xorrygva wrote:

I don't know where this rumor on ET in ZRH is coming from but I don't expect anything in the short term. ET is focusing on GVA at the moment. From Switzerland, the African market (excl South Africa) is more important from GVA than ZRH.

OK, supposedly the African market is more important from GVA than ZRH. But according to the Federal Statistical Office, in 2016 local departing pax to Africa from GVA amounted to 191,758 while from ZRH it was 293,213 (53% more). Excluding South Africa, it's 187,737 from GVA and 225,904 from ZRH (20% more) so Zurich is still in the lead. The reason why you would exclude South Africa eludes me anyway, as ET is flying to four airports in the country and would for sure want to grab some market share from LX. Demand to Ethiopia is almost negligible but for ZRH it is more than 7x higher (3,849 vs. 514).

What am I missing?

pmartin wrote:

The figures are from the Swiss Federal Statistics, direct pax. For the 12 months to 30 September ( ie Q4 16 to Q3 17), total departing pax are 25,168 or 50,336 if departures pax are multiplied by 2. That’s 160 pax per flight. About 70 pct load (around January / February typically only 2 flights per week). No clue how C is doing.

My guess is JCL isn't doing very well. But this is pure speculation based on a few personal observations from ZRH. For example, LX is remarkably often overbooking YCL on their ZRH-PEK flight (sometimes by as many as 30 or 40). Something tells me there isn't much premium demand to PEK compared to PVG. CA could be facing the same problem but has a more suitable configuration (28/199 vs. 8/47/164?). Why LX is using A340 right now is beyond me. I always thought they were using A330 for PEK.

YangFeng wrote:

OK, supposedly the African market is more important from GVA than ZRH. But according to the Federal Statistical Office, in 2016 local departing pax to Africa from GVA amounted to 191,758 while from ZRH it was 293,213 (53% more). Excluding South Africa, it's 187,737 from GVA and 225,904 from ZRH (20% more) so Zurich is still in the lead. The reason why you would exclude South Africa eludes me anyway, as ET is flying to four airports in the country and would for sure want to grab some market share from LX. Demand to Ethiopia is almost negligible but for ZRH it is more than 7x higher (3,849 vs. 514).

What am I missing?

These stats don't reflect exact demand, I actually don't really know what it reflects...I would only really rely for the direct flights only.
GVA has historically stronger links with Africa than ZRH, SR had its African network from GVA until the mid-90s (UN, NGOs, trading, cultural links, etc.). South Africa has historically been different with tourism and other business links.

YangFeng wrote:

If CX opens GVA (and that's a big if), I strongly suspect it will be a A350 destination, 3-4 weekly flights.

3 weekly with A350 would be a failure. GVA needs the B773 which is premium heavy. C. 40% of the demand is premium, the current A350 config would be the wrong choice. 4x weekly is the minimum needed to capture the business market.

For Air China in GVA, I repeat what I mentioned earlier. Business is not doing well both in terms of volumes and generated revenues.

The Swiss aviation statistics for local traffic can’t be trusted (they are pretty accurate for direct traffic). Example Doha has departing pax 19507 direct and local 19711 from GVA, and 24791 direct, 3042 local from ZRH Basically the GVA stats ignores transfer with a ripple effect on all stats to Asia / Africa through Doha. For ZRH the transfer is taken into account. Same for Abu Dhabi. Go figure.

This being said the departing traffic in q3 2017 to Addis Ababa was 1520 for GVA and 1104 for ZRH. 50 pct higher.

pmartin wrote:

The Swiss aviation statistics for local traffic can’t be trusted (they are pretty accurate for direct traffic). Example Doha has departing pax 19507 direct and local 19711 from GVA, and 24791 direct, 3042 local from ZRH Basically the GVA stats ignores transfer with a ripple effect on all stats to Asia / Africa through Doha. For ZRH the transfer is taken into account. Same for Abu Dhabi. Go figure.

This being said the departing traffic in q3 2017 to Addis Ababa was 1520 for GVA and 1104 for ZRH. 50 pct higher.

OK, I honestly didn't think these stats could be so inaccurate. If I'm not gonna trust the Federal Aviation Statistics, then who do I trust? Zurich Airport is using the same numbers in their informational materials for airline opportunities. If you look at some of the top unserved routes in these materials, these are exactly the same routes that WK has recently announced (Colombo, Buenos Aires, Denver, Ho Chi Minh City, Orlando).
Anyway, the figures for direct traffic might be more accurate but they are pretty useless to gauge demand since, well, they only account for direct services. Demand from Geneva to Oman is obviously not 0. It's also not 117'963 from Zurich since lots of passengers are connecting to India, Sri Lanka and the like.

