Helsinflyer100

Comments on a couple of your statements:

It is not only on this route, it is also Barcelona at least.

Not LCC in the Ryanair sense yet, but not far from it and getting much closer in on many routes in many cases. Also, the fact that they have said publicly that they will transfer short-haul flights to partner airlines in no way negates their moral obligation to transparently communicate to individual customers during the sales and ticketing process. The first I heard of the partner airline, in the case of Smartlynx was after Finnair had issues me a ticket on the phone, and even on the ticket, there was no mention of the terms and conditions (e.g. relating to baggage limits) of the partner airline.

Yes, they "have been very clear on this", but the warnings and the outcome are rather different in my opinion. Well they warned us that they would give us rubbish service...so here it is!

NoWindowSeat

Flight bookings during this week = 3.451,25 eur lost revenue for AY from this former customer...just 2 years ago AY would have gotten the money but no more..like many others I've had enough of this crap they throw at their customers.

intuition

Hmm.
I think I have been one of the harsher critics of this strategy, and I am still unhappy about the developments.
What I mean is that if one is following the development of AY even very distantly, it can not come as a surprise that the complete euro-fleet is going to be outsourced at some point.

If someone is posting "Maybe AY is going LCC" (or "operations will cease any day now") with panic in the voice, I feel the need to add some history to that statement.

intuition

While I feel your pain, sometimes it is too easy to explain everything with the stupidity of management (I myself tend to use this explanation a lot

There is a clear strategy. The strategy itself may be the wrong path, but at least AY management pointed out the direction and is doing stuff. Compare this to SK, where owners put up 10+ billion SEK extra last 2 years, and management still haven't made any changes. SK also lost a great deal of local feeder traffic due to skyways folding. AY is at least trying to keep their feeder traffic flying.

As a person who refuses to fly in the back of the bus, I despise the current LCC trend. Make no mistake about that.

The smart lynx deal was a surprise. As I wrote above, I think this is a sign of the europeean air market not yet being ready for consolidation. There is a need for the big longhaul operators to secure their feeder traffic, and to consolidate that traffic in joint ventures would be profitable. But it seems legacy airlines are caught in fighting each other instead of the LCC operators. They seem to hope that another legacy airline folding will give more space for the rest. That seems stupid IMO.

oliver2002

The Smartlynx/6Y MAD deal is just a tempoary wetlease.

The flybe E190 and future A320 with xyz deal will be AY service on aircraft operated/serviced by the contractor, who has to provide service as per a service level agreement. So it will be AY flight number with AY service, but executed by low(er) wage and operating cost provided by the contractor.

Kirtap

There seems to be very little knowledge about these changes even among crew members. Discussed it with AY crew on two recent flights. Their understanding is that there will be a Smartlynx crew + one AY purser onboard the Smartlynx flights and that the service should be the same (or as close as possible...) to that of AY. Needless to say, they were not very happy or optimistic about the situation. And, it is not only the MAD route that is affected but also at least Barcelona, Malaga and Budapest. Smartlynx do not have enough capacity for all these so there will probably be another partner also, which one I do not know.

teme

Current schedule shows that Smartlynx will operate randomly the above mentioned routes. I.e I will fly to Madrid on September 21st and will have Finnair aircraft and Samrtlynx will operate Barcelona route that day whereas September 25th it is vice versa. This adds to the confusion as it is not only one route but several routes that are affected.

WilcoRoger

BUD too? OMFG, with the demise of MA it's bad enough to have only AY serving it, but flying Smartlynx??? I do appreciate a direct flight, but I might as well save some money and fly via MUC with LH.

Kirtap

Thats what they told me, yes. In fact they even said that there is at least one more route except MAD, BCN, AGP and BUD but they did not remember which one. We have to wait and see...

JnsV

Fortunately there is no indication for AY753/754 being operated by anyone else than AY for my upcoming reservations and I hope it stays so because I really do not look forward to travelling on Smartlynx.

SPBanker

Finnish business weekly Talouselämä just had an interview with CEO Mika Vehviläinen (he's the cover boy too!). Interview has pretty confrontational tone. Some choice quotes.

"Finnair does not want to be LCC"

When asked about the missed schedule for finding a strategic partner for Airbus routes, "I don't want to commit to a new deadline. There are still interested parties. As a model this will become more common in Europe."

"Finnair has talked about the partnership with more than five but less than ten companies."

What kind of qualities are you looking for when choosing the partner? "This is a major decision for Finnair. Partner company has to be reliable, of good quality and its price competitiveness has to be such that it can go against any competitor." [That's a pretty tall order! SPB.]

Which services will become for-fee next? "We will see what the customers are prepared to pay for."

mosburger

Considering the signing and other bonuses the current CEO got from AY, I'd expect him to find a credible European partner ASAP. That's what he is paid for, not explaining failures.

intuition

Very interesting!

Was there any more discussion around the LCC comment?

I think Vehviläinen has a good point that there is a need for consolidation, but AY is a pretty small player if one is only considering the airbus narrow body fleet. It may be difficult to trigger the interest with that only. AY needs to find a partner that also sees the value of the feeder traffic (to HEL), and possibly also can complement it (to another hub).

For fleet sizes, just compare AY's fleet of 26 A319/320/321s to Aegean's 29.

mosburger

Iberia as part of IAG? Iberian Peninsula to Asia and Nordic Countries/Baltics/Russia to Latin America. That includes rather heavy premium traffic as well.

intuition

One of my favourite solutions ( during daydreaming