fleet; or start by setting fleet-wide financial objectives (e.g. cut lease costs by x%), determine the number of aircraft to retire to meet the objectives, and adjust the network accordingly.
The first one tends to be more effective but may need multiple tweaks to get to a result that translates into an efficient fleet. The process is time consuming.
The second can be done faster, in fact rather very fast, if not a lot of care is taken into selecting the destinations to be dropped once the fleet changes have been determined. As a result, destinations that are marginally profitable may fall off while loss-making ones are retained.
CKY and OUA for the long-haul.
Belgium Press says that SN could add more flights to LH Group hubs:
"Brussels Airlines wants to reduce connections to the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe. Flights to Lufthansa hubs in Frankfurt, Munich and Zurich will become more important, we read on Saturday in De Tijd and L'Echo."
In French translated to English: https://translate.google.fr/translate?h ... 1c54e696a6
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Re: Brussels Airlines in 2020
Also in HLN: In the list op 56 remaining destinations three new ones arise: Frankfurt, München and Zürich. Possibly SN got the order to ship more travellers to the hubs of Lufthansa.rwandan-flyer wrote: ↑16 May 2020, 08:35Ge203 wrote: ↑15 May 2020, 09:25ACE, BLL, BRS, CHQ, CLY, PMO,CTA, FNC,FSC, HAJ, HRG, SNI, KGS, KRK, LED, LEI, RAK, RHO, SVO, SVQ, VLC, ZAD, ZAG and ZTH for the short/medium-haullongwings wrote: ↑14 May 2020, 22:03 When do we expect to see an official list of destinations being dropped? There are two ways to draw such a list. Either do a profitability analysis of each destination and cut the ones deemed not viable in the short-to-mid term then make changes to the fleet; or start by setting fleet-wide financial objectives (e.g. cut lease costs by x%), determine the number of aircraft to retire to meet the objectives, and adjust the network accordingly.
The first one tends to be more effective but may need multiple tweaks to get to a result that translates into an efficient fleet. The process is time consuming.
The second can be done faster, in fact rather very fast, if not a lot of care is taken into selecting the destinations to be dropped once the fleet changes have been determined. As a result, destinations that are marginally profitable may fall off while loss-making ones are retained.
CKY and OUA for the long-haul.
Belgium Press says that SN could add more flights to LH Group hubs:
"Brussels Airlines wants to reduce connections to the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe. Flights to Lufthansa hubs in Frankfurt, Munich and Zurich will become more important, we read on Saturday in De Tijd and L'Echo."
In French translated to English: https://translate.google.fr/translate?h ... 1c54e696a6
Doesn't look too good, no? Or does it, because it also could mean that more passengers can fly from FRA, MUC and ZRH to the US and Africa via Brussels?
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Re: Brussels Airlines in 2020
There are 2 reasons:
- costs - it is cheaper to let Brussels operate these flights - Austrian became the flights to MUC and FRA as well some years ago, including two additional aircraft
- integration - if you align the company to the hubs, than you need more frequencies to catch situations like overbooking, reroutings in case of delays etc
Regarding the US - it's all about the JV - if planes are over booked, or one can get more revenue with O&D pax or there is a fight for the cheap marginal client, than there will be rerouting. withi the JV i flew even via Manchester, first with Lufthana than with United, to reach the US East Coast, although there neither an operating company of the group nor a hub there.
- costs - it is cheaper to let Brussels operate these flights - Austrian became the flights to MUC and FRA as well some years ago, including two additional aircraft
- integration - if you align the company to the hubs, than you need more frequencies to catch situations like overbooking, reroutings in case of delays etc
Regarding the US - it's all about the JV - if planes are over booked, or one can get more revenue with O&D pax or there is a fight for the cheap marginal client, than there will be rerouting. withi the JV i flew even via Manchester, first with Lufthana than with United, to reach the US East Coast, although there neither an operating company of the group nor a hub there.
Re: Brussels Airlines in 2020
I don't see a reason to bring pax via German hubs to the Mediterranean. We have an own leisure company who can take all over this.rwandan-flyer wrote: ↑16 May 2020, 08:35Ge203 wrote: ↑15 May 2020, 09:25ACE, BLL, BRS, CHQ, CLY, PMO,CTA, FNC,FSC, HAJ, HRG, SNI, KGS, KRK, LED, LEI, RAK, RHO, SVO, SVQ, VLC, ZAD, ZAG and ZTH for the short/medium-haullongwings wrote: ↑14 May 2020, 22:03 When do we expect to see an official list of destinations being dropped? There are two ways to draw such a list. Either do a profitability analysis of each destination and cut the ones deemed not viable in the short-to-mid term then make changes to the fleet; or start by setting fleet-wide financial objectives (e.g. cut lease costs by x%), determine the number of aircraft to retire to meet the objectives, and adjust the network accordingly.
