August 2012 2 Aviation Strategy
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Aviation Strategy Issue No: 177/8 Jul/Aug 2012 Legacy subsidiaries: Quest for a successful model CONTENTS Analysis egacy carriers have all tried to react to the competitive Lthreats of lower cost new entrant competitors by creating their own lower cost subsidiaries. Over time, as the LCC phe - Legacy subsidiaries: Quest nomenon has spread round the world, this reaction has devel - for a successful model 1-4 oped in various ways; but rarely successfully. In the US the network majors tried to establish in-house LCC subsidiaries - some of them several times. They all failed. It may UAL’s merger challenges, have been that the attempts to establish the likes of Song American’s merger explorations 5-8 (Delta) or Ted (United) were just attempts at union-bashing, ill- fated attempts to reduce costs fast enough to compete in some way with low fares of the point-to-point competition; an inter - im measure while putting off the opportunities available under Briefing Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to reduce employee costs throughout the group operations. LAN-TAM merger: Latam Airlines In Europe the early reactions were also to join the LCC revo - launches into tough climate lution with separately branded subsidiaries: British Airways’ Go 9-16 being a brand new start-up; KLM's buzz a spin-off from its regional British subsidiary Air UK. Neither of these were inte - grated into mainline operations. The logic, such as it was, was Databases 17-20 that these subsidiaries could close the operating cost gap on the new entrants but would also have a huge advantage in capital European, US and Asian costs because of the halo effect of their parents – totally wrong, airline traffic and financials as it turned out. BA disposed of Go in the fear that it had created an animal Regional trends that would cannibalise its own core traffic; it was subsequently acquired by easyJet to give the Luton based carrier a leg up in Orders development towards becoming one of Europe's largest carri - ers. Buzz equally went to Ryanair for similar reasons. Both acquisitions were financially painful for the acquirers. Lufthansa by contrast gradually acquired a majority stake in germanwings and was happy to treat it as an entirely separate brand within its portfolio of disparate airline products. It also allowed it to compete directly with its main Lufthansa brand, PUBLISHER albeit on non-hub flying. Air France got into the game late, prob - ably underestimating the incursion of easyJet into its home bases at CDG and Orly. It established Transavia France as a Aviation Economics 'leisure based' carrier using the expertise of the KLM's moder - ately successful transavia.com. Alitalia tried with Volare. SAS has James House, 1st Floor been trying to make sense of Blue 1. 22/24, Corsham Street None of these in-house subsidiaries have been successful; London N1 6DR primarily perhaps because the parent companies had no real interest in allowing them to grow outside their home country Tel: +44 (0)20 7490 5215 (and away from the limitations of national based unions) in the Fax: +44 (0)20 7490 5218 email: [email protected] www.aviationeconomics.com Aviation Strategy Analysis way that easyJet, Ryanair and Wizzair have routes out of Japan, which again made lit - been able to do; partly because of an over - tle sense for Qantas. Virgin Blue also whelming belief in their core brand dis - seems to have dismissed the development suaded them from allowing the sub - as one which as with similar moves in the sidiaries to grow too fast and cannibalise US was bound to fail once the unions dis - the core activities. covered what was going on. The LCC revolution took decades to However, Qantas has treated its low cross the Atlantic, but as in the case of the cost subsidiary as a fully fledged sub - development of many product ideas, only sidiary, coordinated within the Qantas a few years to get to Asia. Now the focus is Group; and been willing to foster it as a in the Far East; where the LCC business fully integrated new brand. Qantas and Aviation Strategy model and the reaction to it is developing Jetstar bid internally for resources on a is published 10 times a year by in new ways. With ownership restrictions route by route and flight by flight basis: Aviation Economics still in place, the start-up LCCs have (with the one proving the potential for the collusion in various degrees of usefulness greatest group returns being allocated the Publisher: from nation states) been able to establish opportunity to operate the flight. Keith McMullan minority owned branded subsidiaries in Importantly the two brands do not com - [email protected] other countries in the region to develop a pete, but work together in complement. Contributing Editor: regional brand