Airline Advisory Panel
Routes Online have invited representatives from the Network Planning departments of a number of airlines worldwide to form an Advisory Panel who will oversee and guide our airport customers in the development of their airport profiles on Routes Online. The Advisory Panel has been drawn from a number of airlines throughout the world, representing all market sectors of the aviation industry. Their role will be to provide airports with guidance on the type and format of information that should be shared, to ensure that the needs of the airlines in evaluating the opportunities presented are met, and also to ensure that airports demonstrate, in detail, the market opportunities that they offer.
The Advisory Panel will also regularly advise of any changes in airline needs, to ensure that this tool continues to offer airports an unrivalled opportunity to promote themselves in an ever changing aviation environment.
Morten Malmros, Director Route Management - Scandinavian Airlines Denmark
"Be realistic when describing your catchment area. With the current development in the industry airport should probably be more focussed on keeping the routes and frequencies they have today rather than spending all the time and energy on trying to attract new business"
Tassos Raftopoulos, Manager Network Planning - Aegean Airlines
"Routes is a great opportunity for an initial introduction and to meet personally potential partners such as airports. We have quite a good understanding of our markets, but the personal contact that we achieve at the event is important. A new service may take years to be realised, we stay in touch with potential partners and over time get to know them, and when we need additional or in-depth information we already have the contacts to approach"
Pavol Mlady, Commercial Manager - SkyEurope
"Be prepared and use the opportunity that you have at Routes wisely; remember that every airline is talking to several tenths of airports during the event. Avoid long presentations on airport and infrastructure developments or master plans; rather, come with particular business cases which you believe in; study the airline's strategy and markets and avoid proposing operations which do not fit into this strategy"
Wojciech Jagiello, Manager Network Analysis - LOT
"From airport delegates I would like more focus on actual data and evidence that some initial analysis of the suggested route has been performed. Also, we are interested in seeing preliminary proposals related to support schemes from airports for new routes. Less paper and more e-presentations!"
Carsten Jensen, Revenue
Manager - Cimber Air
"I do appreciate when at Routes I meet airport delegates who have an understanding of a regional airline like Cimber and who do not oversell their home market potential"
Tobias Pogorevc, Chief Financial
Officer - Helvetic Airways AG
"The type of delegates that I would like to meet at Routes should come from Senior Management and have a deep understanding of the local markets and needs. The airports delegates should also know what kind of customers the local tourism organizations are targeting - e.g. mass tourism, backpackers, golfers etc"
Andrew Meredith, Commercial Executive - BA City Flier
"To airport delegates I would say: keep to the point. Understand who and what BA City Flier represents. Keep paperwork to a minimum - electronic copies please!!!!"
Fiona Downie, Network Planning Manager - BMI Regional
"When meeting airports at routes, it is useful to receive from them top line information on potential new route opportunities - market sizes, key corporate markets etc."
Wolfgang Schein, Director Market Research - Austrian Airlines
"Airports should know in advance to whom they are talking. Nice presentations are fine, but more information about regional developments are more essential"
Dr Borbála Bernát, Network Planning Manager - Malev Hungarian Airlines
Borbála joined Malev 1981, where she started with a role in the Commercial Planning Department, to then move to the Flight and Yield Management Department, and subsequently to the Pricing and Revenue Management Department. She has also worked as Malev representative for Bulgaria.
Since 2001 she work as a Network Planning Manager, where her role involves evaluating different schedule scenarios for the whole of Malev network, studying and planning new air services and preparing schedules for wider bilateral and alliance cooperations.
"At Routes we are expecting to meet marketing people, able to share traffic data, information on competitors and also on costs and fees. My advice to airports is to establish a good marketing department"
Buddy Anslinger, Managing Director International Planning - Continental Airlines
Buddy Anslinger is Managing Director of International Planning for Continental Airlines, a position he has held since June, 1997. In this capacity, he is responsible for planning all aspects of the airline's entire international route network, including Continental Express and Continental Micronesia.
Buddy joined Continental in 1987 as an Analyst in Airport Services. Since that time, he has held positions of increasing responsibility throughout the airline, including Director of Alliance Planning, Director of Strategic Planning, and Managing Director of Government Affairs.
Buddy attended Texas A&M University, where he earned a Bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering and a Master's of Business Administration. He resides in Houston with his wife, Kim, and two children, Ava (20 months), and Will (5 months).
"When airports approach us with service proposals, data needs are different for the types of destination airports are representing.
If the airport serves a leisure destination, we are looking for data on the number of people visiting, what nationalities are the tourists, number of 4 or 5 star hotels (rooms), future hotel development and/or other significant developments for the area.
If the airport is a destination for VFR (visiting friends and relatives), we'd want to know the numbers of people, catchment area, where they are coming from or going to, the class of service the VFR typically utilize, seasonality of visits, and frequency of visits.
If the airport is a business destination, we are looking for all kinds of economic data on the region, including companies located there, types of industry, number of employees, where they typically travel, what class of service they travel in, catchment area, etc. As with leisure destinations we are interested in future developments including company expansions and relocations.
In all cases, if the airport/city/region/resort can make an offer to reduce the airline's risk, we are keen to hear it as soon as is reasonable in the presentation. We also want the costs of the airport by category to help us improve our forecasts. We don't really need someone else to forecast our markets for us, unless they really think we're missing out on some traffic that the databases would miss, which because of online bookings, is getting to be more and more! Although airlines do vary in practices, our airline typically looks at serving markets daily, and in almost all cases, we prefer not to tag or wrap cities."
