‘A New Course For The Future’ For Etihad Airways
In addition to industry challenges, we have faced challenges of our own, acknowledges Robin Kamark, chief commercial officer, Etihad Aviation Group. “We have made tough decisions to achieve necessary change. We are making solid progress – but there is more to be done,” he explains. The company has launched a five-year transformation plan and key reforms to date have included exiting unprofitable routes; simplifying its fleet and reducing aircraft orders; more closely matching capacity to demand, including seasonal aircraft changes; cutting costs and exploring new revenue opportunities focusing on quality revenue; and restructuring our workforce. Mr Kamark acknowledges that next step in the plan will see “strengthened partnerships” and a strategy “to drive innovation to deliver efficiencies and personalised service”. Mr Kamark says the transformation plan is working. “We have made tough decisions, and will keep doing so… we are heading in the right direction, but we still have a way to go.”
Transcript
Robin Kamark:It's been a great year for us. What we have done is to put together a five-year transformation plan within the Etihad Aviation Group, which we're following sort of sort of in detailed progress, which will bring us through to 2023. That goes more or less from you know everything from the network to the revenue management to efficiencies. to generating revenue, cargo side, engineering side. So we are sort of— we are trying to transform the sort of the whole group as such. But again, with a 5-year plan, and we are sort of ticking off the different paths as we go. And 2019 has been a good one for us. Well, I would say that, you know, everybody can cut costs. The question though is, as you also are sort of alluding into, Are you able to cut the right type of cost that doesn't sort of affect our guests? And we think that we have that remedy. Okay, we need to be more efficient, but it is about to invest the right money in the right place at the right time. As such, Etihad is a great brand, has been that since the sort of— it's been a great, great job done when it comes to develop the brand of Etihad worldwide. And we are in a lucky position that we have a worldwide recognized brand and we will continue to have that one. That's sort of the really tricky part is then we also need to cut costs in order to transform. So, you know, the history will tell us where we're able to do that. But we are fairly confident that with the 5-year plan, as I mentioned, that we have, we are following that one step by step. And for latter part of 2018 and throughout 2019, it's been— we see that the things we are doing have the effects on the right places and where we intended to have effects. Well, I mean, as I said during the speech, that you know Etihad had one approach in the history, and it's easy to be sort of you know in hindsight smart. When you know there's no hidden sort of thing that that didn't work out as we intended. Okay, then we we took stock and say, okay, what do we want to do? And we continue. Everybody, you know, from the smallest to the biggest of the world need partnerships. That's the ecosystem. That's the way of doing business today. And we have a lot of partners today on the coaches part and interlining and those sort of things. The question is, How do you develop joint venture into more depth partnerships? Do you want to go into alliances? Which sort of alliances do we want to go? And those are the things that we are now paving out through the 5-year plan. And we want to have partners, but it must be on the right terms, as I say, that benefit. You know, it's classic 1 plus 1 is 2.5. It takes two to tango and all those sort of things. But you need to find that right partner. And it's the right way of saying, you know, this sort of environmental and sustainability issue has been around a long time. But what we are concrete doing is, as I said also during the presentation, And I talked about the Greenliner. We are into the research progress with biofuel. We have done the plastic fuel flight. We're going to reduce the use of one-time plastic with 80%. We are going to go into research and innovation processes with engine manufacturers, with OEMs and those sort of things. And Etihad wants to be in the forefront of being that partner. But again, as in also in commercial aviation, when it comes to sustainability, it's not one and one and one and one. We need to be together as a society. Then it gets momentum and then it gets impact. What will we will launch the green green light? And it's you know for us we are going together with Boeing and we're going to use that flight to do a lot of different sort of research projects with and a couple of of partners that will be announced down the line. So I don't want to say too much about that, but also we are sending out invitations to a number of key players to see okay we're going to use that as I mean I don't have a better word to say a lab. In order for us to get data, see what has effect, what doesn't have effect, and that's we're going to use that constantly. But we'll have it in production, so we use it. And and and that one we have written a cooperation agreement with Boeing. So we both are going to use that one as a call it a flying lab.
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