Airline Insight
John Strickland and Garth Lund break down the latest developments and economic realities of the global airline business.
Airline Insight
Ep 1: Why is IAG delivering double the margin of its rivals?
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While Lufthansa and Air France-KLM navigate complex turnarounds, IAG is delivering a 15% operating margin.
In our debut episode of Airline Insight, John Strickland and Garth Lund break down the strategic divide between Europe’s "Big Three" and what 2026 holds for the sector.
What we dive into:
- The IAG edge: How IAG has consistently outperformed the competition.
- The LCC struggle: Why Vueling, Eurowings, and Transavia are seeing such mixed results.
- 2026 outlook: A look at the next 12 months for European aviation.
Welcome to the first in our new podcast series, Airline Insights, where we take a look at the airline business with a European slant. I'm John Strickland. I've been around the industry over 40 years. I've worked across a number of different airline business models from network carry to low cost. I'm always interested in what's going on. And I'm pleased to say I'm with my good colleague Garth.
SPEAKER_00Thanks, John. I'm Garth Lund. I've also spent time in the airline industry, just over a decade with low-cost airlines in various commercial and finance roles, and now working with airlines, airports, and travel tech businesses to grow revenue.
SPEAKER_01And of course, our paths already crossed Garth when you were at Wiz Air. And I believe you spent uh recent years over in Canada.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I was with Wiz for uh just under eight years and then uh with Flair in Canada for uh about three and a half years.
SPEAKER_01Excellent, excellent. Well let's kick off. In this first episode, we're gonna do a bit of a compare and contrast to the three major European network carriers who've just recently reported their UN results, and of course, we're talking FRNS KLM, IAG, and Lufthansa. We can't, however, ignore the current uh Middle Eastern conflict which is going on and what that might mean for travel overall in the coming months. So let's kick off and uh look at the network carriers. Now they're all profitable, but there are big differences in performance, aren't there?
SPEAKER_00Yes, I mean I think clearly IAG is the standout performer with a 15% operating margin across four different airlines, all of whom delivered double-digit operating margins. They don't break out level, I suspect it's probably not double-digit, but a very strong performance from IAG. Uh, Air France KLM also improving its profit margin up to uh just over 6% E-bit margin. And then bringing up the rear of the pack is Lufthansa Group for the passenger airline segment, which is probably most comparable to um IAG and Air France KLM, an operating margin of 3.6%. So quite some variation in the performance of the uh the three network carrier groups, I would say.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Because if we look back at uh the European landscape of the last few years, the first big consolidation we saw here to compare a tour with what happened across in the US uh much further back, where we ended up with three big network groups. The first of these here was Air France and KLM coming together, and they did it in very different economic times, they're much more benign times, and uh they produced quite good results, which began to slacken. IAG was born, as initially a merger, of course, between uh British Airways and Iberia and has added other airlines into the group. And Lufthansa has again gone a different way. They they started with largely, you could say, Germanic consolidation, buying stakes in airlines surrounding Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and then later not uh countrywise, right next door, but Belgium, and of course, more recently, uh buying a stake uh in ITA. But the results have come out very differently. And uh I think it's maybe interesting to have a chat and a discussion about why so different, because to me, IAG sticks out really strongly, not just as you said, in the strength of margin, but the reasons behind it.