In an interview with the NZZ am Sonntag, the Swiss CEO apparently repeated that the condition to maintain a base in GVA is to break even in 2018. Does anyone know how this GVA Reloaded is progressing and what are their chances to reach their target in 2018 ?

hynithuchi wrote:

In an interview with the NZZ am Sonntag, the Swiss CEO apparently repeated that the condition to maintain a base in GVA is to break even in 2018. Does anyone know how this GVA Reloaded is progressing and what are their chances to reach their target in 2018 ?

Hopefully the CSeries will help getting there. Still, such a shame to see LX pulling out of BSL maybe GVA...

YangFeng wrote:

OK, I honestly didn't think these stats could be so inaccurate. If I'm not gonna trust the Federal Aviation Statistics, then who do I trust?

I don't know about the quality of ZRH reporting, but for GVA it makes no sense. See example on Doha. According to the federal stats, GVA - HKG had a local traffic of 3,874 departing PAX for 2016, i.e. ~ 7,750 return whereas the true O&D is anywhere between 43,000 (OAG) and 46,000 (Sabre Data).

The next CS3 for SWISS is scheduled for delivery 20DEC as HB-JCG.

easyJet is adding two more aircraft to its Basel base effective summer 2018, bringing it to a total of 11 based aircraft (7 A-320 and 4 A-319).

New destinations will be Vienna 6 weekly, Belgrade 3 weekly, Athens 2 weekly, Lamezia 2 weekly, Mahon 2 weekly and Pula 2 weekly.

Stockholm (added for winter) will continue through summer schedule. Manchester, Venice, Barcelona, Hamburg, Figari, Split, Cagliari and Brindisi will see more frequencies. A total of 63 destinations will be served from Basel directly.

In the meantime Wizzair is also continuing its growth with new flights to Budapest (5 weekly), Wroclaw (3x weekly) and Sibiu (2weekly) as well as increased frequencies to Belgrade (3weekly) and Osijek (3 weekly). A total of 13 destinations will be served from Basel in total.

Aegean is adding twice weekly Athens flights as well.

A little pre-christmas GVA update :

- Cobalt is adding LCA 1/w with an A320.
- Adria is adding LJU 3/w with a S20.
- Air Serbia is adding BEG 2/s with an A319
- LX is adding a seasonal 2 weekly flight to TLN.
- Sk is turning OSL in a year round service.
- CA, QR and EY will have morning departures iso night, EY with a 789 iso 333.
- W6, A3, AY, LX, KM are slightly increasing their presence in GVA.

If we don't have any major announcements, it is nice to see new tail such as Air Baltic, Air Moldova, Air Serbia, Ural, Adria, Cobalt.

I would expect other news from LX and U2 soon and will keep you posted.

Thanks for your update. I have been looking for something like this for a while. New widebody morning departures should keep some of the local population happy.
Have a nice Christmas and keep us posted on possible further changes.

SWISS now operates MCT to ZRH nonstop to compete against WY... not quite I saw that they cancelled the MCT-DXB-ZRH sector last night and the plane was ferried back to ZRH nonstop from MCT. There seem to be some issues lately at DXB, many times aircraft are heavily delayed into the airport with long holding patterns etc

LXA340 wrote:

SWISS now operates MCT to ZRH nonstop to compete against WY... not quite I saw that they cancelled the MCT-DXB-ZRH sector last night and the plane was ferried back to ZRH nonstop from MCT. There seem to be some issues lately at DXB, many times aircraft are heavily delayed into the airport with long holding patterns etc

The MCT/DXB run has the problem that it has very short turns in MCT and DXB, any delay basically can't be minimised. It's just the only way LX can schedule MCT/DXB in their current hub banks.

ZRH 1225 - DXB 2130
DXB 2210 - MCT 2310
MCT 0010 - DXB 0125
DXB 0215 - ZRH 0625

kottok wrote:

A little pre-christmas GVA update :

- Cobalt is adding LCA 1/w with an A320.
- Adria is adding LJU 3/w with a S20.
- Air Serbia is adding BEG 2/s with an A319
- LX is adding a seasonal 2 weekly flight to TLN.
- Sk is turning OSL in a year round service.
- CA, QR and EY will have morning departures iso night, EY with a 789 iso 333.
- W6, A3, AY, LX, KM are slightly increasing their presence in GVA.

If we don't have any major announcements, it is nice to see new tail such as Air Baltic, Air Moldova, Air Serbia, Ural, Adria, Cobalt.

I would expect other news from LX and U2 soon and will keep you posted.

Also, new seasonal LX routes to Kalamata and Pula ex GVA.

Skywork also expected to start GVA-LUG.

Exciting news and destinations from LX: seasonal flights to Toulon, Pula and Kalamata, LOL.. .I doubt this will help them to make their GVA ops profitable.

Please continue your discussion and to post your updates in the new thread:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1382409

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