14 July 2008

Crisis Crisis - what Crisis - Farnborough Day1

So its the end of the first day of Farnborough and courtesy of Airline Business I was able to attend the Airline Business Strategy Awards last night. An illustrious affair and thanks to the Reed Business Folks for the kind invitation.

So firstly a few words on the Awards. Each of the recipients were decidedly worthy.

So congrats to LH, SQ, SK, EY, AK, BE, JQ for their performance which has now been truly recognized. Perhaps the toughest one went to SK for their technology award. SK has a particularly hard row to hoe. Congrats chaps.

So the buzz at the event at Lincoln's Inn was the state of the industry. My esteemed colleagues at Table 24 were all bristling with ideas of what to do as experts. But perhaps the mood overall was more subdued. The industry is in a crisis of that there can be no doubt - or can there?

From today's wires - FlyDubai plumbed for Boeing and the 737-800 with a fat order for 50. I doubt they got quite the deal that Mr O'Leary got in 2001 but still it was a pretty mind boggling order nonetheless. The betting on the FlightGlobal website was a higher order book for Airbus - the respondents voted by about 2:1. Given this order can we still be sure.

The C series from Bombardier finally got off the board and into the order books with a first order from Lufthansa. This makes them a launch customer on 2 aircraft coming up soon - the 747-8 Passenger and the C-Series.

Tomorrow will be another day with a big order expected from both EY and QR. Lets see what they do....

Cheers

Timothy

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