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You have to look hard, but amid the recession depression sweeping like a plague through global economies, there are grains of good news, says Colin Ellson
Even among the score of airlines offering frequent services from airports across the UK to the Central European business centres of Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.
As always, Ryanair is good for a news story. In November, what the low-cost airline describes as its “sexy cabin crew” – no political correctness here, then – “got their kit off” for the 2009 Ryanair Cabin Crew Charity Calendar, with the estimated £100,000 proceeds to be donated to Dublin’s homeless community.
Hopefully, they had re-girded their loins against the chill wind of economic reality by the time the airline announced its half-year profits were down year-on-year by 47 per cent.
Nevertheless, Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary was as chipper as ever. “Achieving a half-year profit of 215million euros in very difficult trading conditions,” he said, “is testimony to the strength of the Ryanair low-fare model.”
Certainly strong enough for the airline to unveil a string of new routes to Central Europe at the end of last year. These included Berlin, Bratislava, Krakow and Poznan from its new base at Edinburgh, plus Shannon to Gdansk, with Stansted to Balaton, Hungary, due to launch at the end of March.
Rival low-fares carrier easyJet also put on a brave face when it revealed preliminary results to September 30, 2008, were down by almost 50 per cent year-on-year to £110 million.
Said CEO Andy Harrison: “easyJet delivered a good trading performance. Our winter bookings for the first quarter of 2009 are slightly ahead of last year. There is also evidence of a ‘flight to value’ for both business and leisure passengers. We recognise economic conditions will be difficult and easyJet is planning accordingly, which means focusing on offering customers great value, driving down controllable costs, and preserving cash.”
Small- to medium-sized companies will apply the same wisdom to their business model, and might hesitate to venture into uncharted waters in Central Europe. But there is good reason to examine the potential. For a decade or more, the region has benefited from economic and political stability, and while the credit crunch will inevitably be felt, the area is worth getting on for £40billion a year in UK exports.
If companies need encouragement to throw their hats into the ring, then UK Trade & Investment is reasonably optimistic about the prospects in almost every sector.
Trend-conscious Austrian consumers, for example, are looking for clothing, footwear and telecoms; the Czech Republic requires the services of the advanced engineering, biotech-nology, healthcare and training sectors; and Germany is a market for vehicles and compo-nents, petroleum and gas, and aerospace input.
Hungary also needs British aerospace expertise, and could be fertile ground for companies involved in the automotive, biotechnology and IT industries. Meanwhile, there are opportunities in Poland for sports infrastructure, with three new stadia to be constructed for its hosting of the 2012 European Football Championships, and in Slovakia, there is particular scope in education, waste water treatment and the automotive sector. All of which opportunities could be good news for UK plc in these troubled times..
Vienna
Synonymous with the waltzes of Johann Strauss, and noted for its architecture, the sophisticated capital of Austria is the country’s economic powerhouse. It is home to institutions such as the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), has significant banking and insurance interests, and manufactures everything from machinery and electrical equipment to chemicals and textiles.
British Airways and Austrian Airlines fly to Vienna four times a day from Heathrow, with Aer Lingus operating six flights a week from Dublin.
Prague
Straddling the Vltava River, the Czech capital is a city of unsurpassed beauty, the buildings spanning ten centuries. It has a highly industrialised economy, with products including metals and machinery, aircraft and diesel engines, automobiles, machine tools, refined oil, electronics, beer, chemicals and food.
Flights from London Heathrow to Prague are with British Airways three times a day, while CSA Czech Airlines provides 18 services a week. SkyEurope offers 11 weekly flights from Luton, and easyJet flies daily from Gatwick and twice daily from Stansted. Regional routes, each with five flights a week, include Jet2 from both Edinburgh and Leeds/Bradford, bmi baby from Manchester, and easyJet from Belfast and Newcastle. The airline also flies daily from East Midlands and Bristol. Flights from Dublin are with CSA six times a week and Aer Lingus thrice-weekly, while Ryanair offers frequent services. In addition, it operates to the Czech capital from East Midlands and Birmingham, and to the second city of Brno from Stansted.
Berlin
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 not only triggered the reunification of Germany, but also wrought fundamental structural change to the city, which regained its status as the country’s capital in 1999. As the trade, banking and insurance sectors have grown, there has been a decline in industry and construction. But Berlin still has a strong industrial core, with electrical and mechanical engineering, motor vehicles, food products and chemicals key to the economy, while R&D is targeted for expansion.
