SN to take over Club Med pax from TNT at BRU

[tolipanebas]

As from next summer season, Brussels Airlines will operate a large number of charter flights on behalf of Club Med to several Mediterranean/Red Sea destinations, replacing TNT Airways on these routes, which currently operates them with BAe146-200QC and Boeing 737-300QC...
Furthermore, Club Med will make use of scheduled SN flights wherever possible, leading to a significant growth in traffic volume for SN.

Expect some interesting consequences for the fleet...

[cnc]

finaly!

[flywithUs]

In French : http://trends.rnews.be/fr/economie/actu ... 229290.htm

With a rumour about one or two A320's ...

[airtrotter]

so SN will take care of 80% of the Club Med pax
SN wants just one (or two) type of shorthaul airliner instead of three today (Boeing, Airbus, Avro)
and for 2011 are looking to lease two A320 (or one A320 and one A319)

nice!

[sdbelgium]

Also important to know: Club Med pax will be seated in b.flex, which is a nice advantage over the TNT flights, along with the M&M programme and dedicated check-in counters.

Ce que l’on sait, c’est qu’à la rentrée, cinq Avro RJ85, en fin de leasing, quitteront la flotte.

Has this been confirmed? I read SN had denied this rumour, yet here, it is displayed as a fact.

[Shanti]

Is this the end for TNT pax flights?

[NCB]

It must be said that SN should increase such agreements by working harder with major package travel agents.It's excellent news for SN but let's not get too euphoric yet, the road to becoming a strong airline is still very long.

30 000 new passengers or 60 000 more seats sold is a welcome addition but we have to face it and be honest with ourselves, it's not going to change much.
What it's going to do is to increase load factors by 1% in the summer and add the challenge of scheduling additional charter flights when significant numbers of Avro's will start to be phased out in 2012. I mean, it would have been perfect if the flights were scheduled at night but SN apparently needs to give the best schedules they can. Also, I don't believe for one second that Club Med is going to pay the full fares.

Next, the possibly 2 A320's additions are no surprise at all, quite to the opposite, everybody is expecting a larger A319/A320 addition in 2011. They are not capacity increase but mere B737 replacement. The A319's are too small to replace the B734's, so the A320 is an obvious addition to the fleet. It increases fleet-wide commonality, reduces operating cost over the older B737 and will be more appealing to the paying customer.

Where it gets interesting though is the latest comment on the short-haul fleet replacement, which I suggest to discuss in the appropriate forum.

[tolipanebas]

Has this been confirmed? I read SN had denied this rumour, yet here, it is displayed as a fact.

It's wrong.

The journalist must have messed up his notes, or got confused with his own odd terminology used to describe the time frame for the phase-out: no RJ is to leave the fleet this year, next year however, 5 will leave.

it would have been perfect if the flights were scheduled at night but SN apparently needs to give the best schedules they can.

We're talking dedicated charter flights which will mostly be operated during the weekend, when about half the SN fleet is grounded anyway due to low demand from business driven travellers. it's not like it will be hard for SN to free planes or offer comfortable flying times (contrary to the 6AM departures other charter airlines have) to the detriment of its own scheduled flights.

Other than that, Club Med will just put its pax on the regular SN flights to places like FAO, SVQ or ATH, so that adds pax to existing flights at no big effort... on those flights, this will influence the loadfactor with double digit numbers.

[jan_olieslagers]

Dutch-language Belgian state radio confirms: 2 A320 to join the fleet.
http://deredactie.be/cm/vrtnieuws/econo ... BA_ClubMed.
No indication of timing, though.

[sn26567]

One issue for SN is that most Club Med customers fly to countries that are not served by its scheduled flights: Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, etc. Hence, most Club Med flights will be charters.

It is rumoured that SN might lauch new destinations in the wake of the Club Med deal: Marrakech and Agadir in Morocco, Lamezia Terme in Italy, either with flights totally dedicated to Club Med customers or with flights open to other passengers, depending on the destination. As tolipanebas mentioned, most of these flights would take place on week ends, when half of SN's fleet is grounded.

In winter, SN's co-CEO Bernard Gustin mentioned that Geneva could be developped to serve ski destinations used by Club Med customers.

[RoMax]

SN will need to deploy several new destinations in Turkey, Marocco... to serve these Club Med passengers.
Maybe SN could sell some own tickets on some of these new routes. I could imagine, SN could sell some tickets to North-Africa and Turkey by themselfs. But probably it will depend on how many seats Club Med will need on the routes.

I think SN will open some new routes wich will be used by Club Med but also with seats available for SN itself and some charter destinations wich will completely dedicated to Club Med.
One thing is sure with this big contract they could open some new routes wich would be too risky without the Club Med contract.

But it's just an idea, we have to wait and see what will hapen.

[NCB]

I don't think that it's that straight-forward. Obviously they will have to operate in the week-ends but the downtime during the week-ends is precious for maintenance. Now SN can afford to do maintenance also during the week because there are several spare aircraft, but it's going to be interesting when there are 10 less RJ85/RJ100 and alot of people busy with the deployment of its replacement, together with a few aircraft going tech during the week.
Considering that the Club Med routes are 8 to 12 hours return routes, SN will need one A319/A320 for every route and by my estimates SN will have 12 by 2012. If SN dedicates 5 of these aircraft to Club Med, they will only have 7 A319/A320, 4 B737 and 16 RJ85/100 left to operate the week-end schedule, which is fine but not ideal.

