This week’s featured link
Qatar Airways to Launch Flights to Seattle from 15 March 2021, Marking Second New U.S. Destination Announced This Year – Qatar Press Release
File this under “least shocking news of the year.” With Alaska officially joining oneworld and bulking up its relationship with American, it was only a matter of time before Qatar stepped up to the plate. The big question now is… how long before the Alaska/Emirates partnership crumbles?
Two for the road
BOC AVIATION INCREASES REVOLVING CREDIT FACILITY WITH BANK OF CHINA TO US$3.5 BILLION AND EXTENDS MATURITY TO 2026 – BOC Aviation Press Release
BOC may be based in Singapore, but its largest shareholder is the Bank of China. China has plenty of money, and BOC has been very active in the leasing world lately. It has more than 500 airplanes, some placed in the US with Alaska, Frontier, Southwest, and Spirit. Southwest did a deal for 10 airplanes in May of this year. It’s funny (or maybe not so funny) to think that airlines can’t be foreign-owned in the name of the country’s defense… but the airplanes can be.
France’s HOP! to become all Embraer operator – ch-aviation
It’s about time. Why HOP! with its obnoxious capitalization and punctuation was operating as a separate brand is completely unclear. It will now become a normal regional carrier that’s smaller than it is today.
1 comment on “3 Links I Love: Qatar Moves on Seattle, BOC, HOP! Shrinks”
Regarding Hop!:
1. I never understood why the guy who created Airlinair sold it to AF.
Did he wanted to become the AF ceo?
Airlinair was a ATR operator and an operator for the PST lines within France.
Customers are mainly local businesses needing two return flights daily during the week to Paris.
They arrive at 8am in Orly and comeback the same day with the 6pm flight.
The business case works. It does not need to be done by AF.
Irnically, those lines are now operated by Chalair or Twinjet or Amelia… with an AF codeshare and with the former ATRs of Hop!
2. Again I never understood why the guy (one person again) who created Britair sold it to AF.
They have operated flights with CRJ (the reason why Hop! has CRJs) for AF and this for ages.
I remember well the two logos on their planes in the 80’s: the Air Inter one and the AF one at the same time.
Britair has its office in the city of Morlaix, and now everything is going to disappear.
The guy cried in a regional newspaper interview because of the destruction of the morlaix offices and workshop.
It worked well without being bought by AF. AF would have still just pay and use them without owning them.
Hey, guy, why did you sell yourself to AF?
3. I never understood why AF wanted to purchase Régional, their direct competitor on regional lines inside France (1 hour maw flight duration).
AF had its mini hub in Lyon operated by britair.
Régional had its mini hub in Clermont-ferrand (not far by air to Lyon) with the same services to the same towns.
OK I understand that the Dubreuil family (who creted later air caraibes and french blue) were happy to sell it to AF.
Yes I understand that AF did not want again to have an à la british airways action (buying TAT) or an à la swissair (buying air littoral/buying aom) action.
But I do not thing that would have been a big disaster if let say Lufthansa would have bought Régional.
4. Transavia is not going to fully replace hop!
Lots of services of the so called Hop! airline or hop! domestic services were anyway mainly operated by AF airplanes (A319/A320/A321) and crew such on Orly-toulon or Orly-Biarritz… so transavia mainly replaces AF (even if some services were operated by CRJ an Hop! crew).
What a lot of destruction in all of that, just for some kind of strategy (well no strategy in my opinion).