Can the European low-cost airline boom continue? Implications for regional airports

At a time when the traditional major airlines have struggled to remain viable, the low-cost carriers have become the major success story of the European airline industry. This paper looks behind the headlines to show that although low-cost airlines have achieved much, they too have potential weaknesses and face a number of challenges in the years ahead. The secondary and regional airports that have benefited from low-cost carrier expansion are shown to be vulnerable to future changes in airline economics, government policy and patterns of air service. An analysis of routes from London demonstrates that the low-cost airlines have been more successful in some markets than others. To attractive and historically under-served leisure destinations in Southern Europe they have stimulated dramatic growth and achieved a dominant position. To major hub cities however they typically remain marginal players and to secondary points in Northern Europe their traffic has been largely diverted from existing operators. There is also evidence that the UK market is becoming saturated and new low-cost services are poaching traffic from other low-cost routes. Passenger compensation legislation and possible environmental taxes will hit the low-cost airline industry disproportionately hard. The high elasticities of demand to price in certain markets that these airlines have exploited will operate in reverse. One of the major elements of the low-cost business model involves the use of smaller uncongested airports. These offer faster turn-arounds and lower airport charges. In many cases, local and regional government has been willing to subsidise expansion of air services to assist with economic development or tourism objectives. However, recent court cases against Ryanair now threaten these financial arrangements. The paper also examines the catchment areas for airports with low-cost service. It is shown that as well as stimulating local demand, much traffic is captured from larger markets nearby through the differential in fare levels. This has implications for surface transport, as access to these regional airports often involves long journeys by private car. Consideration is then given to the feasibility of low-cost airlines expanding into the long-haul market or to regional operations with small aircraft. Many of the cost advantages are more muted on intercontinental services.

Telephones, Voice Recorders, Microphones, Phonographs: A Media Archaeology of Sonic Technologies in Twin Peaks

This article argues that sonic technologies, such as telephones, voice recorders and phonographs, alongside more (audio)visual ones such as flickering fluorescent lights, videos, and the television sets are crucial to the world of Twin Peaks, and constitute this world as both a communications network with portals to the unknown, and an accumulation of recordings of ghosted voices and entities, perhaps finding its ultimate expression in the backwards reprocessed speech in the Black Lodge. This lodge can be understood as a space in which there are nothing but recordings, albeit now on a cosmic, spiritual and demonic level. Using a media archaeological approach to these devices in the series, this paper will argue that they were already operating by a media archaeological logic, generating the world of Twin Peaks as a haunted archive of sonic and other mediations.

Old conflicts, new rivals? Airline competition in the European market

Christoph Franz of Lufthansa recently identified Ryanair, easyJet, Air Berlin and Emirates as the company’s main competitors – gone are the days when it could benchmark itself against BA or Air France-KLM! This paper probes behind the headlines to assess the extent to which different airlines are in competition, using evidence from the UK and mainland European markets. The issue of route versus network competition is addressed. Many regulators have put an emphasis on the former whereas the latter, although less obvious, can be more relevant. For example, BA and American will cease to compete between London and Dallas Fort Worth if their alliance obtains anti-trust immunity but 80% of the passengers on this route are connecting at one or both ends and hence arguably belong to different markets (e.g. London-San Francisco, Zurich-Dallas, Edinburgh-New Orleans) which may be highly contested. The remaining 20% of local traffic is actually insufficient to support a single point to point service in its own right. Estimates are made of the seat capacity major airlines are offering to the local market as distinct from feeding other routes. On a sector such as Manchester–Amsterdam, 60% of KLM’s passengers are transferring at Schiphol as against only 1% of bmibaby’s. Thus although KLM operates 5 flights and 630 seats per day against bmibaby’s 2 flights and 298 seats, in the point to point market bmibaby offers more seats than KLM. The growth of the Low Cost Carriers (LCCs) means that competition increasingly needs to be viewed on city pair markets (e.g. London-Rome) rather than airport pair markets (e.g. Heathrow-Fiumicino). As the stronger LCCs drive out weaker rivals and mainline carriers retrench to their major hubs, some markets now have fewer direct options than existed prior to the low cost boom. Timings and frequencies are considered, in particular the extent to which services are a true alternative especially for business travellers. LCCs typically offer lower frequencies and more unsociable timings (e.g. late evening arrivals at remote airports) as they are more focused on providing the cheapest service rather than the most convenient schedule. Interesting findings on ‘monopoly’ services are presented (including alliances) - certain airlines have many more of these than others. Lufthansa has a significant number of sectors to itself whereas at the other extreme British Airways has direct competition on almost every route in its network. Ryanair and flybe have a higher proportion of monopoly routes than easyJet or Air Berlin. In the domestic US market it has become apparent since deregulation that better financial returns can come from dominating a large number of smaller markets rather than being heavily exposed in the major markets - which are hotly fought over. Regional niches that appear too thin for Ryanair to serve (with its all 189 seat 737-800 fleet) are identified. Fare comparisons in contrasting markets provide some insights to marketing and pricing strategies. Data sources used include OAG (schedules and capacity), AEA (traditional European airlines traffic by region), the UK CAA (airport, airline and route traffic plus survey information of passenger types) and ICAO (international route traffic and capacity by carrier). It is concluded that airlines often have different competitors depending on the context but in surprisingly many cases there are actually few or no direct substitutes. The competitive process set in train by deregulation of European air services in the 1990s is leading back to one of natural monopolies and oblique alternatives. It is the names of the main participants that have changed however!

