Featured Airline: Spanair

Overview

Spanair has new owners from Catalonia which has driven a restructuring that covered moving to T1, a new image, new management team, transfer to Barcelona, a new strategic plan and agreements with trade unions.

The carrier has stripped out huge costs from the business and now believes that its costs are €1 – 1.5 per seat off the LCCs.

Fleet

Currently 35 Aircraft in the Fleet consisting of the following aircraft type

• A320
• A321
• B717
• M83
• M83
• M87

For 2011 no additional aircraft will be delivered, remaining at 35, but there will be a switch from domestic services to international, so we can expect a number of new destinations.

Long term the carrier will be looking to add long haul aircraft and operate aircraft from BCN to Latin America and Africa.

Personnel

A new team has been put into place including

• CEO - Mike Szucs
• Head of Network and Airport Development - Matthew Wood

Network Development Strategy

New focus to build Barcelona into a hub, the carrier operates through T1. Aim is to become the airline of choice for Catalonia. It has aggressively targeted certain routes operated by Vueling. Spanair currently has a 16% market share at BCN, second to Vueling which has a 24% of scheduled seat capacity.

• Grow International traffic from 12% of their traffic to 40-50% of their traffic.
• Grow the connecting flows from 21% to 35% at BCN
• Madrid will be kept as a core base, but the connecting flows focused on BCN

The carrier will also operate some point to point services, serving niche routes that may be away from their MAD and BCN bases.

Airline Requirements

Spanair will look to operate a minimum of three weekly service for a new market.

Niche markets like Marseille and Nice are of interest.

Spainair will seek to tap into the existing Star Alliance sales force in a particular market and therefore some markets will be easier to target. Spanair has a good presence in some markets already such as Scandinavia.

Spanair would like to hear from any airport that with an opportunity, particularly airports that would like a Barcelona service that feeds the Barcelona network. The carrier is particularly interested in Africa and Latin America.

For further details on how to submit a proposal via Route Echange or to connect with their route development team visit the Spanair profile.