The first one tends to be more effective but may need multiple tweaks to get to a result that translates into an efficient fleet. The process is time consuming.
The second can be done faster, in fact rather very fast, if not a lot of care is taken into selecting the destinations to be dropped once the fleet changes have been determined. As a result, destinations that are marginally profitable may fall off while loss-making ones are retained.
CKY and OUA for the long-haul.
Belgium Press says that SN could add more flights to LH Group hubs:
"Brussels Airlines wants to reduce connections to the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe. Flights to Lufthansa hubs in Frankfurt, Munich and Zurich will become more important, we read on Saturday in De Tijd and L'Echo."
In French translated to English: https://translate.google.fr/translate?h ... 1c54e696a6
What concerns me much more is cutting 2 African destinations, unless they were not performing well, and more traffic in general via the other hubs.
Meaning that they will not touch the American and Canadian destinations but it should be also on the way that they will bring more pax to BRU instead of only one direction.
Maybe that's why there is no agreement still and then its good that we don't accept the proposals of LH
Re: Brussels Airlines in 2020
Don’t look for things which aren’t there!
The primary reason is synergy as LH and LX have night stops in BRU. If SN operates the first outbound and the last inbound flight of the day to FRA,MUC and ZRH the group can easily save 1 million a year. Only the operator of certain flights will change, not the number of flights. In GVA probably the opposite will probably happen.
Re: Brussels Airlines in 2020
My impression. They will wait as long as possible till the end of the month when there is no money anymore. Then what? To accept or to die? Both are not good
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Re: Brussels Airlines in 2020
There is absolutely no economics in transferring leisure pax via a hub.You can't match cost and revenue.Atlantis wrote: ↑16 May 2020, 09:12I don't see a reason to bring pax via German hubs to the Mediterranean. We have an own leisure company who can take all over this.rwandan-flyer wrote: ↑16 May 2020, 08:35
Belgium Press says that SN could add more flights to LH Group hubs:
"Brussels Airlines wants to reduce connections to the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe. Flights to Lufthansa hubs in Frankfurt, Munich and Zurich will become more important, we read on Saturday in De Tijd and L'Echo."
In French translated to English: https://translate.google.fr/translate?h ... 1c54e696a6
What concerns me much more is cutting 2 African destinations, unless they were not performing well, and more traffic in general via the other hubs.
Meaning that they will not touch the American and Canadian destinations but it should be also on the way that they will bring more pax to BRU instead of only one direction.
Maybe that's why there is no agreement still and then its good that we don't accept the proposals of LH
There reason is different - if you choose to be a network airline, you don't act like a leisure airline.
The group airlines do leisure flights as full charters - so safe revenue only as marginal business, eg Saturadys and Sundays when the trunk routes fly at maybe 20% of their volumes.
The classic leisure segment is Eurowings - that's what they do eg in Munich.
Brussels didin't wanted to have a Eurowings type of product - city P2Ps and leisure destinations, now it moves to a hub oriented product type - city pairs and hub transfer.
Re: Brussels Airlines in 2020
It's rather a good thing that SN isn't integrated into the European Flight Academy. Unless, you want German-speaking pilots, as it's a requirement to enter the school. While SN asks to be fluent in one of the two main national languages, and asks you to learn the other language. They mostly take pilots from CAE Brussels, and are happy with most of the trainees.oldblueeyes wrote: ↑16 May 2020, 07:39Again, perception vs reality...PttU wrote: ↑15 May 2020, 23:49Yeh a fleet of 5. With tails painted with LH, Austrian, Swiss and even an academy plane in Eurowings colors. But none in SN colors. See: SN is treated as being lesser...oldblueeyes wrote: ↑15 May 2020, 14:54
This is one of the jets the training academy of Lufthansa is using, thus part of the hours flight by pilot trainees.
By the way there are 5 of them in the fleet.
How frustrated can you be ?
2015 ( at that time Brussels Airlines was still a minority participation for the group), LH consolidated the 3 flight schools of Lufthansa, Swiss and Austrian in the European flight academy. Thus the tails symbolized the origins of the school as everything was rebranded.
Today, at least on the home page the logo of Brussels is there https://www.european-flight-academy.com/
What you see there is the fleet based in Arizona, not the European one.
You might admit that aicraft painting is not happening every month.
Furthermore, there are external clients as well, as you can see on the fleet of the German academy.
D-ILHA has an All Nippon tail
D-ILHB Austrian
D-ILHC.D ad E Lufthansa - they are operating the Lufthana private jet service product as well
Swiss has its own program with Swiss tail aircraft done together with the Swiss military.
The first question might be - how integrated is Brussels Airlines in this scheme? All the other 3 companies came into the struture with their own flight academies, structures, planes etc. What would the Belgian contribution?