Fluid Ontologies in the Search for MH370

This paper gives an account of the disappearance of Malaysian Airways Flight MH370 into the southern Indian Ocean in March 2014 and analyses the rare glimpses into remote ocean space this incident opened up. It follows the tenuous clues as to where the aeroplane might have come to rest after it disappeared from radar screens – seven satellite pings, hundreds of pieces of floating debris and six underwater sonic recordings – as ways of entering into and thinking about ocean space. The paper pays attention to and analyses this space on three registers – first, as a fluid, more-than-human materiality with particular properties and agencies; second, as a synthetic situation, a composite of informational bits and pieces scopically articulated and augmented; and third, as geopolitics, delineated by the protocols of international search and rescue. On all three registers – as matter, as data and as law – the ocean is shown to be ontologically fluid, a world defined by movement, flow and flux, posing intractable difficulties for human interactions with it.

Landscapes of the invisible: sounds, cosmologies and poetics of space

In this PhD by Publication I revisit and contextualize art works and essays I have collaboratively created under the name Flow Motion between 2004-13, in order to generate new insights on the contributions they have made to diverse and emerging fields of contemporary arts practice/research, including digital, virtual, sonic and interdisciplinary art. The works discussed comprise the digital multimedia installation and sound art performance Astro Black Morphologies/Astro Dub Morphologies (2004-5), the sound installation and performance Invisible (2006-7), the web art archive and performance presentation project promised lands (2008-10), and two related texts, Astro Black Morphologies: Music and Science Lovers (2004) and Music and Migration (2013). I show how these works map new thematic constellations around questions of space and diaspora, music and cosmology, invisibility and spectrality, the body and perception. I also show how the works generate new connections between and across contemporary avant-garde, experimental and popular music, and visual art and cinema traditions. I describe the methodological design, approaches and processes through which the works were produced, with an emphasis on transversality, deconstruction and contemporary black music forms as key tools in my collaborative artistic and textual practice. I discuss how, through the development of methods of data translation and transformation, and distinctive visual approaches for the re-elaboration of archival material, the works produced multiple readings of scientific narratives, digital X-ray data derived from astronomical research on black holes and dark energy, and musical, photographic and textual material related to historical and contemporary accounts of migration. I also elaborate on the relation between difference and repetition, the concepts of multiplicity and translation, and the processes of collective creation which characterize my/Flow Motion’s work. The art works and essays I engage with in this commentary produce an idea of contemporary art as the result of a fluid, open and mutating assemblage of diverse and hybrid methods and mediums, and as an embodiment of a cross-cultural, transversal and transdisciplinary knowledge shaped by research, process, creative dialogues, collaborative practice and collective signature.