SPEAKER_00No, I agree. I think IAG has a few underlying advantages. First of all, they have very strong home markets. As we know, London is the largest air travel market in the world. A lot of business traffic, premium traffic. Dublin with Aerolingus is well placed as a connecting hub between Europe and the US, as well as having also its own strong OD demand to the US. And then Spain is a very strong market. You know, there is outbound traffic, a lot of inbound leisure traffic. Um, so I think IAG has, you know, they have done well to build up a portfolio of strong home markets, and I think they're running the business efficiently and effectively to capture that demand, and particularly in recent years, the the premium demand.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. I mean, certainly looking at these airlines, uh, I've always had a positive impression about the way the integration has taken place uh in IAG. Uh it's pretty multicultural, of course. Organisations change over time according to their leadership. They've played to their strengths and indeed built up more strength. And I know for my own history, I mean, London, if served in the right way, uh particularly transatlantic, is a gold mine in terms of premium traffic. Well, not in not only just London, but Heathrow in particular. You know, uh it was certainly a lesson to me uh earlier in my career moving from a a Gatwick-based airline to work for British Airways to see the sheer volume of premium traffic that they carried uh on a number of the uh the leading North Atlantic gateways. And of course, we had a lot of worries about premium traffic coming out of a pandemic. And I think IAG has said recently in their earnings that recovering to that level of business traffic is ancient history. It's not going to happen. But what they and others have seen as being uh a reasonable recovery, but the real strength of premium traffic may be driven more by leisure. Uh, and they're filling those cabins at a phenomenal rate with an enormous amount of output in the number of North Atlantic Way flights they have out of London and indeed supplemented by those from other airports.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think they've really built the business in a way that is suited to what we've seen in terms of recent trends like the premiumization of demand and uh yeah, running the business very effectively.
SPEAKER_01Uh you know, at the same time, while that's been happening, what we see moving up scale is the performance of their Spanish business. You know, Madrid may describe it as becoming the kind of Latin American centre of Europe. There's been more migration. Iberia has an extremely strong program, as you would imagine, to Latin American gateways. They're building upon that by adding frequency. And as you mentioned, you know, the Spanish domestic market, one, it's a large domestic market, two, it's remained strong, and of course, it's the natural leisure flows in and out of Spain, typically from North and South Europe and Welling in particular, as well as Iberia and Iberia Express have been able to tap into that, haven't they?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean I think the transformation of Iberia is really spectacular. I mean, when IAG was formed, I think it's fair to say that Iberia was you know very much the poor relation to British Airways. And now in 2025, Iberia was the leading airline in the group in terms of operating margin. Um so I think they're doing a great job with the airline and particularly in capturing the growth in the South Atlantic market to Latin.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. And as we've said, you know, they've got this portfolio of airlines and they seem to really work diligently in a disciplined way, if if you like, in terms of allocation of capital. While I I guess unless some major unexpected thing happened, BA is going to get the lion's share of capacity because of course it has for position of heath through, but they will make each internal airline compete strongly for who gets aircraft resources. We saw that when the uh A321 XLRs were coming in not much more than a year ago, when it was planned that Air Lingus would be the first to get those aircraft. And because they had challenges in pilot negotiations initially, the aircraft went to uh Iberia with uh Airlingus Fend following. And so individual airlines for individual CEOs have to demonstrate they can deliver the best result, the margin, and the overall profitability of their business.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. A bit of a different story if we look at some of the other airlines. Exactly. Or airline groups, I should say.