It would have been easier if they could operate the flights as red eyes but I guess that it doesn't suit the customer.

I have previously advocated for SN to operate North Africa on red eyes to increase aircraft utilisation so I like the idea of opening up the routes to other customers as well and to compete more actively with Jetair and Thomas Cook.

[RoMax]

The aging B737 and RJ fleet wich will leave the fleet in the comming 3-5 years could be a small problem if they need many aircraft for Club Med. But I'm sure SN has a solution for this, otherwise they wouldn't sign such a big contract with Club Med.
Don't forget, it's not the plan to decrease the amount of aircraft in the fleet of SN. The fleet of SN will grow, despite the RJ's and the 737's leaving the fleet. If SN is in need of more aircraft in 2011, they will lease more (or expand the lease contracts of some RJ's, BAe will be happy to offer SN a low leasing price).
SN said they will lease two A320's (or 1 A320 and 1 A319), but I don't believe this will be it for 2011. I expect more A32S.

This contract with Club Med is a very good opertunity for SN to deploy new markets. With all these Club Med passengers, the risk of opening new routes is much smaller. They will open new routes to several Club Med destinations, and on several of these routes they could sell tickets themself. With the passengers of Club Med flying in b-flex (and even b-business), these routes will probably work very good.

[BrightCedars]

At the beginning of days SN Brussels operated to CMN and IST, that was developed, there was codeshare with AT, and then it all went down. SN couldn't compete with either AT or TK. Now maybe this can help support these routes as well. I'm baffled not to see SN codeshare with TK for the least now that they are both members of Star Alliance.

This is good news anyhow! Now the question is whether the CEO means 2 aircraft types in all i.e. A330 and A320 family or 2 type for shorthaul i.e. A320 family and something else replacing Avro's and 737's.

[SN_fan]

Those Club Med passengers that will be flying in b.flex is probably only the service offered on the plane no ? So the old economy class service. Because I don't see the need for holiday passengers to change flights, take an earlier flight etc.

[acba]

If SN dedicates 5 of these aircraft to Club Med

The market of Club Med is not thát big Imo, the dedicated destinations would be: Agadir, Marrakech, Enfidha, Djerba, Taba or Ovda, Hurghada, maybe Luxor, Antalya and Bodrum. On most destinations one weekly flight would suffice and most of these destinations can be flown as a triangular flight. (next to the regular flights to Athens, Faro, etc.)

Those Club Med passengers that will be flying in b.flex is probably only the service offered on the plane no ?

Currently, Club Med also uses a lot of flights of Thomas Cook Airlines Belgium (and its partner airlines), where the Club Med pax travel in Premium Class.

Btw, currently Club Med already uses the SN charter flights to e.g. Djerba (sunday) and the regular flights to Faro and Athens.

[RoMax]

If SN dedicates 5 of these aircraft to Club Med

The market of Club Med is not thát big Imo, the dedicated destinations would be: Agadir, Marrakech, Enfidha, Djerba, Taba or Ovda, Hurghada, Antalya and Bodrum. On most destinations one weekly flight would suffice. (next to the regular flights to Athens, Faro, etc.)

I've also heard Corsica would be pretty important, togheter with some additional Italien destinations. On some of these routes, SN maybe could sell some own tickets. Some/most will probably just charter fligths.

Currently, Club Med also uses a lot of flights of Thomas Cook Airlines Belgium (and its partner airlines), where the Club Med pax travel in Premium Class.

Club Med wants to be a premium tour operator, that's why they will sell b-flex and even b-business tickets.

[RoMax]

At the beginning of days SN Brussels operated to CMN and IST, that was developed, there was codeshare with AT, and then it all went down. SN couldn't compete with either AT or TK. Now maybe this can help support these routes as well. I'm baffled not to see SN codeshare with TK for the least now that they are both members of Star Alliance.

This is good news anyhow! Now the question is whether the CEO means 2 aircraft types in all i.e. A330 and A320 family or 2 type for shorthaul i.e. A320 family and something else replacing Avro's and 737's.

This contract with Club Med delivers more pax than a codeshare with AT. SN can probably fill one weekly flight to most of Club Med's destinations, you can't fill a flight with a codeshare. So this is a comletely other story than the IST and CMN flights of SN in the past.
With some luck, SN can open some new regular routes to some of these Club Med destinations. They could fill up the remaining seats wich Club Med doesn't need.
About the TK codeshare, maybe TK's succes to BRU is the awnser. I don't think TK has many seats left for SN passengers.

About the aircraft types. I suppose they mean short haul: A32S and a regional aircraft family like CRJ or E-jets. Otherwise they mean two manufacturers: Airbus and Embraer or Bombardier or something like that.

[NCB]

If SN dedicates 5 of these aircraft to Club Med

The market of Club Med is not thát big Imo, the dedicated destinations would be: Agadir, Marrakech, Enfidha, Djerba, Taba or Ovda, Hurghada, maybe Luxor, Antalya and Bodrum. On most destinations one weekly flight would suffice and most of these destinations can be flown as a triangular flight. (next to the regular flights to Athens, Faro, etc.)

You're taking me out of context, because later in the sentence I wrote:

"to operate the week-end schedule".

As said, the charters will be operated during the lean week-ends, so no need to dedicate aircraft for the rest of the time. Obviously, SN doesn't need to dedicate 5 aircraft for 365 days a year.

[fcw]

TNT stopped flying for Club Med because they were loosing money , as did a lot of other charter companies in the past.
BruAir will increase his loadfactor, but will probably loose money on it too!