By Updesh Kapur/Doha


Over the next few weeks, media around the world will be bombarded with press releases featuring a common thread that PR agencies will want to ensure maximum coverage for their clients.
It’s a busy time for the writers preparing to disseminate news targeting journalists, freelancers and social media influencers across the globe.
It will all kick off next Tuesday. The world’s largest travel show gets underway in Germany attracting companies across the travel spectrum. Hotel chains, airlines, national tourist boards, tour operators, cruise lines, car rental firms, travel technology providers, web-based travel businesses, the list is endless.  ITB Berlin is an annual marketplace in the German capital that brings together the global travel community looking to strengthen relationships and develop new ones.
Press conferences will announce product launches, new campaigns will be revealed and research studies unveiled along with seminars discussing industry trends on the fringes over a busy few days. With the world’s travel media flying in, it’s their loyalty that PRs will be hoping to win over to secure those all-important column inches.
It will inevitably be a bun fight for coverage in the special onsite daily travel broadsheets promoting the five-day event. And of course there will be travel titles and travel sections of national newspapers around the world being fed with news from Berlin.  Many global travel companies will want to use ITB Berlin to give their 2015 publicity campaigns a boost.  For airlines, in particular, ITB Berlin is seen as a platform to showcase their latest products and fly in top management to host press conferences knowing their target media audience is spending almost a week covering the vast show. From the Gulf, Qatar Airways, Etihad, Emirates and Oman Air, along with their respective national tourist boards, will all be present with their latest wares.
But it is just after ITB that these airlines and many more around the world will be focusing on – and using PR to maximise their message.  It’s the time of the year when airlines want to capitalise on forward bookings by promoting their seasonal flying programmes – the common thread referred to earlier.
Twice a year, on the last Sunday of March and October, airlines typically implement their new flying programmes. This year, March 29 and October 27 signal the start of new schedules, coinciding with daylight savings, depending on which part of the world you live in.
In the Northern Hemisphere from next month, this means a new Summer schedule flying programme while in the Southern Hemisphere, it’s the beginning of the Winter programme.
So what will we see from March 29?
Typically, capacity increases, frequency hikes, deployment of bigger aircraft on many routes, introducing new planes into the fleet, reviving services and launching brand new routes, etc…. Airlines are preparing for a busy six-month period that will cover the peak summer months in the Northern Hemisphere, taking advantage of near- to full flights and maximum fares to help their balance sheets.
Any talk of scrapping services is not on the agenda. It’s all hands on deck to utilise all available aircraft.  It’s never been so good, you may say. With oil prices plunging over 50% during 2014, this has meant huge savings for airlines, now able to pump capacity back in when they feared loss-making operations due to the hefty price of oil.  With much lower fuel prices now, let’s operate more flights as travel becomes relatively cheaper. Nice thought, but this is not the rationale behind the mega scheduling changes expected from March 29.
Expansion provides consumers with more choice and an edge over competitors unable to do so due to lack of aircraft or lack of precious landing and take-off slots at congested airports.
The Northern Summer flying months are traditionally the best ever for airlines worldwide. There is a hive of activity with the deployment of aircraft and coordination of schedules between airlines that have codeshare marketing partnerships or global alliance tie-ups, simply to “minimise connecting times and maximise connections”. Though the “summer” has already been on sale for some time, it is the extra capacity being ploughed in, on a number of destination pairings and introduction of new routes that will make the headlines.
In the UK, air capacity data shows a significant rise in international capacity from late March to the end of October coinciding with Northern Hemisphere summer schedules. Over the past four years, the UK’s summer capacity has risen by at least 75% against the same year’s winter offering, increasing by as much 90% in 2011.
Richard Maslen, Content and Community Manager of Routesonline, the digital platform of the Routes global network planning events, says: “We should see new routes and higher capacity aircraft being scheduled soon to take advantage of summer holidays.
 “This is a crucial period for the industry as historically, airlines make the lion’s share of profits during the summer – for some as much as 80%.
 “Seasonality is one of biggest issues for airline network planners and can be found in almost all markets in the aviation business, but the degree of seasonality differs considerably.”
During the weaker winter months, airlines will schedule heavy aircraft maintenance checks and onboard product renovations as such work during the busy summer holiday season would not be logistically feasible.
Some airlines have gone to the extent of parking aircraft in the winter to avoid operating loss-making and non-feasible flights, while others have leased out planes to airlines in other parts of the world where there is demand.  
Adds Maslen: “In a perfect world, we would see level demand throughout the year. However, in the real world, this is the exception rather than the rule. Airlines are forced to manage capacity to meet demand. This could be through the use of different sized aircraft at different times of the year, upgrading to meet peak demand periods and through seasonal offerings.”
These include, for example, winter ski destinations such as in Europe packed to capacity or popular winter sun markets such as the Caribbean, also typically full to capacity.
But it is during the summer where there is the largest upward variation in capacity from the world’s airlines.
It’s a very complex process of scheduling that airline network planners are tasked with. But the bottom line is to fill planes and offer the most competitive service to lure customers and increase revenue, regardless of seasonality.  Busy times ahead for airline PRs pumping out similar messages around the world.

♦ Updesh Kapur (below) is a PR & communications professional, columnist, aviation, hospitality and travel analyst. He can be followed on twitter @updeshkapur

Related Story