SPEAKER_01Should we look at Air France KLM? Sure. Yeah, I mean that one, because again, a former employer, I moved to KLM's UK subsidiaries after my time at BA, so I know very well the strength of that company and its hub through Amsterdam Skip Hall. And I mentioned that merger was the first one to come along, Air France KLM. But you know, looking at it from outside, because it happened uh in a time after I'd left, it never looked like a real merger. I mean, not only do you have the identities, and of course IEG's kept the identities to the customer of those uh typically national airlines, but there didn't seem to be a real merger in terms of integration of uh fleets, in terms of maybe approach to pricing and revenue management and so on. And indeed, Air France, whether you could really call them the older statesman, but certainly the larger partner, it was them really buying into KLM rather than a marriage of equals. They were actually dragging the group down in terms of poor performance, and it was KLM who was way, way punching above its weight and strongly uh developing on the basis of that strong skip hole hub. But we've now seen an incredible reversal. I mean, I I think on the one hand, uh Ben Smith came in the first non-French leader on the Air France side, but of course leading the group, and seems to have been able to really successfully reduce the uh typical historical frictions in Air France. So industrial relations is certainly not something which is a preoccupying element now. Paris is a bigger market anyway, I think after London, uh very big market. And KLM's now facing a lot of challenges in Schipol, internal and external.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I agree. I think um when we look at the portfolio of airlines within Air France, KLM now, as you say, Air France is the leader in terms of operating margin. KLAM is clearly facing some challenges. I think they've been a little bit hamstrung, partially by capacity constraints in Schipol, partially by uh increasing taxes in the Netherlands. Um, you know, ten years ago it almost were, you know, at least on the short hill market, the passenger taxes were low or non-existent out of the Netherlands. Now it's 29 euros, I think, to Europe, plus tariff increases in Schiphol. So I think they do have some underlying challenges which they are facing, and that's impacted the margin. But they do have their transformation program underway. So hopefully we'll see the benefits of that in coming years.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and you you mentioned some of those cost increases. I think uh they've talked about 40% cost increases in airport charges at Gipal, which is uh enormous. And although, I mean, you know from your own uh uh work experience, if we look at low-cost carriers, they will genuinely move pieces around the chessboard. You know, Wizair would move aircraft around all over Europe, indeed beyond, Ryanair would do the same indeed, EasyJet. But we can't really see these network carriers doing it the same way. I think Lufthansa has done a bit of moving between Munich and Frankfurt before when they've been unhappy about things, or whether they are a shareholder, I think, in Munich Airport. But I mean, network carriers in terms of slot portfolio and route networks and uh hub banks and so on, it's just not the same possibility, is it, Garth?
SPEAKER_00No, I think they are um the the big hub markets that they operate are the strength of the business, but also, as you say, can be a weakness in the sense that they aren't really mobile assets. And maybe as we've seen with um the allocation of the XLRs with an IAG, you can deploy capital between perhaps different elements of the portfolio, but the big hubs are really there to stay. So there's not too much they can do about the uh changing environment beyond you know lobbying politically or so and so on. But um, yeah, I think it does remain a challenge.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So we'll see what happens in the coming year. I mean, KLM, as you said, they're talking up big this transformation programme. They said they need to do more, and certainly Air France is a strong performer currently. Uh but uh if we turn to, as you said, Lufthansa, you know, bringing up the rear, so to speak, in terms of uh poorer performance. Yep, they came in with a profit, they were talking positively about that compared to the previous year. But uh again, a very different uh overall landscape. I mean, what one thing to be fair, if you like, if we're going to do a kind of critique amongst these airlines, is and they said it in their earnings score, you know, they don't have the same market strength uh in Germany that uh the other two groups have. I mean, while Amsterdam's a small market in its own right, Paris and London, in the case of the other groups, are large, and indeed uh to an extent Madrid, but Frankfurt and Munich are much smaller in native or local catchment areas, so they they have to rely much more on uh connection flows, even though Germany itself uh has a substantial population.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I think the German economy is perhaps not the you know engine of Europe that it might have been 10, 15 years ago. I imagine that's also been um impacting the performance of the group. Even today, I think Volkswagen announced they would be letting go of 50,000 people between now and 2030. So I think kind of the recalibration of the German economy has not helped. On top of that, the domestic market in Germany has changed substantially since COVID. You know, it was, you know, even on a point-to-point level, it was a relatively large market in its own right. Uh but now that point-to-point domestic market has not quite disappeared, but it's really a shadow of its former self. So kind of the core German market for Lufthansa is probably not performing as strongly as it once did. And as you say, it's probably a relatively smaller market that means the group is more dependent on connecting flows, which typically come at a lower yield than um point-to-point traffic.
