EU – US
Looking at transatlantic regulatory issues, the limited progress made in stage one of the EU-US aviation agreement has allowed us to launch a new subsidiary airline called OpenSkies offering direct services from continental Europe to the US for the first time. The first service will be from Paris to New York on a Boeing 757 that offers flat beds and a unique style of service.
One reason we chose the name OpenSkies for our fledgling new business is to signal our commitment to stage two of the talks between the EU and US towards a genuine Open Aviation Area – with equal traffic rights and removal of ownership restrictions. Then the industry can finally reap the benefits of the kind of sensible cross-national consolidation that has taken place in electronics, motor manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, banking and almost every other business sector.
We will not hesitate to remind the government of its right to terminate the current deal if sufficient progress towards this bigger goal has not been made by 2010.
The new air treaty has also enabled us to move our flights to Dallas and Houston from Gatwick to Heathrow and we are increasing frequencies on flights to New York JFK, Washington, Seattle and Orlando.
Separate to the air treaty we have announced our intention to launch services from London City airport to New York using Airbus A318 aircraft in an all-business, 32-seat configuration.
New aircraft
We announced our long awaited order for longhaul replacement and growth aircraft during the year. Both the Airbus A380 and the Boeing 787 have huge potential for us and, of course, for our customers.
The ‘whispering giant’, as the Airbus A380 has been called, and the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, will set new benchmarks in the sky for comfort and technology, and in terms of emissions, NOx and noise.
Boeing subsequently announced a delay to the original delivery schedule, and while this is a setback we are working closely with them to mitigate this.