Lee Lipton, Director of Network Strategic Planning - Southwest Airlines
Lee Lipton is Director, Network Strategic Planning for Southwest Airlines. He currently leads the team responsible for developing Southwest’s long term network and business model strategy.Lee has been with Southwest Airlines for 12 years, serving previously in Ground Operations, flight scheduling and route planning positions. Before joining Southwest Airlines, Lee worked as an analyst for a Washington, D.C. based aviation consulting firm.
"We are interested in the information that best describes the region and its possibilities for Southwest Airlines. There's the quantitative side where we need to understand traffic, revenue, business and tourism economy, demographics, airport information and the other components that scale the opportunity for us. We are also interested in a qualitative assessment, especially the trends and drivers that help us understand a community's future and how it might fit into our strategy and plans. Our most productive relationships are with airports that can see things from an airline's perspective, are proactive in educating us, recognize the investment and risk associated with route decisions, and that work with us genuinely as partners."
Duncan Hall, Procurement Manager - British Airways Plc
Duncan HallAfter graduation from university, Duncan worked for four years in retail banking before joining British Airways in 1996. After four years experience in airport systems and supplier management in customer relations, Duncan became a buying manager in the Procurement department in 2000. Since then he has worked in a number of commodity areas, most recently taking responsibility procurement activity for airport, ATC and other operational contracts in the Middle East and Asia Pacific region.
"The best approaches from airports start with short, punchy commercially focused presentations. Airports are enablers for airlines to serve a market rather than a destination in itself . A quality approach would clearly show the airline a good business reason to fly to the city concerned. This will be substantiated with figures on local business, tourism capacity, Origin & Destination market size and growth projections to prove that there is a gap in the market. Once this is established, the airport will demonstrate why it should be the chosen gateway versus alternative airports in the same catchment area. The airport should outline its USP and highlight what the passenger experience will be like and how it can enable the airline to operate smoothly with quick turnarounds.
A good approach will recognise the commercial risks a new operator faces and will aim to address this by offering broad and flexible incentive schemes or some mechanism of risk sharing, naturally within the boundaries of applicable laws. Better approaches involve an integrated proposal that includes the wider community who will benefit from the additional airlift. This will include tourism authorities, local government and chambers of commerce who should all be willing to support economic benefit to the region."
Pete Yap, General Manager Networks and Schedules - Jetstar Airways
Pete has been in the aviation industry for 11 years, and the focus of his career has been on long term route and fleet planning. Currently, he holds the position of General Manager - Network & Schedules at Jetstar Airways in Australia. He looks after fleet planning, aviation & regulatory charges, network planning, and scheduling for the airline. He also held prior positions at Air New Zealand, US Airways, and Seabury APG.
"When being approached by airlines, I would like airports to present information on the top revenue opportunities out of their airport that are relevant for my airline. Information on O&D passenger flows, catchment area, seasonality, and fares is essential. As a low cost carrier, it is important for the airport to present ways that they can help ensure the success of new or additional services. This can be done through financial concessions, growth incentives, joint marketing funds, and/or other risk sharing activities. We look for ‘out of the box' solutions, and I would encourage airports to do the same. As Jetstar is a carrier that is experiencing rapid growth, airports need to realise that we are looking to develop a long term relationship. Since Jetstar would be making an investment with any new services, the airport should also be willing to invest. Additionally, it would be beneficial to the airport if they could gain the support of tourism bodies prior to approaching the airline."
Todd Scott, Global Network Planning Manager - UPS Airlines
Todd Scott is Global Network Planning Manager for UPS Airlines, a position he has held since February, 2004. He has been with UPS since 1983 and associated with the airline since 1995. In his current capacity, he directs the team that plans the entire UPS international route network. UPS Airlines is the primary network allowing UPS to move express packages to over 200 countries and over 400 airports worldwide.
Before accepting his current position, he spent a number of years in UPS' Long Range Planning function as a Marketing and Finance manager and later as the International manager.
"UPS basically flies where the packages are. We are an integrator and do not put up a significant number of flights for just heavy cargo. Small packages really drive our network and the heavy cargo fills the gaps. However, we do have an interest in global trends and where industry is moving in the future. Staying current in all facets of the aviation industry is critical to success.
When we talk to airports about service, we need to see a way to tie it into our network as a benefit to overall cost and revenue generation. While understanding the industries and growth in the areas surrounding a particular airport is important, other information such as Improvement in "overfly" routings, cargo demand, cargo yield, and landing fee information are all part of the analytics as well."
Vadim Besperstov, Commercial Director - S7 Airlines
Vadim Besperstov has graduated from Siberian Academy of Public Administration in Novosibirsk, Russia in 1998. The Following year he joined Novosibirsk-based Siberia Airlines in the position of economist. During eight years with Siberia Airlines (in 2006 re-branded as S7 Airlines) he changed several positions in commercial department and currently is commercial director of S7 Airlines. Under his responsibility is network planning, revenue management, inventory control, alliances issues. Participated in several M&A projects in Russian aviation market. During his time with S7 he defended doctoral degree in Economics in Novosibirsk Transport University. Since 2005 he has lived in Moscow, where S7's headquarter is now based.
"Since I represent certain region of CIS countries, I suggest the way airports approach airlines in that region includes analysis of traffic rights issue. We still live in regulated environment and very often airline's willingness to serve destination faces limits from government authorities. If an airport can provide support from local authorities and communities, this becomes truly valuable."