SPEAKER_01Now, another fact I think worth uh chatting about Gaff is we touched on premium traffic and business traffic. And here again we see uh interestingly, a really strong story coming out of IEG about premium traffic, the amount they have and expectations of its continuity, and Air France KLM may be particularly on the Air France side, investing more in the product, including first La Premiere for Air France as well as uh business KLM again, uh beefing up what they do. Um, yeah, part of their success maybe reflects, as you said, the difference in market dynamics. But uh it's interesting that Lufthansa's lagging behind, and and I I wonder how much of that is due to um differences in capacity. I mean, they've talked about uh waiting for delivery of 787 aircraft, putting in uh, from their point of view, a very well-upgraded business product, the Allegras business cabin uh and census in the case of Swiss, but uh they're pretty behind, wouldn't you say, Garth, compared to the other two and where they are at the moment on that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think if you compare it to E France PLM, which cited that their premium revenue has grown from 31% of total revenue uh in 23 to now uh 36%. And then you compare that to Lufthansa, which um, you know, as we know has struggled with the uh the rollout of the Allegras product. The uh I think all but four seats in the business cabin on the 787s with the new Allegras product, you know, those seats are blocked until certification. The fleet is still, I think, let's say in relatively early stages of renewal, you still have a lot of the 330s, the 340s, the 747s, and so on, which you know don't have the same level of hard product as more modern aircraft. And given that the main source of demand strength recently has been that premium leisure travel, I think that's probably been a challenge for them. On the other hand, it is quite notable upside for future years. The you know, once they can start selling the business capital on the 787s, that's free revenue upside. Um so I think going into subsequent years, perhaps this will turn around and start to work in their favour. But uh yes, it has been a headwind recently.
SPEAKER_01And you know, particularly premium traffic, but the general continued buoyancy of the North Atlantic market um for all three groups, it's interesting if we reflect back. And I remember the time I was at BA, they had at the peak, I think, 577400s. I mean, it already descended to around about 40-ish pre-pandemic. They were on the way out, but they weren't expected to go as quickly as they did. Then one fell swoop, they were gone, uh, made that decision not to bring them back. Uh, similar decisions for um Air France uh KLM, but as you said, Lufthansa still with a bit of a mixed bag of with 340s, albeit I think they're going quite quickly, some 747400s. And perhaps Lufthansa being the only one of the groups who took the last version of the 747478, and without trying to be too av geeky about it, though I would love to do that. I mean, uh they've just sold to, I think, to the US government, uh part of their presidential plans, which to me seems incredible. I did see that uh Carter Sport said they couldn't turn down the price they were offered. But if we look at this summer and this need for premium traffic, uh need for premium capacity rather, you know, they're really kind of selling themselves short. And and it's it also is hard to believe, as you describe, that those new seats in the 787s, the whole idea of aircraft being delivered and not being able to use those seats because they were not certified for uh fire performance. Uh I mean, I don't know how that situation arose. I know they wanted to switch suppliers, but there are challenges all around for all three groups in capacity being tight, but Lufthansa in particular uh over the coming summer months. Maybe less of a worry in the economy cabin where all of them, and indeed US carriers have talked about some economy cabin softness.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think we'll need to see, at least on the long haul side, I think we'll need to see where things go in the Gulf. I mean, that could change the demand dynamic for the likes of Lufthansa and so on. Yeah, certainly challenging uh a challenging fleet to compete with the more modern fleet structures that Air France KLM and IAG have moved towards.