awareness. Distribution systems are linked: both carri - Heini Nuutinen AirAsia, for example, based in Malaysia, ers cross-sell each others' services. This can has established subsidiaries in Thailand, lead to both carriers operating the same Production Editor: Indonesia to allow it to create a Southeast route (they overlap on 32 routes overall) Julian Longin [email protected] Asian network. It plans to open AirAsia but the process is designed to ensure that Japan in partnership with ANA in 2013. inter-brand competition and demand can - Subscriptions : Distances within South East Asia between nibalisation is minimised while maximising [email protected] major centres are also far longer than group returns. Jetstar participates in the QF Tel: +44 (0)20 7490 5215 comparative routes in the US or Europe; and partners' FFPs; and code share agree - and AirAsia compounded the problem for ments with common partners. Copyright: the legacy carriers by establishing AirAsia Jetstar too has been used to access Aviation Economics X as a separate long-haul low cost model. cross-border brand development as such All rights reserved In doing so it created as if almost by as AirAsia. It has built up 50% owned chance its own unbundled network model Jetstar Asia, based in Singapore - possibly Aviation Economics allowing self-transfer at the low cost ter - allowing it to access slightly lower employ - Registered No: 2967706 (England) minal at Kuala Lumpur. ment costs and more efficient crewing. It In Australia, Qantas appears to have cre - also has a 30% stake in Jetstar Pacific Registered Office: ated a new type of in-house low cost sub - based in Vietnam - although it is currently James House, 1st Floor sidiary; again one that could possibly be limited to domestic services. It recently 22/24 Corsham St described as union-bashing. Following the established Jetstar Japan in partnership London N1 6DR demise of Ansett and near collapse of Air with oneworld alliance partner JAL - ini - VAT No: 701780947 New Zealand, and the emergence of new tially designed to operate domestic routes ISSN 2041-4021 (Online) low cost competition (Virgin Blue, now (it started operations in June this year with The opinions expressed in this publication do Virgin Australia), it seems to have caught its three A320s and plans for a 21 strong not necessarily reflect the opinions of the edi - tors, publisher or contributors. Every effort is unions napping when it established Jetstar fleet) it will undoubtedly go international made to ensure that the information con - in 2004. The official story at the time may before long. It has also announced plans to tained in this publication is accurate, but no legal reponsibility is accepted for any errors have been that this low cost fully owned start Jetstar Hong Kong in a joint venture or omissions. subsidiary would only be used on 'leisure' with China Eastern - the first LCC to be The contents of this publication, either in routes - notably naturally low yielding based in Chep Lap Kok - which, AOC per - whole or in part, may not be copied, stored or reproduced in any format, printed or elec - routes into and out of the Northern mitting, is set to start operations next year. tronic, without the written consent of the Territories and Gold Coast, which were Also, it has the domestic New Zealand publisher. unsuited to Qantas' high cost structure. operations and increasing involvement in The unions seem to have rationally trans-Tasman routes - all notoriously and accepted that it also made sense for historically difficult to operate efficiently. Jetstar to operate longer haul leisure In all these Jetstar has the advantage of July/August 2012 2 Aviation Strategy Analysis Thailand Pacific AirAsia X Indonesia AirAsia AirAsia AIRASIA ROUTE NETWORKS being able to access the Qantas Group Is the Jetstar model successful? In the fleet, order book, and financial resources; first half of the group's financial year and it may perhaps be assumed that the ended June 2012 Jetstar achieved operat - parent group sees greater shareholder ing profits of AUD147m (US$146m) up by returns from allocating its capital to its 3% on the year before, while Qantas main - new brand. line returned AUD66m, down by 60% on These moves have spurred a splurge of the year before level (although admittedly legacy carriers' responses in the region. impacted by the effects of strike action of SIA has set up Scoot (although it has oper - an estimated AUD194m). Jetstar produced ated its own single aisle leisure carrier Silk a third of group capacity in the first half Air for many years). This is operating hand- and carried 64% of the total number of me-down 777s and is designed to attack passengers. Of course the published fig - the “burgeoning market” for medium- to ures come under criticism - basically refer - long-haul intra Asian low fares demand.