Aer Lingus, the Irish airline carrier has announced plans to cut over 650 jobs as part of its large scale restructuring plans. The cuts are in an attempt to save the airline about £88 million pounds as they struggle with low passenger numbers.
The airline reported losses of £60 million in 2009 and a rise in passenger numbers seems to be a long way off. After discussing job losses with staff and unions, the cabin crew face about 230 compulsory redundancies and the rest of the job cuts will be voluntary.
It comes at a time when British Airways are still facing strike action and Lufthansa are still in talks with pilots to agree a new deal.
Energy performance certificates are all over the news and Internet recently, they are so much in the news that people are starting to use them as a every day word such as E P C and other variations. The term refers to a certificate you need when trying to sell your home. Here are the rules
“Energy Performance Certificate - new rules This bit is important because under new regulations, from October 1st 2008, you - the homeowner - are responsible for the Energy Performance Certificate. So you need to check your estate agent doesn’t trip-up and potentially land you both with a £200 fine, per instance! From October 1st 2008, an Energy Performance Certificate must now be available:
when the property is viewed;
when written information is provided on request;
before contracts are exchanged.
Sales particulars: Displaying the Energy Performance Certificate
As a minimum, the asset ratings graphs (see top picture) from your EPC must be included within the sales particulars (including electronic) if they contain two or more of the following:
A photograph of the building or any room inside the building
A floor plan of the building
A description of the size of the rooms in the building.
Advertising
With window cards and newspaper adverts you are not legally obliged to include the rating graphs, although the Government suggests it would be good practice to do so if they contain any two of the above items.
Commissioned
By ‘commissioned’, the Government means all documents - including the EPC - within your HIP must have been ordered with a commitment to pay. There should also be an expectation that all documents will be made available within 28 days. If they are not (unlikely in most cases), the person responsible for marketing your home must make reasonable efforts to obtain them as soon as possible, or risk pain of penalty (see below). From 31st December 2008 a Home Information Pack must be available from the time it is first placed on the market (subject to Govt review) - This date ends the transition period allowing Hips only to be commissioned before marketing commences.
Enforcement penalty fine (£200)
If you - or your estate agent - is responsible for actively marketing your home, there is pain in store for not obtaining a HIP: £200 penalty fine (repeatable for each day). The EPC, however, is solely the homeowners responsibility; although it would be a daft estate agent that attempts to market a home without an EPC in the HIP because they too would kop for a fine. Estate agents are automatically reported to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) too; with continued naughtiness leading to a banning order.”
Personally I think the whole thing is another way the government is making money and probably putting thousands of pounds worth of claims into there own greedy pockets through the expenses claims that there has been massive uproar over. What do you think of E P C’ s? Technically the information that i given will either make your house more salable or not, as if you are given a rating of F or G then your house will have a high running cost when it comes to things like heating.
The airport operator BAA has been ordered by the Competition Commission to sell 3 of its seven airports, bringing an end to BAA’s monopoly of airports ownership in London and Scotland. In the toughest ever corporate divestiture ordered by the competition watchdog, BAA, a subsidiary of Ferrovial, Spain, will have to sell Stansted, Gatwick and one of either Edinburgh or Glasgow airports within 2 years. Most prized Heathrow airport will remain under BAA control.
The total value of three airport sales is estimated between £3.5 and £4 billion, by the analysts. Infrastructure funds, foreign airports, pension and sovereign wealth funds are expected to bid for the sale.
The Competition Commission has reserved the right to carry out sales by appointing an independent divestiture trustee if BAA fails to comply with completion of disposal within specified dates.
The world’s biggest airport operator hit back at Commission’s unprecedented move, alleging that it was based on flawed analysis and the recommended remedies were impractical in existing economic conditions. BAA has 2 months to appeal to the Competition Appeal Tribunal against Commission’s order.
The Commission would appoint a monitor to oversee sales. Approving suitable purchasers will be watchdog’s prerogative.
BAA has been given concession to decide which of the Scottish airports it would like to sell.
BAA’s profits are down by nearly 20% due to drop of 4.2 million in number of flyers last year. Heathrow traffic was down only 1.4% overall due to 3.5% increase in long haul traffic. Total passenger numbers covering 7 UK airports dropped by 2.8%. while Heathrow, Stansted and Gatwick combined registered 2.6% drop, accounting for 3.4 million fewer flyers. Read the rest of this entry »
The UK airport operator, BAA, has received 6 indicative bids for acquisition of London Gatwick, the second-largest airport in the UK. Read the rest of this entry »
BA is exploring possibility of a potential merger with Qantas in a bid to consolidate global aviation industry.
