KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

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normalthings
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

Post by normalthings »

It sounds like the Icelandic government has been meeting to discuss the effects of and potential government intervention in a bankruptcy/collapse of WOW airlines.

Both Icelandair and WOW Air lost money last year. However, Icelandair actually owns most of its planes as well as owns a line of successful hotels and other valuable assets. WOW Airlines on the other hand doesn’t have many assets at all. It’s planes are all very new and are financed/leased.

It sounds like Kansas City really did do end up better off getting Icelandair.
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

Post by dev49 »

normalthings wrote: Mon Sep 10, 2018 10:10 pm It sounds like the Icelandic government has been meeting to discuss the effects of and potential government intervention in a bankruptcy/collapse of WOW airlines.
Link?
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

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dev49 wrote: Tue Sep 11, 2018 4:12 pm
normalthings wrote: Mon Sep 10, 2018 10:10 pm It sounds like the Icelandic government has been meeting to discuss the effects of and potential government intervention in a bankruptcy/collapse of WOW airlines.
Link?
https://www.mbl.is/frettir/innlent/2018 ... u_wow_air/
The article is in Icelandic. I also looked through the comments here https://www.reddit.com/r/Iceland/commen ... ina_mblis/ to get a better understanding on what's happening.
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

Post by dev49 »

I also found this thread on a.net after doing some digging talking about their financials a couple week ago. Doesn't seem like anything super dire, although they are looking for more money. I also can't see Iceland letting them go under at least at the moment, they are making too much off tourism (plus expanding the airport). I guess we will see.

https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtop ... #p20642701
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

Post by brewcrew1000 »

AerLingus is adding flights to Minneapolis, its possible Kansas City could be in the next batch if this rapid Aer Lingus North American expansion keeps going
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

Post by flyingember »

brewcrew1000 wrote: Wed Sep 12, 2018 10:31 am AerLingus is adding flights to Minneapolis, its possible Kansas City could be in the next batch if this rapid Aer Lingus North American expansion keeps going
Yes, please. We want to fly into Ireland in the next few years and a direct flight would be super nice.
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

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dev49 wrote: Wed Sep 12, 2018 8:48 am I also found this thread on a.net after doing some digging talking about their financials a couple week ago. Doesn't seem like anything super dire, although they are looking for more money. I also can't see Iceland letting them go under at least at the moment, they are making too much off tourism (plus expanding the airport). I guess we will see.

https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtop ... #p20642701
Looks like WOW has $448million USD assets and $428million USD noncurrent and current liabilities and $448million in subordinate capital and liabilities per their own presentation. $590 Million USD of the liabilities is from interest bearing debt and operating leases. EBITDA of -$26million USD in the last 12 months.Equity is currently 4.5%

WOW has been traveling around trying to sell a “bridge loan” which would provide operating funds until they can sell equity in an IPO roughly 18 months from now. Rumor is that multiple banks have denied them. The dominant Icelandic news this week has been that WOWs will collapse if this bridge loan is not secured
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

Post by beautyfromashes »

^ How would WOW going under affect Icelandair? Would they increase routes to cover demand that would have gone to WOW or increase prices?
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

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Icelandair would 100% raise prices in order to regain profitability.

WOWs demand is different than Icelandair in the same way that Spirits is different than SWA or Delta. Thus, I don’t think Icelandair would grow to all of WOWs US markets, at least not immediately.
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

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I suspect that Iceland will bail either of these financially strapped airlines out if either gets into financial ruins. But, read on (good news below).

Either of the airlines bellying up with put Iceland's tourism into ruins as well. It would throw Iceland and the Krona into a huge recession.
see here: https://now.guidetoiceland.is/2018/09/1 ... sm-sector/

Icelandair is also in financial hardships. They just cancelled their winter schedule in/out of several cities including Cleveland to save money. Their CEO just dropped out like their stocks did too. Here is a recent article a couple weeks ago.
https://skift.com/2018/08/28/icelandair ... sm-market/

NOW THE GOOD NEWS...

The Krona exchange rate fell last week on the financial woes of WOW and Icelandair - specifically because of tourism (the main economic impact to Iceland today). If either of the airlines would fail, tourism would collapse in the country.