SPEAKER_01And for all of them, they'd reported, I mean, Lufthansa was reporting just as conflict in the Gulf was uh getting uh going. And uh, as we speak today, we don't know how long that uh may last. But if we look uh on the kind of comments that all three groups made into the summer, particularly given their exposure to North Atlantic, which is which is significant, more more so for IEG, they were quite optimistic, again, not as we discussed on the premium side. I think all of them have seen worries in terms of uh uh the economic cabin traffic. And it's just perhaps worth us reflecting on how that might pan out now, because we know uh with uh I guess you'd say political sensitivities from the European side, uh, since we got the new uh administration of the US, you know, uh a little over a year ago, big differences between different European countries in terms of reduction in travel, softness of economic gab in travel. And we know, in some ways, it's a cliche that when there are sensitive uh security or conflict situations, the American tendency is to be reserved and not want to travel beyond borders. You know, I guess it's a bit of a murky crystal ball as we speak uh on what might happen in terms of summer travel on the North Atlantic.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think it is um unclear at the moment. I mean, I know um in general IAG had cited strong bookings into Q1, albeit with an earlier Easter, which does help. But um you know, the strength of the transatlantic market in recent years has been premium traffic, particularly from a US point of sale, which uh you know increasingly I would say the the US carriers are well positioned to capture, particularly when you combine that with the strength of their credit card programs. And the European travel and particularly the economy cabin, or sorry, European point of sale, particularly in the economy cabin, that has been weaker. Um so I imagine we'll continue to see more of a shift of revenue towards um the US carriers potentially on the transatlantic market.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's gonna be interesting to watch. Uh I mean another factor, of course, is uh uh as this conflict is underway, of course, we've seen the oil price spike and the European groups, especially Lutan, so are pretty well protected in terms of hedge position. And philosophically, you know, the US carriers tend not to hedge. So, how that dynamic is going to play out, whether the US carriers are gonna feel some pressure to put prices up, maybe they feel they could feel comfortable to do that, as you said, in the premium cabins. I'd I I would really be surprised if any airline would want to put up economy pricing, even into the thumb up peak, because they see weakness already. And if if we reflect on load factors in the last year, uh where they were reported, uh the European carriers all showed a little bit of a softening in uh transatlantic load factor because of the economy cabin.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think the hedge point is interesting um from what the European groups reported. They're mostly about 60% or so hedged for the uh the 2026 calendar year. As you say, the the US carriers tend to have a much lower forward hedge coverage. So potentially they are more exposed if the uh higher fuel prices do persist. So I think that'll be also uh interesting to watch how that plays out.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. And then if we turn linking these carriers to, you know, uh we can't ignore, as I said, that you know what's happening in the Gulf. We've seen uh uh an almost close down, albeit uh uh a reopening of some capacity by the Gulf carriers uh out of Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Doha. Uh we've seen other carriers from Europe cancelling services to many destinations uh in the region. And then the complexity where they are flying over the Gulf and to fly around increasingly narrow secure airways, either to the north of Iran or or south of uh uh the Gulf, over, for example, Saudi Arabia. So this again uh muddies the waters in terms of network planning. We're we we don't know how long, as we speak, the conflict may last, and let's hope it's over sooner than later, and some normality comes back, but we can't easily quantify human uh sentiment in situations like this. So, again, uh what might these European carriers do? You know, there's some opportunity for them versus for Gulf carriers at the moment. Markets like uh uh UK, Europe to Australia, for example, which in the past might have flown more typically direct on a BA or a Qantas service, uh they've cut capacity down from what they flew in the past, both with 747s going or downgrading, typically on some flights, 777 or even 787 capacity. Asian carriers are smaller players in these markets, they don't have 747s anymore, the cafes, the Malaysians, and the Singapore. Airlines. Might we see aircraft that have been displaced from the Gulf going to Asia? We've seen one or two ad hoc flights being added by carriers like Lothan. So do you think there might be a change in direction, or would they just stick even more onto the North Atlantic if it still remains to be buoyant?