In response to an initial approach from Qantas, BA revealed that it was exploring the feasibility of a merger in ‘dual-listed company structure’ with the Australian flag carrier. Read the rest of this entry »
The British Airport Authority (BAA) has finally agreed to the appointment of a watchdog who will independently monitor air quality and noise, if it is allowed to operate flights from a third runway at the Heathrow airport.
There have been several complaints against third runway plan and critics are worried that it would not be used for reducing present load on existing facilities and improvement of services but would be utilised for increasing more number of flights. Read the rest of this entry »
German flag carrier Lufthansa is taking over Britain’s BMI for €400m (£318m) leading to another shake-up in the airline industry in Europe.
Lufthansa, which already had under 30% stake in BMI, has bought 50% stake of Sir Michael Bishop, chairman BMI, taking control of 80% stake. The balance 20% remains with Sweden-based Scandinavian Airlines, which also intends to sell off its stake.
Lufthansa would be gaining second biggest takeoff and landing slots share at Heathrow airport after British Airways. BMI’s share of slots at Heathrow is 11.4%, next only to 41.5% held by BA.
Virgin Atlantic’s, Sir Richard Bransons, who is seeing Lufthansa as major rival to BA, welcomed the deal. While its chief executive, Steve Ridgway, praised Michael Bishop as one of the icons of UK aviation who championed the cause of consumers and helped in providing much needed competition to BA and one more choice to consumers.
Lufthansa is facilitating consolidation of European aviation industry. It bought 45% stake in Brussels Airlines with option of outright takeover of Belgian airline in 2011. It has plans to buy stakes in Italy’s Alitalia and Austrian Airways.
BMI origins back to 1938 and was known as British Midland in 1964. The name was later changed to BMI. It flies fleet of 51 aircrafts to 51 destinations and handled 10.6 million passengers last year.
Massive slump of 92% in first-half profits has forced British Airways to cut next summer’s capacity, as it forecast bleak outlook for 2009.
High fuel costs compounded by the banking crisis and poor peak season this year, resulted in sharp fall in pre-tax profit from £616m in the same period last year to £52m in 2008. However growth in revenue was up 6.4% to £4.8bn since BA refused to cut down prices during weak demand and adopted strategy different from low-cost rivals. Its chief executive Willie Walsh claimed that it had done well against very tough economic conditions.
BA is heavily dependent on financial services industry for its revenues as nine out of 20 customers belonged to this sector. It draws maximum business from London Heathrow to New York-JKF route which is heavily used by financial professionals and bankers.
Walsh commented that last 6 months’ period would be remembered as the bleakest on BA’s record, which was impacted by banking crisis, record oil prices and closure of several airlines.
BA has planned to cut its summer capacity by 1% next summer by reducing flights on busiest routes. It would also drop 4 routes next year including Heathrow services to Kolkata (India), Dhaka (Bangladesh) and Gatwick routes to Zurich and Dublin.
The airliner pointed out that stronger dollar had offset gains of fall in fuel prices and ruled out significant cut in fuel surcharges.
Missing airport service targets has cost £7 million to the erring airport owner BAA. Britain’s largest airport group failed in meeting service targets at Gatwick and Heathrow, including seating and security queues.
BAA has also been warned over consistent failures in achieving benchmarks for signage, cleanliness and seating at some terminals.
BAA has been ordered by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to pay back landing fees of £7.34m to two of the biggest airlines at the airport along with highest ever charge of £1.65m for missing new security queuing targets at Heathrow in April. The minimum waiting time for passengers has been halved as per the new service standard.
CAA reported that overall security queuing time had improved significantly during April to September in comparison with last year. New guidelines of April 2008 stipulate that passengers at highly congested Gatwick and Heathrow departure gates should not be made to queue for more than five minutes for security checks 95% of the time, against earlier waiting period of a minimum of 10 minutes.
Barring initial substandard performance at the opening of Heathrow Terminal in March, CAA reported that BAA met 5 minutes target at Heathrow and Gatwick. It pointed out that Terminal 3 did not meet targets for departure lounge seat availability and Terminal 4 failed in achieving benchmarks for piers, while Gatwick was performing consistently below standard for directions, seating, cleanliness and piers services.
BAA spokesperson informed that the group was working on plans to improve seating, cleanliness and signage standards at some terminals of Heathrow and Gatwick.