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European airline consolidation to enhance financials? Few deals to be done, at least locally

European airline margins have underperformed other regions for years. There are many reasons for this, but our analysis suggests that Europe’s relative lack of consolidation may be a significant one, since margins appear to be correlated with market concentration. Even after a number of significant deals over the past decade, the European market is less concentrated than North America, where consolidation has gone further, to the benefit of margins. Europe is also less concentrated than Asia-Pacific (analysed as its sub-regions), whose margins have consistently been the highest.

If consolidation brings structural benefits, are there still European deals that can make a difference? Europe has a long tail of small carriers, which are unlikely to have a significant impact, but comparison with North America points to the potential for further combinations among the top five. Nevertheless, there are hurdles to such deals, not least of which are the ongoing restructuring programmes at Europe’s Big Three and the incompatibility of LCC/FSC mergers, but some second tier groups could be targets.

Airlines in Transition: Willie Walsh's view of the world of global airline alliances

Few have single-handedly changed the landscape of global airline alliances the way Willie Walsh has. As the CEO of International Airlines Group, the owner of British Airways and Iberia (and soon Vueling), Mr Walsh had an instrumental role in bringing Qatar Airways into the oneworld alliance.

The ascension of Qatar occurs at a time alliances are undergoing significant change: Qantas in Mar-2013 launched a partnership with Emirates; oneworld's airberlin may partner with Air France-KLM; and Etihad has a staggering number of partners. Mr Walsh is respected amongst fellow executives for his candid and direct views – which peers perhaps wish they felt at the same liberty to say.

During CAPA's recent Airlines in Transition conference in Dublin, Mr Walsh gave a number of his thoughts on global alliances. He supports bilateral relationships and thinks the Qantas-Emirates alliance will be good for both partners. Mr Walsh also noted the limits of alliances: they are mainly to deliver additional revenue, not cost savings, and perhaps exist only because global mergers are not permitted by regulators.

Airlines in Transition part 3: How full service airlines are reshaping models to be more competitive

Over the past three decades, airline industry profits followed a fairly consistent cyclical pattern until the turn of the twenty-first century, which has so far seen seven loss-making years. If 2013 reports a profit, as forecast by IATA, the industry will have had four years of positive results (2010 to 2013). Nevertheless, profits are insufficient to cover the cost of capital and full service carriers still face critical challenges.

The global economy is still weak, fuel prices remain high, LCCs are undermining the legacy carriers’ short-haul markets and the rapid expansion of Gulf carriers is having an impact on their long-haul markets. In our third report on CAPA’s Airlines in Transition conference, we look at how FSCs are responding to these challenges.

CAPA Airlines in Transition report, Part 1: The natural history of airline alliances

From the first US Open Skies agreement with the Netherlands in 1992, and the subsequent granting of antitrust immunity to the KLM-Northwest joint venture in 1993, the evolution of airline alliances has been rapid and far reaching. Bilateral codeshares, immunised JVs, multilateral branded global alliances, the Etihad equity alliance: why are there so many models? In the first of a series of reports based on CAPA’s recent Airlines in Transition conference in Dublin, we examine the history and evolution of airline alliances and partnerships.

After decades of strict regulation of international traffic rights post WWII, which controlled destinations, capacity, frequencies and prices, a campaign for more liberal air services agreements (ASA) between nations began to gather pace in the US from 1977. In the words of Jeffrey Shane, General Counsel, IATA and a former senior US aviation regulator, any attempt to modify an ASA was characterised by a "highly calibrated, tit-for-tat mode of negotiation".

European airline labour productivity: CAPA rankings

This analysis updates CAPA's previous study of European airlines’ labour productivity ("European airlines’ labour productivity. Oxymoron for some, Vueling and Ryanair excel on costs") to reflect the most recent financial results and adds four carriers not included in the original article (Wizz Air, Aegean Airlines and the two IAG subsidiaries British Airways and Iberia).

The contrasting performance of LCCs and legacy carriers is clear, although there are some notable exceptions to the pattern. BA and Iberia’s different labour cost productivity is significant, while Air France-KLM and SAS are weak performers.

We introduce an overall CAPA European airline labour productivity ranking, revealing the carrier with Europe’s most productive workforce, based on six measures.

European airlines’ financial results in 2012; Net profit of biggest 13 down 72% for the year

The biggest 13 European airline companies for whom 2012 accounts are available reported an aggregate fall in net profit of 72% in 2012 to just EUR69 million. At the level of operating profit, which provides a more accurate view of underlying performance, the aggregate result fell by a more creditable 17% to EUR 1,662 million (71% of this from the four LCCs in the sample) and the operating margin fell by 0.5ppts to 1.5%.

Total revenues grew by a healthy 8.0%, but total costs grew faster, by 8.5%.

Costs were inflated by an 18.9% increase in fuel costs, whose share of revenues increased to 28%, up from one quarter in 2011. Excluding fuel, all other costs grew by 4.8%, appreciably slower than revenues.

LCCs grew faster, had higher load factors and, while their collective operating margin fell slightly, from 9.8% to 9.5%, this was vastly superior to the legacies’ collective 2012 margin of just 0.5%.