Yes, that doesn't sound good, but here is the silver lining as of today...

On Friday, September 14:
-from the article link below-
WOW air has been working with Pareto Securities, a Norwegian corporate finance company which has worked with Norwegian Airlines and Icelandair previously, to establish how to improve the bond issue. The result was that financing of between 6 – 12 billion krónur would be required to sustain the business and continue expansion—albeit at a slower rate than before.

A plan is being put in place for WOW air to restructure the business financially before going onto the stock exchange within 18 months, reports RÚV. Mogensen confirmed that bondholding investors will receive priority for shares and at a discounted rate of 20% off their share prices.

Mongensen has contacted the current investors to seek further funding and a meeting has been held on 14th September with only €5 million of stock still needing to be bought. Króna exchange rates have responded by increasing again and WOW air’s future looks more secure than it did a week ago.
Article Posted Friday Sep 14 Evening:
https://www.icenews.is/2018/09/14/wow-a ... ry-so-far/

This is good news for Iceland.

We fly WOW Air for a second time from STL to KEF tomorrow and next week home. Both flights are sold out on the A321-200 (208 seats). We flew WOW from STL to KEF to FRA (Frankfurt Germany) in June and loved it really. The planes are brand new, comfy and more leg room than on our A330's we fly to EU otherwise. The service was excellent too. We did upgrade to the XXL seats and full class service (bags, meals, etc) then and now.

In July we flew Icelandair from MCI to KEF and enjoyed it too. The plane was a little small for along haul flight (we took standard seats - biz class was too far expensive). The service was excellent too.

They are both very comparable IMO. If you want a cheap seat on WOW in the back of the plane and you take only a personal item and that's it - then you may be tight but you get what you pay for. WOW's planes offer all front seats as XL or XXL or Big Seat (which is like first class seats) - you pay more - you get more and comfort too.
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

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Southwest extended their schedule today for April/May

Pensacola is back Saturday only
Portland is cut (says seasonal)
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

Post by dev49 »

Did Via air cut Kansas City? I don't see it or steamboat on its destination list anymore.
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

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Austin is getting non stop to Frankfurt via Lufthansa. Don't understand why Austin is getting all these European non stops considering (3rd or 4th nonstop now) they have 2 massive airports within 3.5 hours of each other and pretty sure United and American run flights like every hour to Houston and DFW. Is the economy that much stronger in Austin? We have a larger population and we can draw from 3 smaller metros of around 1 million.
Maybe Condor pulls out Austin now and we get Austin's Condor flight
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

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brewcrew1000 wrote: Fri Oct 05, 2018 7:14 pm Austin is getting non stop to Frankfurt via Lufthansa. Don't understand why Austin is getting all these European non stops considering (3rd or 4th nonstop now) they have 2 massive airports within 3.5 hours of each other and pretty sure United and American run flights like every hour to Houston and DFW. Is the economy that much stronger in Austin? We have a larger population and we can draw from 3 smaller metros of around 1 million.
Maybe Condor pulls out Austin now and we get Austin's Condor flight
1. Austin has a lot of high paying tech jobs. Companies like Apple have set up big offices in Austin.
2. Austin has UT which has a lot of international students and which also brings in more of those high paying tech jobs.

You are correct in saying KC’s catchment area is larger in both population and area.

Condor will almost 100% pull out of Austin. I also think Condor could leave Pittsburgh. Overall, TATL is weakening. I’m not sure if we will get any flights
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

Post by dev49 »

normalthings wrote: Fri Oct 05, 2018 7:57 pm
brewcrew1000 wrote: Fri Oct 05, 2018 7:14 pm Austin is getting non stop to Frankfurt via Lufthansa. Don't understand why Austin is getting all these European non stops considering (3rd or 4th nonstop now) they have 2 massive airports within 3.5 hours of each other and pretty sure United and American run flights like every hour to Houston and DFW. Is the economy that much stronger in Austin? We have a larger population and we can draw from 3 smaller metros of around 1 million.
Maybe Condor pulls out Austin now and we get Austin's Condor flight
1. Austin has a lot of high paying tech jobs. Companies like Apple have set up big offices in Austin.
2. Austin has UT which has a lot of international students and which also brings in more of those high paying tech jobs.