British Airways has six flights a day from Heathrow to Berlin, easyJet 11 a week from Luton and Ryanair has regular departures from Stansted. Among the regional routes, Lufthansa offers 18 services a week from Manchester, easyJet flies daily from Glasgow and Liverpool, and from Bristol four times a week, and Ryanair operates frequently out of Edinburgh and East Midlands. Irish routes include Aer Lingus’ seven flights a week from Dublin and thrice-weekly frequency out of Cork, and Ryanair flies from Dublin and Shannon.
Cologne
When Nikolaus August Otto invented the four-stroke engine in Cologne in 1876, he pioneered the city’s future as Germany’s motown. It is the HQ of Ford Europe, with other big names also in residence, including Citroen, Mazda, Toyota and Volvo. As the lynchpin of the economy, the automobile industry is supplemented by large retail companies and the insurance sector, represented by giants such as Axa, Zurich, General Cologne and Gerling.
From London, Lufthansa serves Cologne 20 times a week from Heathrow, easyJet daily from Gatwick, and Germanwings up to three times a day from Stansted. Regional flights include bmi’s daily frequency from Manchester.
Dusseldorf
The economic centre of Germany is also among its top telecoms hubs. There are 18 internet providers based in the city and it leads the country’s mobile phone market. Other big contributors to local wealth include the advertising and fashion industries, national and international financial institutions, publishing houses, and one of the largest German stock exchanges.
Lufthansa operates 108 flights a week to Dusseldorf: 35 from Heathrow, 16 from London City, 23 from Manchester, 22 from Birmingham and 12 from Newcastle. Among other routings, Air Berlin flies four times a day from Stansted, as does flybe from Birmingham, plus its three flights a day from Manchester and two from Southampton. Jet2 offers six flights a week from Leeds/Bradford, and Aer Lingus has the same frequency from Dublin. Ryanair operates flies to Dusseldorf from Stansted, Birmingham, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester and Shannon.
Frankfurt
With the two tallest skyscrapers in the European Union, Frankfurt is also a towering force as Germany’s financial centre, home to the country’s largest stock exchange. And as the seat of the European Central Bank and the German Federal Bank, the city exerts consider-able influence over both European and global fiscal policies. The city is also host to a series of major annual trade fairs, including the world’s largest motor show.
Flights from Heathrow to Frankfurt include British Airways’ seven services a day, and Lufthansa’s 70 a week. The German flag carrier also flies from London City, Manchester and Birmingham 28 times a week each, from Bristol twice daily, and from Dublin thrice daily.
Among alternative regional services, flybe operates three flights a day from Birmingham, Manchester and Southampton, and Aer Lingus operates up to six a week out of Dublin. Ryanair’s routes to the German city are from Stansted, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham, Kerry and Dublin.
Hamburg
The major force behind the city’s economy is the Port of Hamburg, ranked second in Europe after Rotterdam. International trade makes this the fastest-growing port in the EU and home to a large number of consulates. The industrial base includes shipyards, an Airbus assembly plant and the manufacture of steel, aluminium and copper. The media is also an important sector, and Hamburg featured in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies.
British Airways flies to Hamburg four times a day from Heathrow, Lufthansa 21 times a week. The German airline also has 11 flights a week from London City and 12 from Manchester. Alternative services are flybe’s twice-daily flights from Birmingham, and easyJet’s six a week from Luton, while Ryanair operates from Stansted and Dublin.
Munich
With the strongest economy of any German city, the scenic capital of Bavaria is not only the powerhouse of the south, but also a global player. It houses the HQ of Siemens electronics, BMW, MAN trucks, Linde gases, aerospace contractor EADS, Alliance insurance and Munich Re reinsurance, and is the main European base for McDonalds and Microsoft. Biotechnology, IT and publishing are also important sectors in the city which might have been home to Adolf Hitler, but also gave the world the music of Wagner and Mahler.
British Airways and Lufthansa each fly to Munich seven times a day from Heathrow, with the German carrier also offering 22 services a week from London City and 21 from both Manchester and Birmingham. In addition, easyJet operates a daily service from Edinburgh and a double-daily service from Stansted. Aer Lingus, meanwhile, flies seven times a week from Dublin, thrice-weekly from Belfast, and four-times-weekly out of Cork.
Budapest
Known as the Queen of the Danube for its spectacular setting either side of the river and the historic quarter of Castle Hill, the Hungarian capital is the country’s economic motor. A centre for the R&D projects of multinationals such as Nokia, the city is benefiting from a massive injection of EU funding, much of it destined for infrastructural improvements. This has attracted financial institutions such as AIG and ING to set up shop, while many other companies have made Budapest their regional HQ too.
