BAD NEWS FROM THE U.K.

In the course of only two days I have seen several negative news pieces coming from Britain, concerning air travel. This is especially important, because Britain is one of the most traveled destinations in the world, and its airline industry is known to be in the forefront of the global industry.

First, the hubris of British Airways.

Yesterday we learned that BA has been flying empty airliners on trans-Atlantic routes, because of “shortage in cabin crew employees”. The media coverage emphasized the environmental damage being done by a B747 flying across the ocean, but I think there are many more issues in this story. How can an airline like BA, perhaps the most prestigious airline in the world, find itself in such a position (assuming that its statement is true) when it can not man some of its flights?

I’m afraid that the answer to that question is – hubris. BA thinks that from its high position in the airline industry it can get away with practically any kind of behavior. This conclusion is not based only on the empty flights episode. A few months ago BA was fined with hundreds of million of dollars by both the British and the American authorities because of antitrust activities – fixing flight fares with other airlines. That episode, too, have shown a kind of corporate policy that basically says: we are above all the others; the rules do not apply to us; we can do as we wish because we are the famous, rich and successful British Airways.

In other words, BA’s behavior is like the typical celebrity driving under the influence in the streets of Hollywood, thinking that if he or she got caught by the police, their sexiness and famousness will get them off the hook. As Paris Hilton recently learned, that is not always the case. BA should have known that, too, but apparently it still consider itself to be a special category.

The other bad news is about future travel procedures in the U.K. I think anyone who will read this news article can understand why I am considering it to be bad.

NEXT VACATION IN DUBAI?

It appears that for many years we have been living with a huge mistake: we thought that New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, San Francisco, Rome and other cities like these were the cultural capitals of the world and the main destinations for tourists from all over the globe.

Wrong.

Because when you read the recent news from the Dubai Air Show, you easily understand that the attractions of Doha and Dubai have taken the place of the Empire State Building, the Eiffel Tower and the Golden Gate Bridge.

How else can one explain the number of new airliners ordered by Dubai’s Emirates and by Doha’s Qatar Airways? I look at the figures and find it hard to believe: Emirates has 246 (!) planes on order, most of them wide body giants like B773 and A380. Now it has ordered 70 new A350. Qatar also has dozens of plane orders from Boeing and Airbus.

Both companies talk about the coming years in terms that make the congestion at JFK seem like a deserted glider air strip in the heart of the Australian Outback. And I just want to ask a little question: with all due respect for those two thriving cities, how on earth all those planes are going to be filled? What am I missing here?

A CONFUSING PICTURE

Looking at the world of commercial aviation these days can make you quite confused. On the one hand, every other day another airline publishes a new record high quarterly report, with positive figures that we could have only dreamt of a couple of years ago (and that includes U.S. airlines). On the other hand, soaring oil prices threaten to make part of air travel into a luxury commodity available only to the rich and the famous. What’s going on here?

Of course, the effect of high oil prices is yet to be seen, but the fundamental issue is already on the table of the international airline community: what to do with the fact that air travel is becoming more and more expensive? In the past decade, long before the current oil crises, the main trend in the airline industry was the rise of the “low cost” airlines. Brands like Ryanair, EasyJet, Air Tran and Tui Fly have become to be known almost as the old legacy ones, British or United. But today all the airlines face the same reality. Can the low cost airlines keep air travel as a popular service available to the masses? Or maybe at the end of the day the legacy airlines will surprise us by showing that all of those cruel economic steps that they have been taking in the past few years are paying off? Stay tuned.