Debrief

Some ‘unbelievable’ long haul fares cost the same per kilometre as the regular $29 no-frills specials, offering lower cost service but without the economies of a large cabin. But like whitegoods, it can’t last. They will cut capacity and fares will rise to sustainable, albeit low turnover rates. High fares of years past covered built-in fleet redundancy, disrupted flights, spares and engineers at strategic ports and a host of other backups, plus large capital investments and in house ground handling and support functions. The new LCC operation has few of these backups, runs on cash flow, leased fleets and outsourced support. Its little wonder the evening current affairs TV shows regularly feature their alleged foul ups.

Post the recession, those airlines with deep pockets and the collateral to borrow will be the survivors. They will have access to vast numbers of cheap, new aircraft and staff to rebuild from, but the traditional multi level backups of the past seem to be gone.

Flights of fancy: nonstop to London

Two years back aviation experts were expecting a modified Boeing 777 or Airbus A340 capable of operating flights from Australia to London nonstop to gather the attention of Qantas. But the case for such services has always been built on carrying only very high yield fares, as Singapore Airlines does on its Business class only A340-500 service to New York and Los Angeles. But since late 2008, the high yield segment has the hardest hit by the economic downturn on both short and long haul. Unfortunately premium seats on these ultra-longhaul aircraft can’t be simply converted to more cattle class by shifting the dividers, as the extra passengers would limit the range of the aircraft. One doubts if Boeing or Airbus’ embattled shareholders would presently wear one cent being spent on developing ultra-longhaul aircraft as they savage production and try and stir up sales lower down the fare (and service) chain.

Schedule watch

Against the ebbing tide, Darwin has scored two additional daily Virgin Blue services also gets a red eye Jetstar service to Brisbane reinstated. The LCC scrabble on the Darwin-Denpasar sector has seen Garuda quit its full service on the route, as well as its proposed services to Jakarta. No passenger or freight operators expect any increases on services to Honiara to replace SAW’s brief service, again indicating little viable demand for the carrier’s capacity existed. Similarly a route breakdown shows no scope for suddenly dreamt up Sky East Airlines to be based on SAWs E190s and F50s. But a sudden surge in Narrabri-Sydney loads before QantasLink quit could be very viable for Aeropelican’s new service – if they can retain them.

Justice – Indonesian style.

An Indonesian court’s conviction of Captain Marwoto Komar, the pilot of the 737 that crashed at Yogyakarta, reportedly on the strength of the air accident investigation findings and not freshly obtained sworn evidence, flies in the face of aviation’s almost global ‘no fault’ based accident investigation. Whatever he may or may not have been guilty of, the ATSB and related organisations’ accident investigation findings are heavily protected and cannot be used in subsequent civil or criminal court proceedings in most countries, in accordance with the ICAO conventions. They certainly form a well educated basis of where to look but whether the same witnesses can be made to appear as sworn witnesses in court is another matter.

The thousand of Australians who fly to and in Indonesia, and the millions transiting their airspace, deserve safe airspace and airlines. If Indonesia, which has been assisted by Australia since the late 1960s, doesn’t clean up its act it deserves the bans as instituted by the European Union. The Yogyakarta case won’t help that process one bit, and any other jurisdiction using it as a precedent will make that goal even harder. Pilots and controllers, whose work is perhaps the most highly recorded and documented of all, will simply clam for fear of courts freeloading on the findings of safety investigations.