They don't really need to be part of EFA.
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Re: Brussels Airlines in 2020
So you see.. somethimes it is better to have something integrated, sometimes not.Ge203 wrote: ↑16 May 2020, 10:13It's rather a good thing that SN isn't integrated into the European Flight Academy. Unless, you want German-speaking pilots, as it's a requirement to enter the school. While SN asks to be fluent in one of the two main national languages, and asks you to learn the other language. They mostly take pilots from CAE Brussels, and are happy with most of the trainees.oldblueeyes wrote: ↑16 May 2020, 07:39Again, perception vs reality...
2015 ( at that time Brussels Airlines was still a minority participation for the group), LH consolidated the 3 flight schools of Lufthansa, Swiss and Austrian in the European flight academy. Thus the tails symbolized the origins of the school as everything was rebranded.
Today, at least on the home page the logo of Brussels is there https://www.european-flight-academy.com/
What you see there is the fleet based in Arizona, not the European one.
You might admit that aicraft painting is not happening every month.
Furthermore, there are external clients as well, as you can see on the fleet of the German academy.
D-ILHA has an All Nippon tail
D-ILHB Austrian
D-ILHC.D ad E Lufthansa - they are operating the Lufthana private jet service product as well
Swiss has its own program with Swiss tail aircraft done together with the Swiss military.
The first question might be - how integrated is Brussels Airlines in this scheme? All the other 3 companies came into the struture with their own flight academies, structures, planes etc. What would the Belgian contribution?
They don't really need to be part of EFA.
Just getting emotional about flags, tail logos and so on does not bring one further.
The whole discussion is very emotional, often led by symbols rather than looking for the facts, reasons and alternatives and than see if the choosen one is rather reasonable or not.
Re: Brussels Airlines in 2020
I beg to disagree!Ge203 wrote: ↑16 May 2020, 10:13
It's rather a good thing that SN isn't integrated into the European Flight Academy. Unless, you want German-speaking pilots, as it's a requirement to enter the school. While SN asks to be fluent in one of the two main national languages, and asks you to learn the other language. They mostly take pilots from CAE Brussels, and are happy with most of the trainees.
Firstly the German language is a requirement for LH,OS and LX, but obviously wouldn’t be one for SN.
The big difference however is that EFA selects on ability rather than money. Students pay a modest fee of 3000€ to start, but the training is paid for by an interest free loan which is paid back in the form of a salary sacrifice of 5% once the student becomes employed as a pilot. Many graduates of other schools will be unemployed for years whilst having to pay back 100 000+€ to the bank, parents who often guarantee these loans may have to sell their houses...
The last intake at SN was mainly graduates of EFA by the way.
Re: Brussels Airlines in 2020
The reason they don't touch the North-American routes might also be because these destinations are more or less covered by the A++ joint venture.Atlantis wrote: ↑16 May 2020, 09:12I don't see a reason to bring pax via German hubs to the Mediterranean. We have an own leisure company who can take all over this.rwandan-flyer wrote: ↑16 May 2020, 08:35
Belgium Press says that SN could add more flights to LH Group hubs:
"Brussels Airlines wants to reduce connections to the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe. Flights to Lufthansa hubs in Frankfurt, Munich and Zurich will become more important, we read on Saturday in De Tijd and L'Echo."
In French translated to English: https://translate.google.fr/translate?h ... 1c54e696a6
What concerns me much more is cutting 2 African destinations, unless they were not performing well, and more traffic in general via the other hubs.
Meaning that they will not touch the American and Canadian destinations but it should be also on the way that they will bring more pax to BRU instead of only one direction.
Maybe that's why there is no agreement still and then its good that we don't accept the proposals of LH
Re: Brussels Airlines in 2020
Since Carsten Spohr made it pretty clear they want to cut night stops, it could also mean SN has to take over flights which require LH/LX to have night stops at BRU.lucas wrote: ↑16 May 2020, 08:41Also in HLN: In the list op 56 remaining destinations three new ones arise: Frankfurt, München and Zürich. Possibly SN got the order to ship more travellers to the hubs of Lufthansa.rwandan-flyer wrote: ↑16 May 2020, 08:35
Belgium Press says that SN could add more flights to LH Group hubs:
"Brussels Airlines wants to reduce connections to the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe. Flights to Lufthansa hubs in Frankfurt, Munich and Zurich will become more important, we read on Saturday in De Tijd and L'Echo."
In French translated to English: https://translate.google.fr/translate?h ... 1c54e696a6
Doesn't look too good, no? Or does it, because it also could mean that more passengers can fly from FRA, MUC and ZRH to the US and Africa via Brussels?
They (SN) need to stay alert, but this move might also mean SN got/will have more importance within the group. Don't forget that until less then a year ago we were all not to happy about the outlook having EW taking over SN completely.