Winair, CEO, Hans van de Velde at the CAPA Airline Leader Summit – Latin America & Caribbean 2024

Transcript

Hans van de Velde:Well, Winair is in the market for 60 years, traditionally with smaller aircraft like 19-seaters, and since a few years we stepped up to a 50-seater ATR. We will add an extra one this winter, and with this new capacity we're able to open up routes to what we call the south, so to Barbados, St. Vincent and St. Lucia. So we are growing our network. Our personal opinion is, is that one of the biggest problems in this region is that on-time performance is really lousy of most airlines. So we don't deliver up to our promise. So we should really step up our game. And to, to be able to have a performance as an airline that's consistent, that has a good on-time performance, you need a certain fleet size. So for me, a fleet size of 3 ATRs can never be the end. You need at least five or six aircraft to be able to handle unexpected maintenance or scheduled maintenance or unexpected incidents. So for me, if the strategic plan would not foresee in five or six aircraft, you better not start. So that indirectly is the answer. So we now at three. We will add a fourth one next winter season, and from there on we will build our our our fleet. No. So the market for for for young young-timer ATRs, because that's a deliberate choice of us. We don't want— we don't have the money to buy new aircraft, but we don't want to step into the pitfall that many carriers do, that they also, because of lack of source, they go for aircraft of age 25, 30 years, and we don't want that. We want operational stable aircraft, and that market is tight. So to be able to find ATRs 500 or 600, that's a real struggle, but if you plan ahead well in time, there are possibilities, of course for a price, but it's still doable. It's a deliberate choice to have a 42 or 48-seater, because in this region, we are connecting islands, with 2,000, 3,500 inhabitants. And of course there are bigger islands, up to 400,000, but many routes are very thin. So to be able to fill up 48 seats, that's already quite a challenge. And I think evidence shows that for many routes, 70 seats is too much. So for us, we stick for now with the 50-seater. We have been studying data from OAG, from Amadeus, from Sabre on the development of demand in the region, but it's extremely difficult to interpret because lots of airlines, us included, they operate very complex routes. So we operate from, as an example, from St. Maarten to St. Kitts to Antigua to Dominica and back. And also that's one flight, but it's 7 city pairs. So to actually know where somebody getting on the aircraft in St. Kitts is going to is quite complex, especially in this data. So there probably is a chance, and that we will see this winter because we will open up new routes, to bypass some stops. So we will have more direct flights because we, combination of looking at data and common sense, think there's a There's a market, but are we sure? No, we're not. So it's a bit of an adventure.

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