The development of long-haul air services from regional and secondary airports in Europe

In recent years there has been tremendous interest in the growth of low-cost airlines in Europe operating from regional and secondary airports. These have been entirely in the short-haul sector, however. Intercontinental services remain dominated by a few large airports such as London Heathrow, Frankfurt, Paris CDG and Amsterdam. This paper examines the recent development of long-haul services and shows that some of the medium sized European airports have seen their network reduced in the last decade, while it also appears more difficult to replicate Ryanair’s use of obscure minor airports in the long-haul arena. Possible means of providing long-haul links to European regional airports are examined. Continental Airlines is launching new routes from New York to places such as Belfast and Bristol with the Boeing 757 offering around 150 seats. These obviously depend upon the hub feed at the US end to gather a much wider range of North American destinations together. Emirates has ambitious plans to serve more European airports from its rapidly growing hub at Dubai. Already it offers the only eastbound long-haul flight out of Scotland (Glasgow-Dubai). Routes between smaller airports catering for the visiting friends and relatives market have developed where there has been historical migration. These are typically at low frequencies. Canada has services from Europe such as Cardiff-Toronto and Lyon-Montreal. Hamburg has a link to Accra in Ghana, Las Palmas (Canary Islands) to Havana, Cuba and Birmingham to Ashgabat in Turkmenistan. In some cases it is possible to support a service through a second stop in Europe (e.g. Lisbon-Porto-Caracas). Low frequency services are also to be found catering for the holiday market such as to Florida or the Caribbean (e.g. Dusseldorf-Orlando). In the absence of any direct long-haul service, connections via a European hub are necessary to access intercontinental points from regional airports in Europe. International alliances between airlines are shown to have been a mixed blessing in this respect. They have generally widened connection opportunities via the major hubs and led to more competitive through fares becoming available. However, some secondary and regional hubs have been run-down in favour of major hubs in the same alliance (which may be in a different European country), reducing accessibility from smaller and more peripheral regional airports. Examples include London Gatwick which has the main London service from many smaller UK airports such as Jersey, Inverness and Plymouth but has been run down as a long-haul hub by British Airways and Copenhagen, which now has very limited long-haul service by SAS; instead a double-change is required from many small Scandinavian airports to reach Star Alliance services out of Frankfurt. The growth of low-cost short-haul airlines such as Ryanair and easyjet may have reduced fares for local passengers but has reduced global connectivity where they have driven a traditional hub airline off the route. A good example is Belfast in Northern Ireland which used to have a link to Amsterdam by KLM. They have been displaced by easyjet, which is fine for passengers only travelling to Amsterdam but beyond there is no longer co-ordinated scheduling and through fares to KLM’s global network. If a passenger does attempt to connect via Amsterdam it will usually cost them more than previously and if anything goes wrong, the connection is ‘at their own risk’. The scope for a long-haul low-cost airline is examined. It is demonstrated that it is difficult to obtain a sufficient cost advantage in long-haul for a ‘no-frills’ all-economy class product. This is because the major airlines are able to obtain very high yields from their first and business class traffic (one full fare first class passenger with a lie flat bed may be paying the equivalent of 40 deeply discounted economy excursion fares). This enables airlines to offer the seats at the back of the aircraft based on a very low marginal cost. It is difficult to increase aircraft and crew utilisation as this is already high on intercontinental sectors. Cargo is less easy to ignore as it provides significant extra revenue on long-haul flights although introduces complexity. It is also difficult to eliminate all ‘frills’ on flights of 8 or 12 hours duration: even if charged for it is necessary to maintain food service (galley space) and in-flight entertainment, while keeping standard provision of toilets, baggage handling etc. The cost saving from using secondary airports is marginal for long distance traffic where it forms a much smaller proportion of total costs. Many of these smaller airports have runway length or apron/terminal space insufficient to handle widebody aircraft. Hub feed is much more crucial for long-haul services: there are few dense routes (mainly Virgin Atlantic’s long-haul network from London plus Paris-New York). Intercontinental services from Frankfurt or Amsterdam typically depend on connections for 70-80% of their traffic. Bilateral air services agreements between governments also restrict the opportunities for long-haul services from regional airports. When the UK-India bilateral was renegotiated to allow extra flights, the three British carriers applying all wanted to use this scarce capacity from London Heathrow rather than any regional airport. Other bilaterals may specifically name the capital city only in the route schedule. It is concluded that the best scope for long-haul services from the regions is to major hub airports in other parts of the world, such as those developed by Emirates and Continental. Opportunities for point-to-point leisure services fall into two main categories: ethnic links and holiday destinations (some of which may already exist as charters). A long-haul low-cost ‘no-frills’ air service is likely to be a risky venture but carriers such as easyJet may be tempted to try this from their bases in secondary airports such as London Stansted or Berlin Schonefeld if profits falter on their European network, using their short-haul services to provide feed. Otherwise, the regional airports are in the hands of the major airlines or alliance groups and their European feeder operations. Important links are currently under threat from lack of capacity for small aircraft at the major hubs, run-down of secondary hubs and competition from low-cost airlines for short-haul traffic.