Malev Hungarian Airlines flies to Budapest three times a day from Heathrow in a codeshare with British Airways, plus double-daily from Gatwick, with its six flights a week from Edinburgh, 12 from Manchester and daily service from Glasgow all operated by BA.
Regional flights include Wizz Air’s 11 departures a week from Luton, Jet2’s five-times-daily service from Manchester, easyJet’s daily flights from Gatwick and twice-daily flights from Luton, and Aer Lingus’ seven times a week service from Dublin. In addition, Ryanair flies from Glasgow, Liverpool, East Midlands, Bristol and Dublin.
Gdansk
Forever associated with Lech Walesa and the trade union movement which helped to topple communism, Gdansk is one of the major economic centres in the Baltic region. The industrial scene is dominated by shipbuilding, petrochemicals, chemicals and food processing, with hi-tech sectors such as electronics, telecoms, IT engineering, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals of increasing importance. As the majority of the world’s amber deposits lie along the Baltic coast, processing of the fossil resin is another big contributor to the economy.
Wizz Air flies from Luton to Gdansk 11 times a week, with Ryanair offering frequent services out of Stansted, Birmingham, Liverpool, Bristol, Dublin and Shannon.
Krakow
Tourism to its many historic sites contributes significantly to the economy of Poland’s second city, where the trend towards a market economy has been steady since the fall of communism. The automotive, coal, mining, IT, manufacturing, retail and chemicals sectors are the focus of foreign investment, and some 20 large multinational companies have a presence in the city, including Google, IBM, General Electric and Motorola.
Flights to Krakow are dominated by low-cost airlines easyJet and Ryanair. The former serves the city from Edinburgh and Luton four times a week, from Belfast and Newcastle thrice-weekly, and from Gatwick, Liverpool and Bristol daily. Ryanair’s flights are from Stansted, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, East Midlands, Birmingham, Dublin and Shannon. Alternatively, British Airways flies daily from Gatwick, Jet2 operates from Leeds/Bradford four times a week, and Aer Lingus has seven services a week from Dublin.
Warsaw
In their reconstruction of the devastated capital of Poland after World War Two, the authorities decreed it would be a major industrial centre, and built numerous factories. But as the communist economy deteriorated, they mostly went bankrupt, and now only the Arcelor Warsaw Steel Mill remains. With the introduction of a free market, however, foreign investment has given the city a new lease of life, and today it has the largest concentration of electronics and hi-tech industry in Poland, with the finance, banking and food processing sectors further boosting a healthy economy.
LOT Polish Airlines flies from Heathrow to Warsaw three times a day, with British Airways operating double-daily. From Luton, Wizz Air has 13 flights a week, and easyJet 12. The airline also serves the Polish capital three times a week from Bristol, while Aer Lingus offers seven services a week from Dublin, from where Ryanair also provides a good frequency.
Bratislava
The capital of Slovakia, straddling the Danube and at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains, is a small city that punches well above its weight. Service and hi-tech companies have prospered in recent years, with IBM, Dell, AT&T and Accenture building service centres. A strong motor vehicle sector is represented by the factories of Volkswagen, Porsche and Audi, and trade, banking, IT, telecoms and tourism are important cornerstones of the economy.
Flights from London to Bratislava include Air Slovakia’s new once-a-week service departing Gatwick, plus a Ryanair service from Stansted, and SkyEurope’s 13 flights a week from Luton.
The airline also operates daily from Manchester, and Ryanair flies regularly out of Edinburgh, Birmingham, Bristol, East Midlands and Dublin.
Central Europe
In addition to being able to join direct flights from airports across the UK to all the major business centres in Central Europe, executives faced with a multi-destination itinerary in the region will have no problem flying on from their first landfall to meetings in adjoining markets.
All the area’s national carriers have good domestic networks, and offer a range of flights to neighbouring countries, supplemented by intra-regional airlines.
LOT Polish Airlines, for example, flies from Warsaw to Vienna, Prague, Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Dusseldorf and Budapest; while the CSA Czech Airlines network from Prague reaches out to Berlin, Bratislava, Budapest, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Krakow, Munich and Warsaw. Austrian Airlines has a similarly comprehensive Central European network, as does, of course, Lufthansa.
Choose a low-cost airline, however, and it is important to buy tickets several weeks ahead of the trip to get the lowest fare. Remember, too, that most budget airlines only fly point to point. This makes arranging several flights more difficult than when using a full-fares airline, including collecting luggage and checking in for each sector, as transfers between flights are not usually offered by the no-frills boys.
The Carbon Cost
The table below shows the distance covered by a return flight between London and the destination, along with the approximate carbon emissions and the cost of offsetting it with The CarbonNeutral Company. See: www.carbonneutral.com
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