China and New Zealand have agreed to amend their air services agreement so that their airlines can establish commercial code-share arrangements.

Annette King, New Zealand’s Minister of Transport, made the announcement after meeting with Yang Yuanyuan, Minister of the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China. She said, ‘Yang and I agreed that China and New Zealand will implement from this month a change to our 1993 air services agreement to facilitate code share arrangements.’

According to official statistics, New Zealand received 114,000 visitors from China in the year to March, a 26% growth year-on-year.

ir New Zealand launched direct Auckland-Shanghai services in November 2006, a ‘milestone’ for the airline and for direct travel between New Zealand and China.

Air New Zealand plans to increase its Auckland-Shanghai services from three to five. Which is excellent news. However, shared codes are not without their problems. A simple example: when the idea of code sharing first started Qantas, the Australian airline, made deals with several other airlines. The result was chaos at the airports.

A traveler would buy a Qantas ticket, check in at a Qantas counter and find that the aircraft ready for boarding was from some other airline. At which point the passenger refused to fly.

Nowadays it is very, very carefully explained to all passengers right from the very first contact that this is a code-share flight and all though it might say Qantas it may very well be Finnair. Not that anyone has anything against Finnair. It is just that most Australians do not see raw herring and vodka as a satisfactory inflight meal. (I lie, I lie. The food on Finnair is, in fact, quite excellent.) Still, a flight from Sydney to Bangkok is often code-shared between Finnair, Air Malta, British Airways and Qantas. And this could give a passenger pause.

Code-sharing can bring benefits but it has to be handled very, very carefully.
Source: China View

IATA, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has identified five challenges China will face in an air industry which can compete at world levels. These are: efficient air traffic management, environmental sustainability, cost-efficient airport infrastructure, internal cost control and commercial freedoms.

However, note that IATA. almost by definition, is representing all the other commercial airlines (a vocal slab of which is American neatly protected from true competition by Americ’a strange bankruptcy laws) and commercial freedom is something members of IATA have been squabbling about among themselves since it was formed. Basically what most IATA members want is commercial freedom from everyone else, but not for everyone else.

Giovanni Bisignani, IATA’s Director General and CEO and shown here, at the China Civil Aviation Development Forum in Beijing, said, ‘China has an important role in the industry today, and is a future global leader for air transport. By 2010, the largest single market for aviation will be intra-Asia, accounting for nearly a third of all air travel with China at the centre. China is at a critical moment that is also a great opportunity. And to build a more successful future, China has to avoid the mistakes made in other parts of the world.’

He went on, ‘ While there have been impressive accomplishments in China - IATA-1 was opened last year that cuts 30 minutes off a round trip to Europe, RVSM will be implemented this year — big challenges still remain. The congestion delays in the Golden Triangle can be measured in hours, while the inefficient airspace design in the Pearl River Delta is costing HK$1 million a day with Chinese carriers being the most affected. We need a solution quickly.’

And IATA would like, please, to have the prices of going and coming lowered.

Giovanni Bisignani said, ‘China has some of the highest charges in Asia outside of Japan. With uniform charges for all Chinese airports, they are definitely not cost-related. IATA is working with the government to develop a charges regime that challenges airports on efficiency, provides a reasonable return to investors, and supports a competitive industry.’

The competitive industry would, of course, mainly be members of IATA and, indeed, again he has a point.

Massive landing charges curtail commercial development and China will have to make up its mind of what basis those charges should be made.

He then got to commercial freedom which is a tricky point with every major country in the world and it is pointless trying to blame one country over another.

He said, ‘The recent US-EU open-skies agreement moves the industry in the right direction, but falls short of the fundamental change we need. China’s fast growing economy demands efficient air transport links, and progressive liberalisation has played an important role — opening Hainan as a free port for aviation services, liberalising bilaterals with the US, ASEAN, Japan and Korea. With the aviation industry’s centre of gravity moving East, China has an enormous leadership opportunity to shape policy where the US and EU have failed to do so.’

It may well be he is hoping for too much.
Source: Money Control

Zhang Hongbiao, general manager of China Aviation Industry has confirmed that European aircraft manufacturer Airbus will hold a majority 51% stake in the new Tianjin assembly facility. The remaining 49% will be held by an entity called Tianjin Zhongtian Aviation Industry Investment.

The Chinese company’s registered capital of RMB300 million ($39 million) includes RMB180 million from Tianjin Bonded Zone Investment.

The joint-venture aircraft assembly facility will begin operating early in 2009. By 2011 it will be producing four A320 planes a month. Total investment in the project is estimated at around RMB10 billion ($1.3 billion).
Source: China Daily

Two airline companies in Shanghai have arranged cross-Strait charter flights for the Dragon Boat Festival. It is a movable feast but this year it will be on June 19.

China Eastern Airlines and Shanghai Airlines each have a round-trip flight on June 15 and 19 between Shanghai and Taipei.
China Southern Airlines has scheduled round-trip charter flights from Guangzhou to Taipei for June 16 and 21.
Charter flights from Xiamen to Taipei are set for June 15 and 19.

The Dragon Boat Festival, which falls on the fifth day of fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar, is said to be in memory of a patriotic Chinese poet who drowned over 2,000 years ago.
Source: Jongo

At a conference in Beijing speaker after speaker said, ‘We need policy reform.’ They were talking about airspace.

China has a booming civil-aviation industry but is lagging behind in the field of ‘general aviation’ — which means everything besides commercial airliners and military aircraft. General aviation covers crop dusters, corporate jets, single-engine training aircraft and cargo aircraft, among other things.

This is much bigger than you might imagine. Civil aviation — where you get on an airline’s plane and go from Shanghai to, say, Sydney — accounts for most air passengers worldwide. But the most number of flights come from the much over-looked ugly sister — general aviation.

General aviation is important because without it you cannot have other forms of aviation. It allows training of pilots and technicians. It helps to develop infrastructure, a secondary web of small airfields in smaller and remoter cities which, in turn, allows for more efficient point-to-point transport.

Australia is an excellent example of how it works. Yes, the vast majority of passengers go to the major airports. But it is feeder traffic from places like Mudgee which keeps those flights ticking over. (And, incidentally, saved the life of friend of the writer by getting him to a Sydney hospital after a severe heart attack.)

In China general aviation is still a baby. It accounts for less than 1% of the world’s general-aviation fleet.

Comparative figures: 1,000 departures of private aircraft from Beijing’s airports last year, 60,000 from New York, 25,000 from Moscow and over 3,000 from Dubai.

What is the problem? First there is a 21% tax on imported aircraft. That is a problem but, in the scheme of things, relatively minor. The main problem is airspace. Most airspace is under military control with little spare capacity in civilian airspace so getting permission to fly means applying up to five days in advance.

There are very few ‘fixed based operators’ (FBOs), the service centres based in airports that maintain and operate private aircraft.

The government’s plans to promote general aviation are not clear. Mostly it comes down to the military hanging on to control of air space. It is quite plain that it is unwilling to let go, even at low altitudes were there should be no conflict. Eventually, it will have to if China it to continue its path onwards and upwards.
Source: The Economist