Analysis for South Pacific

It’s not all priority boarding and airport lounge access driving business travellers anymore, says Egencia’s Business Travel and Technology Survey. In its 4^th edition, the survey shows the increasing desire by business travellers for technology access, cross-device integration, and greater productivity offerings on the road rather than traditional airline offerings.

Philippine low cost airline Cebu Pacific is aiming to upgrade its Manila-Sydney service to daily, satisfied with its improving performance on the route.

A more efficient usage of slots at London Heathrow has helped Europe’s largest airport continue to grow its passenger traffic despite operating at near capacity. A record 6.76 million passengers were handled in June 2017 (+2.3% from June 2016), including a record 259,917 passengers flying through on June 30, 2017, the airport’s busiest day ever, has boosted the number of passengers travelling through the UK’s hub in the past 12 months to 77 million, another record.

Papua New Guinea’s PNG Air is hallway through an ambitious fleet renewal and expansion programme, which has enabled the airline to improve its product and increase domestic capacity.

Last week, the Blue Swan Daily teased you with our exclusive interview with Malaysia Airlines CEO, Peter Bellew, who visited the CAPA offices to discuss all things Malaysia Airlines in the Australia market.

Air Niugini (ANG) recently announced it was now an all-jet aircraft operator after the last of its six Q400 turboprop aircraft left the country in Jun-2017 destined for a new owner.

Australia is proving an outlier to a strong global growth trend seen across other major domestic aviation markets over early 2017. According to recent release by IATA, while domestic travel is growing rapidly in China, Russia, the US, Brazil and India, the Australian market has “barely grown in year-on-year terms in 2017”.

If you haven’t heard of the artificial intelligence (AI) powered personal travel assistant, known as Mezi yet, today is your lucky day. Mezi have just announced a welcome entry into the corporate travel market designed at offering a travel-as-a-service solution for Travel Management Companies (TMCs), Corporates and Travel Agents.

Air New Zealand launched its latest safety video titled A Fantastical Journey, a name which is actually very fitting. The term Fantastical literally means “conceived or appearing as if conceived by an unrestrained imagination; odd and remarkable; bizarre; grotesque.” Yep that’s about right.

AirAsia X is looking at expansion opportunities in Australia including the potential resumption of services to Adelaide. The airline’s recent expansion in China and India provides new opportunities for growth in Australia as a majority of its Australia traffic transits beyond Kuala Lumpur.