Conversion course – Does anyone understand the airlines?
On 22/06/2010, in Airline corner, by steve
My fascination with aircraft started at about age 5 and I first heard about air traffic control when I was 16. Gabi Nemeth who made music besides being an air traffic controller was on a TV talk show and he made a gallant effort to explain what ATC was all about… He must have done a great job because I for one understood what he was saying and from then on wanted nothing better than to be a controller. Being accepted to the physics faculty of a University in Budapest almost derailed my destiny but I corrected it soon enough and on my 21st birthday I issued the first landing clearance all on my own!
In the years that followed I collected just about every qualification a controller can have and added a bit of computer programming skill also. In time I exchanged the microphone for a desk at ICAO in Paris and later, for a post involved in building the new Amsterdam ATC system, AAA. But I never thought of myself as anything other than an air traffic controller. I was also very much convinced that what I was doing with or without the microphone, was the best possible course for our charges, the aircraft and their operators. Giving them directs, shortening the tracks wherever possible and the many other “treats” all appeared as going out of our way to help them.
My first exposure to IATA was at the very first Flow East meeting which was held in Budapest. We knew relatively little about this mighty organization or how it worked and were generally a bit suspicious of its motives… They sent a diminutive Swissair captain as one of their representatives and what he lacked in stature was more than made up for by his forceful personality and very clear words blasting us for the very poor job we were doing. He did not spare the civil aviation authorities either, drawing multiple color lines on a wall chart showing where the air routes should be in his view… Very few of the existing routes were where he thought they should be of course. His propensity for drawing colored lines earned him the nick “Tintoretto”. I remember how deeply hurt I felt by all the verbal abuse but also the feeling that may be, just may be, Tintoretto had a point. Had I known what profound effect his colored lines would have on my life many years later, I would have kissed the little captain on the brow for sure.
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Hungarians buy themselves an airline – Has MALEV been saved?
On 05/03/2010, in Airline corner, by cleo
It would be so nice being able to report here that the Hungarian government has finally found the magic bullet and their buying back of MALEV Hungarian Airlines was the first step in making the ailing company healthy again. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. It was politics that has given MALEV a new lease on life with no magic bullet in sight.
This was painfully evident in the interview with MALEV’s CEO Martin Gauss, shown in the morning program of Hungarian television aired on 4 March. The poor guy was trying to explain why he believed they had a good plan and in the process described how MALEV will first shrink, then grow, how they will copy the good things from the low-cost airlines and reject the bad ones… Nothing that we have not heard before and nothing that has actually worked for others in a similar predicament.
MALEV looks back on a proud history that started on 26 November 1950 when the company began independent operations as the successor of MASZOVLET, a post-war enterprise run together with the Russians. As the national flag carrier, MALEV flew far and wide, providing the vital links to Europe and the Middle-East during the communist years. Its Russian built aircraft were fuel guzzlers and the productivity of the company was nothing to write home about… But back then such things were of no consequence. The State had deep pockets and all holes created by the national carrier were plugged immediately.
When capitalism finally arrived in Hungary twenty something years ago, MALEV, like many other old names in the country was faced with the cruel realities of real competition. In all fairness we must add that the predicament of MAELV was perhaps even worse than that of the others because competition in the airline world is so much deadlier than elsewhere.
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Should MALEV be saved?
On 01/12/2009, in Airline corner, by cleo
Do you remember the term “flag-carrier”? This was usually applied to the airline of a country which was seen as the object of national pride. As recently as a decade ago, when new States came into being, no matter how small, one of their first acts had been to create a national airline (often followed by an air traffic control centre… but that is another story). Of course the aviation marketplace has changed in a big way, there is intense competition between companies, and being a flag-carrier has all but lost its patina.
Airlines have disappeared from the scene, some are gone completely (SABENA) others live on wearing the guise of companies that took them over (Northwest) and still others have kept their colors and name but are now just a division in a mega-carrier (Austrian and Brussels Airlines in Lufthansa, KLM in Air France). Most of them had one thing in common: their long (and not so long) term prospects were all but rosy. Surviving on national pride was not an option.
The problem with Malev is that many in Hungary want to save it because they believe that a country must have a national airline. They also claim that a country’s independence is reduced if it does not have its own airline. These are the worst possible reason for trying to save an ailing company and it costs a lot of taxpayer money before the company folds anyway.
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In memoriam Northwest Airlines
On 25/10/2009, in Airline corner, by steve
A330s of NWA
A few years back my business required a lot of travel to and all over the United States. I was a Northwest WorldPerks member and it was of course only natural that I flew via Amsterdam and than on the NWA system in the US.
Northwest was the fourth largest airline in America and for some reason they did not enjoy a stellar reputation… They flew old planes and customer service was supposed to be below par. Some people called them NorthWorst. May be I was lucky but in all the hundreds of thousands of miles I flew with them, I never had a single reason to complain.
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