Can the European low-cost airline boom continue?: Implications for regional airports

At a time when the traditional major airlines have struggled to remain viable, the low-cost carriers have become the major success story of the European airline industry. This paper looks behind the headlines to show that although low-cost airlines have achieved much, they too have potential weaknesses and face a number of challenges in the years ahead. The secondary and regional airports that have benefited from low-cost carrier expansion are shown to be vulnerable to future changes in airline economics, government policy and patterns of air service. An analysis of routes from London demonstrates that the low-cost airlines have been more successful in some markets than others. To attractive and historically under-served leisure destinations in Southern Europe they have stimulated dramatic growth and achieved a dominant position. To major hub cities however they typically remain marginal players and to secondary points in Northern Europe their traffic has been largely diverted from existing operators. There is also evidence that the UK market is becoming saturated and new low-cost services are poaching traffic from other low-cost routes. Passenger compensation legislation and possible environmental taxes will hit the low-cost airline industry disproportionately hard. The high elasticities of demand to price in certain markets that these airlines have exploited will operate in reverse. One of the major elements of the low-cost business model involves the use of smaller uncongested airports. These offer faster turn-arounds and lower airport charges. In many cases, local and regional government has been willing to subsidise expansion of air services to assist with economic development or tourism objectives. However, recent court cases against Ryanair now threaten these financial arrangements. The paper also examines the catchment areas for airports with low-cost service. It is shown that as well as stimulating local demand, much traffic is captured from larger markets nearby through the differential in fare levels. This has implications for surface transport, as access to these regional airports often involves long journeys by private car. Consideration is then given to the feasibility of low-cost airlines expanding into the long-haul market or to regional operations with small aircraft. Many of the cost advantages are more muted on intercontinental services – for example, aircraft utilisation is already high and few routes have sufficient local demand without the use of hubbing. Large turbo-prop aircraft such as the DHC Dash 8 400 series offer very good economics compared to regional jets on short to medium sectors where demand is too thin to support a Boeing 737 operation. flybe is using these on certain ‘third level’ routes in Britain and other opportunities are identified in mainland Europe. It is concluded that there are still good growth prospects for low-cost airlines in Europe, especially in France, Italy and some of the new EU member states but rather than growing to dominate the air transport industry, an equilibrium position is likely to be reached. Some regional airports may see their services reduce once the market becomes saturated or the relative competitive position of the major airports and airlines improves.

Ramón Gaya and “People’s Museum” of the Pedagogical Missions

En este trabajo se propone destacar las diversas aportaciones de Ramón Gaya al llamado “Museo del Pueblo” de las Misiones Pedagógicas (1931-1936), explicando las circunstancias en que se creó dicho Museo así como sus actividades durante los años de la II República. Se presta una atención especial a las condiciones en que funcionaba el Museo y la importancia que tenía tanto en el marco de la difusión de la cultura en los pueblos que visitaba como para los “misioneros” mismos. Para subrayar la significación particular que tenía el Museo en la trayectoria vital de Gaya, se hace hincapié en el testimonio personal del pintor.This article centres on the various contributions that Ramón Gaya made to the so-called “People’s Museum” of the Pedagogical Missions (1931-1936). It explains the circumstances in which this Museum was created as well as the activities in which it was involved during the Second Republic. Special attention is paid to the conditions in which the Museum operated and to the importance it had both in the context of the dissemination of culture in the villages it visited and in terms of the “missionaries” themselves. In order to underline the particular significance that the Museum had in Gaya’s own career, the article makes use of the painter’s own personal testimony