You are correct in saying KC’s catchment area is larger in both population and area.

Condor will almost 100% pull out of Austin. I also think Condor could leave Pittsburgh. Overall, TATL is weakening. I’m not sure if we will get any flights
Condor already announced they are pulling out of AUS. They are staying in PIT for the next year but it looks like they are down from 3x to 2x a week.
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

Post by kcjak »

brewcrew1000 wrote: Fri Oct 05, 2018 7:14 pm Austin is getting non stop to Frankfurt via Lufthansa. Don't understand why Austin is getting all these European non stops considering (3rd or 4th nonstop now) they have 2 massive airports within 3.5 hours of each other and pretty sure United and American run flights like every hour to Houston and DFW. Is the economy that much stronger in Austin? We have a larger population and we can draw from 3 smaller metros of around 1 million.
Maybe Condor pulls out Austin now and we get Austin's Condor flight
The area between Austin and San Antonio is nearly built up the entire way. Even though SA is a separate metro area, it's not unreasonable to think that people would drive to Austin for a flight rather than change planes. After making the SA-Austin drive several times recently, I've been considering the area more as a single market of ~6 million instead of separate metros.
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

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dev49 wrote: Sat Oct 06, 2018 9:30 am
normalthings wrote: Fri Oct 05, 2018 7:57 pm
brewcrew1000 wrote: Fri Oct 05, 2018 7:14 pm Austin is getting non stop to Frankfurt via Lufthansa. Don't understand why Austin is getting all these European non stops considering (3rd or 4th nonstop now) they have 2 massive airports within 3.5 hours of each other and pretty sure United and American run flights like every hour to Houston and DFW. Is the economy that much stronger in Austin? We have a larger population and we can draw from 3 smaller metros of around 1 million.
Maybe Condor pulls out Austin now and we get Austin's Condor flight
1. Austin has a lot of high paying tech jobs. Companies like Apple have set up big offices in Austin.
2. Austin has UT which has a lot of international students and which also brings in more of those high paying tech jobs.

You are correct in saying KC’s catchment area is larger in both population and area.

Condor will almost 100% pull out of Austin. I also think Condor could leave Pittsburgh. Overall, TATL is weakening. I’m not sure if we will get any
Condor already announced they are pulling out of AUS. They are staying in PIT for the next year but it looks like they are down from 3x to 2x a week.
Yea. My bets are that they won’t come back in 2020
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

Post by normalthings »

It seems BA won’t be coming to STL next year as had been widely rumored.

In other news...

It seems like there is always a new airline at the overhaul base. Kenya Air and El Al are the latest to get work done there. They join Hawaiian and AeroMexico on the southern ramp. IIRC, they are mostly leased units getting worked on before their next airline. We are still getting a ton of Southwest 737s and Delta’s new A32 and 73 series planes. Pretty neat that they come here before they go into service

The Evergreen 747 that was at Jet Midwest is now the “Airforce One” that is being barged to a Museum on the East Coast.
Last edited by normalthings on Thu Oct 11, 2018 10:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

Post by KCPowercat »

is it possible to hook us up with some links or something behind posts like "safe to say that BA wont' be coming to STL next year"?

not that i really care about STL flight patterns specifically but a lot of posts in this thread with innuendo that are hard to figure out if they are fact or speculation.
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Re: KCI Flight Schedule Adjustments

Post by normalthings »

KCPowercat wrote: Thu Oct 11, 2018 10:28 pm is it possible to hook us up with some links or something behind posts like "safe to say that BA wont' be coming to STL next year"?

not that i really care about STL flight patterns specifically but a lot of posts in this thread with innuendo that are hard to figure out if they are fact or speculation.
A multi part answer.
1. BA had always been rumored to announce STL in August. That obviously didn’t happen.
2. Sources who had talked up a BA announcement are now back tracking
3. We are quickly leaving the typical “TATL” announcement season.
4. When BA announced Pittsburgh, STL changed their tone on TATL flights away from their usual “it is a priority for the airport to gain service to London” to “STL meets frequently with airlines to discuss future service”. Look at Urban STL for more info on this one.
5. I’m not saying BA will never happen, I’m just saying that I don’t think it’s going to happen when everyone else had said it would.
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