SPEAKER_00I mean, I think it depends how long the conflict goes on for, as I see it. Hopefully it will come to a close soon. But even so, once it does, these are large hub operations in the Gulf. You can't just kind of turn them off and turn them on again from one day to the next. So at least in the short term, there probably will continue to be some temporary impact, which, at least on the eastbound services, is likely to support demand for the European long-haul airlines towards Asia. I mean, I think all three groups have relatively limited exposure to Asia nowadays. I mean, that market has really moved over the last 10-15 years to the Gulf carriers. I think IAG only operates 4-5% of its total capacity to Asia. Um so I expect there is going to be opportunity for all three groups to capitalise on the lack of supply in the Middle East. On the other hand, you know, it's also disrupted their own services into the Middle East. And uh yeah, I think it'll depend how long the conflict goes on for. But um yeah, hopefully it comes to a swift end and um yeah, the Gulf carriers can come back online as normal.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean at this moment I I've watched the whole genesis of Gulf Carrier developments. You know, uh I remember Ember's right since the beginning, you know, we had two planes, you know, and then I was a sceptic, but now I'm a believer. Uh I don't see this model as being broken. As you said, if we get through this uh conflict quickly, it will be pain to recover from and trust rebuilding. Uh I don't see the European carriers have got a lot of capacity to suddenly switch back to what they used to do, going east, yes, they can use uh displaced aircraft now, as you said. I mean, BA's probably got, I don't know, roughly five or six aircraft a day, but are not going to Dubai or Abu Dhabi and so on at the moment. But as you you and I would uh doubtless think it's it's a bit of a a tough task for network planners because opportunistically you could say, oh, we could do this, and then it could all be sorted out, and you uh dislocated something else that you would rather do. So you don't want to wait too long, but you don't want to jump too quick uh in a situation like this.
SPEAKER_00It's a challenging uh balancing act, I would say. We have seen some additional flights um added by carriers here and there, but it looks to be relatively ad hoc so far. I imagine probably the biggest impact at this point is that you know those last few seats which were available for sale on, you know, say a Frankfurt to Singapore flight, I'm sure those went for very high yields. But other than that, as you say, how to plan capacity from here on out is challenging. But I think um everyone's probably waiting to get more of a sense of is this a is this a two or three-week impact or is it a two or three month impact or longer than that?
SPEAKER_01Exactly. And just to turning away from the conflict for uh a moment, Garth. I mean, I think one other thing we should talk about in the context of the European carriers is they all have their own low-cost uh subsidiaries in the group. And they're pretty big. You know, you're not talking about a handful of planes, you know, we're talking in the hundreds, and even with fleet renewal, both with uh you know IEG in particular with uh Welling, uh, in a smaller way. I mean Iberia Express functions partially as a kind of low-cost carrier. Then of course you have uh Transavia versus Transavia France and uh Neverlands for FS KLM and Eurowings uh in uh Lufthansa Group. But the performance is very different on these. Now I suppose the idea of these, I would say maybe particularly that for um Lufthansa and France KLM was defensive, particularly against you know Ryanair's ever widening stretch around Europe. Uh I think less so in the case of uh IAG. But I think it's only uh it's fair to say it's only Welling that's really making decent money. You know, uh Eurowings is very modest. I think the figures just that we saw in the last year of Transavia was actually a loss. So big investment, but very different results, Garf. And you and you spent several years directly in a low-cost environment. What how do you look at that?
SPEAKER_00As you mentioned, I think Welling clearly leads the pack here with about a 12% operating margin, uh, Eurowings on 4%, and uh, as you said, uh uh Transavia slightly loss making on a minus 1% uh operating margin. I think Welling has a couple of strong advantages. Number one, it has its own very strong home market, Barcelona. Um you have a large population with relatively high spending power, you have strong inbound tourism, you have VFR traffic to from Barcelona, uh, you have business traffic, and you have the hub connections that they run over Barcelona to kind of fill in the gaps. So they have a very strong and well-diversified demand profile, I would say, in Barcelona, which is you know really their stronghold. And on top of that, they also have a strong cost structure, especially when you compare it to Transavia and Eurowings, even though Welling operates the shortest stage length of the three uh low-cost airlines, they actually have by quite some margin the lowest cost per ASK, which I think is impressive. And perhaps they retain more of kind of the original independent LCC DNA from the sort of Welling and ClickAir days. But I think they have managed to um, you know, despite being in a network carrier group, they have maintained a competitive cost structure. And I think if you look at the structure of the airlines within the IAG group, Welling is afforded a very strong market that is unique to Welling within the group, whereas Transavia, for example, shares the Paris market with Air France, it shares the Amsterdam market with Skippel. I imagine to an extent, you know, Transavia is operating the routes, which don't necessarily make sense for the mainline airlines. Um, so they're not always perhaps getting the creme de la creme in terms of the route network. And as we mentioned, I think Transavia has also been impacted by higher taxes, for example, in the Netherlands. And then if we look at Eurowings, okay, it was profitable, which is good, and you know, it did deliver a higher margin than Lufthansa mainline.