SISTEM KUNCI DAN ALARM OTOMATIS PADA PAGAR RUMAH MENGGUNAKAN FINGERPRINT BERBASIS ARDUINO UNO

Technology in this era is growing rapidly and cannot be separated in many significant influences. In this era many systems are very fast and efficient in a good and the best way including security system such as automatic lock security. The security system which are very much found in the community and one of the security system is security for house fence. In this system there is so many and dangerous problems that cause robbery and the fence being destroy by bad people starting from several case and a lot of criminals that been found because the lock security system is not in a good way. There is a lot of fence and house are not in a good and automatic security dan make everyone is safe and lock the house especially the fence without feeling worried.In this research the authors conducted some major impact based on the background that has been explain by creating an automatic lock system for fences using arduino technology which is the center and the core of this research and this research is using fingerprint as a tool to be able to open an automatic lock system and it can open

Semi-automatic selection of summary statistics for ABC model choice

A central statistical goal is to choose between alternative explanatory models of data. In many modern applications, such as population genetics, it is not possible to apply standard methods based on evaluating the likelihood functions of the models, as these are numerically intractable. Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) is a commonly used alternative for such situations. ABC simulates data x for many parameter values under each model, which is compared to the observed data xobs. More weight is placed on models under which S(x) is close to S(xobs), where S maps data to a vector of summary statistics. Previous work has shown the choice of S is crucial to the efficiency and accuracy of ABC. This paper provides a method to select good summary statistics for model choice. It uses a preliminary step, simulating many x values from all models and fitting regressions to this with the model as response. The resulting model weight estimators are used as S in an ABC analysis. Theoretical results are given to justify this as approximating low dimensional sufficient statistics. A substantive application is presented: choosing between competing coalescent models of demographic growth for Campylobacter jejuni in New Zealand using multi-locus sequence typing data

Aligning Public Sector Agencies: Revisiting Luftman\u27s Enablers and Inhibitors of Alignment

This paper discusses the results of a research study in the alignment of Business Strategy with Information Systems and Technology (IS/IT) in government. A qualitative research method was used to examine social enablers of alignment in six government agencies. The paper contrasts the findings with the study of Luftman et al (1999) that identified several important enablers and inhibitors of alignment using data collected from 500 company executives. The results show that management support is an important social enabler of alignment that includes literacy in technical matters and cohesive decision-making that comes from sound business and IS relationships. A business planning style that involves business and technical staff, and open business plan communications that engages internal and external stakeholders, were also found to be social enablers of alignment

ANALISIS PROSES DATA REPORTING OROS MODELER KE SAP HANA PADA ACTIVITY BASED COSTING UNTUK INDUSTRI TELEKOMUNIKASI MENGGUNAKAN METODE SAP ACTIVATE

PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia bergerak dibidang telekomunikasi yang menyediakan jasa dan jaringan telekomunikasi yang sangat lengkap dan tersebar di berbagai wilayah di Indonesia. Oros Modeler merupakan aplikasi yang sudah lama digunakan oleh PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia dalam melakukan alokasi dana dan pada proses hasil reporting di Oros Modeler tidak memiliki komponen penyusun (breakdown) cost object product secara detail sehingga informasi yang di dapat dari Oros Modeler hanya berupa Actual Cost (total biaya cost pada produk yang dihasilkan). Maka dari itu dibuatlah Peraturan Menteri Badan Usaha Milik Negara (BUMN) Nomor PER-02/MBU/2013 yang dapat merancang aplikasi untuk mendukung tujuan proses bisnis sehingga PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia ingin mengimplementasikan SAP HANA dengan tujuan hasil reporting yang diharapkan SAP HANA dapat memiliki komponen-komponen penyusun untuk membentuk sebuah produk jadi dengan memodelkan activity based costing. Metode yang digunakan menggunakan metode SAP Activate .Menggunakan SAP HANA hasil reporting dari setiap cost object product yang dihasilkan dapat di diketahui komponen penyusunnya sehingga menjadi lebih detail dan lebih akurat dalam mengidentifikasi setiap cost object produk yang ada pada PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia