London Heathrow, The Death has almost arrived !!!

London !!!!!!!!!!

The place where even today, Kings and Queens still exists, but then the air travel has not gone the way it should have. Thanks to the locals !!! They can`t sleep at night if the planes keep zooming at night, so this led to a series of disasters for the aviation scenario there.

The Heathrow Airport is waiting for development for decades now, and it already functioning at a 98-100% capacity. Since they aren`t developing the airport, the traffic and the passengers are choosing the better option of flying via the Gulf, because that is reasonably cheaper and also fantastic.

I have landed at the Heathrow, and yeah, its air space is really a busy mess. Many a times the flight keep circling in the air for 30 minutes. and when you flight is taking off there is a huge queue, sometimes even 10 planes are waiting on taxiway and from the window you could actually count how many planes were lined before yours.

The vicinity does have a lot of development options and none of them seem to be advancing. It is aptly said, that, if the city or a country has to develop for infrastructure, then some locals have to face hardships.

Considering the fact that, the development isn`t a possible option even in the next decade, they should allow flights to operate during the night which may allow opportunity for more passengers and flights. Frankfurt Airport on the other hand has 4 runways and ample more space for future terminals and runways. So, a lot of share of Heathrow has also transferred there.

A lot of airlines have started flying the A380 to LHR because, that way more people can be commuted, but at this point, there is a need for more landing and take off spots needed. Ironically, the case of LHR also has a side-effect, it seems British Airways may no longer be competitive in the next 4-5 years.

Let`s see if the Queen cares enough and does something about it.

Emirates Receives Its 50th A380 Jumbo

Emirates received its 50th A380 today, and still continues to be the undisputed leader with the highest A380s in its fleet.

With this addition, this newest A380 aircraft will be taken for operations by August. It is estimated that by late 2017, there would be a total of 90 A380s in the Emirates fleet in operation. Currently 27 airports are being served with the A380 by Emirates alone. By the end of this fiscal year, the number of destinations will rise to 33 after the gradual addition of Kuwait, Mumbai(YES our MUMBAI !!!), Frankfurt, Dallas, San Francisco and Houston.

With 50 A380s already delivered to Emirates, deliveries are still pending for an additional 90. And no surprises that in case Airbus chooses to offer the A380-NEO(New Engine Option), which Emirates is asking for, who knows, it is quite likely that Emirates may add more of the double deckers to their fleet.

Literally, the A380s of the Emirates fly from one corner of the world to another, Los Angeles in one end, to Auckland in the other end.


Image Courtesy of bhmpics.com

Emirates: The Flying Supremo

A small desert nation, with nothing but oil, started as a small time airline, by leasing a couple aircrafts from other airlines, began its venture in the flying business.

No one could ever imagine then that it would spoil the party for the giants like British Airways, Lufthansa, Qantas, American Airlines and so on. Emirates is one of the few airlines in the world to solely operate wide bodied, twin aisle aircrafts in their entire fleet for the regular passenger flights. Perhaps in modern day time, it is the only airlines running a successful flying business with profits and still expanding at an exponential pace.

Today Emirates is the worlds leading airline, transferring the highest number of international passengers. Their home airport, the Dubai International Airport (DXB), is operated 24 hours round the clock where they send their flights packed all round the world. 

During the night, when the North American and European airport are sleeping (thanx to the locals who don`t allow the flights to take-off and land there during nights) Emirates silently packs and blasts almost 200 heavy bodies out of Dubai. And they fly back to Dubai by the end of the day. What American and European airport can`t achieve with even 5 runways, this Dubai airport is possible to achieve using just 2 runways,  by operating 24 hours round the clock.

What makes the Emirates this big ??

The most important aspect of Emirates is the location of their hub, it is literally at the center of the earth, it is at the cross-roads of the world. Secondly, it has more oil than any other part of the world. Thirdly the Dubai rulers have shown keen interest in starting, expanding and supporting this venture. Today, Emirates operates only wide bodied aircrafts, which have longer range and are more fuel efficient, this enables them to operate flights to smaller distances like Mumbai, to the medium haul distance like London, long haul distances to Sydney and the ultra long haul distance to Los Angeles, which is almost 16 hours of flying over the poles.

Dubai is located strategically at a point where it has become an important transit hub where there are connection routes to transfer people between

-Asia and North America

-Indian Sub-continent and Europe

-Europe and Australia-New-Zealand

-South America and China

...

...

...

Almost every un-imaginable connection is possible, from this one place and we call it

"Majestic DUBAI"

Emirates Fleet

The Emirates fleet consists of wide-bodied aircraft, including the Airbus A330, Airbus A340, Airbus A380 and Boeing 777, as well as Boeing 747-400 freighters operated by Emirates SkyCargo. The only narrow-body aircraft is an Airbus A319CJ which is being operated by Emirates Executive charters. Emirates operates the world`s largest fleet of Boeing 777s and the Airbus A380s. The B777 and the A380 both have been the main reason behind the hidden success of this young airline. At this point, it has over 200 aircrafts in operation and over 300 aircrafts on order, which means, there shall be a time where there will be almost 500 Emirates flights zooming around the world.

Emirates Threat

The airline is by all means cannibalizing all possible flying routes by offering better service at a lower price. It is the undisputed choice amongst business travelers and first class travelers. Once an interviewer asked, where will they deploy their new aircrafts after USA looked to decline them more landing right, to this the airlines officials answered saying that, if they weren`t allowed more rights to fly to that country, they`d simply return all the Boeing crafts back, there could not have been a bolder response to this. Similar had been the case when the Europeans thought of declining them more landing rights and they politely cancelled order of 70 aircraft of Airbus A350-XWB. Literally there is no stopping to this airlines, they have lesser words and more of action.

Futur-ama

They have already carved a niche in the global aviation sector. Now they are in process of constructing a new airport, The Al Maktoum International Airport, which on completion will have 5 parallel runways, and tons of gates, and all the Emirates operations will be shifted to this new airport and the existing Dubai airport will become the hub for Flydubai, the low cost carrier.

With the Al Maktoum Airport, they will be able to manage an impossible 1.5 million flight movements annually, and manage almost 200 million passengers, which is more than double of what Atlanta`s Hartsfield–Jackson airport(world busiest airport at this point) can manage today.

May be in the year 2025 I would write how poorly the Atlanta Airport is doing that moment...

The Beast A380 Comes to Mumbai

The legendary Airbus A380, has been going places since years, but due to regulations in India, it was still not to be seen at any Airport in India. It is good that, the DGCA(Directorate General of Civil Aviation, Government of India) realized that it was loosing the flying race to the Gulf Carriers like Emirates, Etihad and Qatar and later they approved the A380 to operate at its major airports (Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai).

9 out of the 10 operators who fly the A380 have scheduled operation to India, so the market surely exists for this particular model in the country.

Late in the month of May, Singapore Airlines became the first airline to have scheduled A380 operation in India with a daily services to Delhi and Mumbai. Emirates is not far behind in making a decision, it has quickly picked its favoured destination Mumbai for operations. And now Lufthansa is planning to deploy two planes for the Delhi and Mumbai flights from its global hub the Frankfurt Airport, popularly know as the Fraport.

The Mumbai airport is so unprepared, that increasing passenger numbers is impossible and there is no additional space to either build a huge terminal or add an additional runway. All the landing slots are sold off at Mumbai, the number of seats are limited and tickets to fly in and out of Mumbai is higher compared to other cities in the world. The best an airline could do is, send in their biggest planes to Mumbai.

Before the A380, the largest plane to be allowed to operate at any Indian airport was the Boeing 747, which is again, disappearing quickly because they are being replaced by better, lighter and more fuel efficient planes like the B777, B787 and A330 which are all twin engined and have lower cost per passenger to operate and still fly on the long haul routes.