SPEAKER_01Uh but that's an interesting point, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00But it probably doesn't have quite the same strength of market as welling um or the same cost structure.
SPEAKER_01I think it's interesting what you said because it's absolutely the case that they've got that rock solid uh home market and they have the space uh to exploit it uh in the case of uh welling. But I think also uh when I look at those airlines or even dealings with those airlines over the years, uh I think it's quite right and very important what you say that uh welling has been given that degree of independence. It's been used, they've tested it out for a little time in Austria, they've kind of tried to be in Rome, they tried to be, I think, a little bit in Paris, I think maybe it's still there, but uh they've really focused on the core activity and delivered those uh low unit costs. I saw in the recent results of IEG, they talk about uh a couple of so years down the line as IEG starts to take delivery of their Boeing 737 Max, I think it's nine and ten aircraft uh into their fleet, uh, which are going to boiling, they see that as transformational again in the cost base. And interesting on that, we never always see as external observers what goes on in terms of allocation of fixed costs. But that 737 deal was, if you like, the last bequest of Woody Walsh to IEG. You know, uh at a time when Boeing was going through the mill in all the challenges they faced concerning with Max, he went to Paris Air Show and did a deal, which while you know I'm not primitive of details of, of course, uh I could imagine it was along the same lines as to what Ryanair has managed to uh extract uh in terms of probably being a really strong deal, which gives them a good fixed cost base. And I think returning in terms of the way the airlines work, as you said, uh the other two tend to be being used more as tools uh perhaps it's unfair to say puppet-like, but in some ways there's a bit of puppeting for the parent company. And we see right now um Transavia France is really using all the slots in Orley. Air France took that decision to move out completely, other than long haul, and I think one or two feeders, uh, and all the point-to-point stuff is operated now by uh Transavia, uh, and I think they probably miss other opportunities that they wish to exploit, and not necessarily in Paris. I mean they have bases in other parts of France, but they can't do as much as they want. Eurowings, well, originally it was not going to be in Frankfurt and Munich, and then it is in those airports. Uh you could say, in some ways, Lufthansa has succeeded in pushing Ryanair activity back. I mean, nobody really pushes Ryanair back, but you know, Ryanair has, for the reasons, as you said, about costs in Germany cut back. That doesn't mean they won't come back in again. But they've got kind of quite a clean sheet in Germany. So um that in itself is maybe a key strategy. Uh we've got a new CEO, Max Karnatsky, who's come from uh Sun Express, a widely experienced airline executive. Uh, I'm sure he'll be taking a look at his brief and what they do uh as a low-cost part of uh the cancer group. I think really uh we are about out of time for today, Garth, in our discussion. Um have we have we missed anything?
SPEAKER_00I think we've covered all the key points, I hope.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, what we'd like to know from you, the listeners, is what you think of our first podcast. We hope to have another one out to you in about a month's time. We hope you've enjoyed it, we hope you found it useful. And if there are any discussions you'd like us to have, uh, and we may reserve the right to have guests as well on future podcasts, let us know in your feedback to this one. So until the next uh Airline Insight Podcast, it's goodbye for me, John Strickland.
SPEAKER_00And for me, Girl Land.