Airways Podcast

Vinay and Rohan invite you to join them a special two-part series featuring airport traffic changes from around the world. This week, we hit up Oceania, Asian, African and Middle Eastern airports that experienced the most salient passenger traffic adjustments. We'll not only provide objective data on the numerical changes, but also our insight and analyses explaining the trends. We start off in Oceania (4:05) wrapping up in Auckland and landing in Mumbai (11:02) and covering the Subcontinent. Next, we'll cover the largest connecting market from South Asia, aka the Middle East (23:36) with a unique take on Iran's traffic developments with a split-airport strategy. Heading South, we briefly cover Africa (38:00) then loop East to Southeast Asia (41:00) and North Asia (1:02:04). We conclude by covering the mysterious, yet fascinating People's Republic of China (1:09:15). We'll bring you part II next week!

For a limited time only, Airways Podcast listeners get 15% off their first Cranky Concierge travel support package. Visit https://crankyconcierge.com/airways to take advantage of this special offer through March 15th.

Your Airways Podcast duo Vinay Bhaskara and Rohan Anand continue their coverage of the Q4 and FY 2016 earnings reports for American (2:25), Southwest Airlines (18:42) and JetBlue (28:18). Extending beyond the usual humdrum of strong earnings, we analyze and dissect attributes unique to each airline, and baseline them against broader trends in the industry, to create our interpretation on revenue forecasts, Wall Street reactions and potential customer perceptions. For the route gurus, we did a hybrid of network beat and core, where we do a rapid fire on new route developments (36:10) like Air India to Washington, Finnair's A340 retirements, Aer Lingus to Las Vegas, Frontier's growth in Cincinnati and Cleveland and more.

We head to Iceland this week in the Network Beat bonus segment of the Airways Podcast, where Creator and Co-Founders Vinay Bhaskara and Rohan Anand dissect the Whos, Whats and WOWs of Islandia. We start by delving into the strategic importance of Rekjavic's Keflavik International airport (1:30), paying close attention to the capacity breakdown at KEF and its unique connecting model as a transit and stoppover point between Europe and North America. We'll then discuss Icelandair (6:40), the largest carrier at KEF airport with over 50% of the market share, its innovative and FREE "stoppover program," and the future of its network and commercial strategy with the 737-MAX entering the fleet later this decade to replace its workhorse 757s. We compare this to WOW Air (11:55), comparing the use of larger, widebody and Airbus-exclusive fleet. The remainder of the episode, we'll do some additional compare and contrasts on the successes, threats and opportunities for Icelandair and WOW, and how these two will vie for similar types of traffic flows but with one utilizing a hybrid model and the other as a fully un-bundled LCC.

This week Airways Senior Business Analyst Vinay Bhaskara and columnist Rohan Anand kick-off the first Airways podcast of 2017, starting with in-depth coverage of the Q4 and FY earnings reports for Delta (1:42) and United (19:47), who posted their results during the earlier half of the month. No conversation of the Big Three in the U.S. can take place without bringing up American Airlines, who, despite not reporting Quarterly and Fiscal Year results at the time of recording, had still taken headlines with the details of its new Basic Economy product (33:52). Finally, the duo decided to stay in the contiguous 48 this week and concluded on a somber note by discussing the retirement of United's 747-400 fleet by the end of 2017 (50:37).

*RE-UPLOAD TO CORRECT FILE ERROR* This week Airways Senior Business Analyst Vinay Bhaskara and columnist Rohan Anand conclude 2016 by recapping the top stories of year. The team discusses various leadership changes within the industry (1:42), major labor deals reached throughout the year (4:43), the breakup between Alaska and Delta (8:34), Delta's codeshare agreement with Korean Air (10:34), the DOJ's changing position on joint ventures (12:41), new international service launched during the year (17:24), security problems and terror threats (21:03), product improvements (22:12), Delta's Bombardier C-Series order and interesting aircraft/routes to fly (23:12), and a fun wrap-up (31:50).

This week in the Network Beat bonus segment of the Airways Podcast, Airways Senior Business Analyst Vinay Bhaskara and Columnist Rohan Anand discuss Qantas' new London-Perth route debuting in 2018 (0:14), and the potential for the route to be transformative (4:41).

This week Airways Senior Business Analyst Vinay Bhaskara and columnist Rohan Anand discuss the DOJ granting its stamp of approval for the Alaska/Virgin America merger (1:20), the DOT clearing Norwegian Air International to grow long-haul service in the United States (12:56), Avianca seeking out a joint venture partner (23:28), and President-Elect Donald Trump criticizing Boeing for the price of Air Force One (34:12).

This week in the Network Beat bonus segment of the Airways Podcast, Airways Senior Business Analyst Vinay Bhaskara and Columnist Rohan Anand discuss Aeroflot looking into potential joint ventures (0:28), the fading importance of airline alliances (0:36), and where Aeroflot is going (1:27).