KUBA74 From Poland, joined Mar 2000, 432 posts, RR: 0 Posted (11 years 1 week 6 days 11 hours ago) and read 1698 times:
Portugal seems to be more and more attractive holiday place but despite growing demand there are still a few Portuguese charter airlines- Air Luxor in fact is the only one which comes to my mind. Watching photos from Faro you see the tarmac full of foreign airliners and almost no Portuguese aircraft. Some of the companies that tried to run the business in the past (e.g. Air Columbus) quickly went bankrupt. Just wondering why the Portuguese do not make money in airlines?
Regards
Kuba
TriStar500 From Germany, joined Nov 1999, 4685 posts, RR: 47 Reply 1, posted (11 years 1 week 6 days 11 hours ago) and read 1685 times:
There are also "Yes Airways" (a TAP affiliate) and "Euro Atlantic Airways", although the latter is more specialized on ad-hoc and wet-lease operations.
Three charter companies for such a small country? I don't think this is such a small number...
Homer: Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!
Luzezito From Spain, joined May 2001, 268 posts, RR: 0 Reply 2, posted (11 years 1 week 6 days 10 hours ago) and read 1677 times:
My guess would be that, as you say, Portugal is mainly an incoming tourist destination and all those foreign tourists are mainly catered for by foreign charter carriers.
Because of their size they can offer much better prices and would make it difficult for a start-up to compete with them.
In Spain, for instance, being also an incoming destination, there are quite a few carriers (Spanair, Air Europa, Futura, Iberworld, etc) and they seem to be making fairly ok. I see a few reasons for this:
1.- most started as a direct competitor to IB for national routes and then expanded to other European destinations.
2.- The Spanish market is bigger than the Portuguese both in volume of National passengers and points to be served, so this gives more room for charters or other companies to fill the gap.
3.- Big vertically integrated tourist groups like IBEROSTAR have their own airline (Iberworld). Mind you, this is also how Spanair started before 51% of the shares were sold to SK (I think). Are there such big groups in Portugal?
I have taken Spain as a comparison because they both are neighbours and the tourism fenomenon is very important. I thinks as fas as Portugal is concerned it is mainly a matter of size. Portugalia though is doing very well as a regular airline.
JR737 From Portugal, joined May 1999, 39 posts, RR: 0 Reply 5, posted (11 years 1 week 6 days 8 hours ago) and read 1642 times:
SATA International, is operating several charter flights, as well as regular ones.
Besides being an airline based in Azores, it is operating from Lisbon, Faro, Funchal (Madeira) and Ponta Delgada (Azores).
Air Luxor is also operating some regular flights.
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