Fully Fledged: Clickair Enjoys Early Success

Spanish low-fare airline clickair has enjoyed considerable success in its first 16 months of operations, and expects to be carrying 10 million passengers a year by the end of 2008. Credit: Berthold Riede

In the cut-throat world of low-cost carriers (LCCs) where short-lived start-ups can sometimes seem two a penny, clickair has good reason to celebrate the end of a successful first year.

Since its launch in October 2006, the carrier’s fleet has grown from three to 22 Airbus A320s operating on 51 routes, and it was even presented with a 2007 industry award for ‘best newcomer,’ reports Routes News.

The brainchild of Spanish flag carrier, Iberia, and initially launched with euros120 million ($178 million) behind it -- making it one of the best financed start-ups in Europe -- clickair may have come from a privileged background. But it is more than a solid financial start that has seen the Barcelona-based LCC succeed where so many other fledgling low-cost carriers have failed.

“In order to come up with a strong low-cost model, we spent a lot of time looking at all the airline babies that have been conceived by larger airlines over recent years, and we realized that many of them had not advanced very far, or had failed completely,” admitted clickair CEO, Alex Cruz. “So last year, our goal was to establish our product in the market, building up the foundations for a good network.”

As a basic building block for this foundation, maintaining low costs across all of its operations has been the key priority for clickair.

“Keeping our costs as low as possible has been an important part of our strategy, and we are now the cheapest or second cheapest airline for flights to a number of major airports in Europe, which is something we are very proud about,” Cruz enthused. “It has been quite difficult, and it will be hard to maintain, but we know that we must stick to a strict low-cost structure in order to succeed in the long-term.”

Quality service at a low price

Something that makes clickair stand apart from its competitors is its dedication to giving passengers the highest possible quality of service on a low pricing structure. This is an area where its connections with Iberia have proved invaluable, allowing it to offer travelers extra perks like access to airport lounges ; business fares with semi-flexible terms attached; the option to book flights through travel agents rather than only selling online; and the opportunity for passengers to earn oneworld points on clickair flights through Iberia’s alliance membership.

Said Cruz: “In return for offering some of the most competitive prices on the market, we obviously can’t deliver a legacy service – we are dedicated to making sure this airline lasts for a long time and becomes profitable quickly, so we can’t just bolt on lots of extraneous services.

"Having said that, we do believe that the key to our success is continuing to grow our passenger services, as long as we can continue to do so without increasing the end cost to our customers. There is definitely scope here to create an unusual and attractive low-cost product, and while it can’t be done overnight, we’ve managed to achieve so much in our first year that I see great things ahead for 2008.”

Its model certainly seems to be working. Having comfortably met its target to carry 4.5 million passengers during the first year of operation, clickair now commands the largest individual share of traffic (14 percent) at Barcelona’s El Prat Airport, connecting the gateway with the highest number of international destinations of all the carriers that operate there.

Having successfully launched 22 routes not previously flown by investor Iberia, the carrier now looks well on track to hit the 10-million-passenger mark by year-end 2008, with the aim to be flying up to 70 routes by that time.

“Our objective has been to create a very attractive product for those traveling from the Barcelona area,” commented Cruz. “Going into 2008, we want to refine our network, expand frequencies according to passenger demand and perhaps enter some new markets.”

In general, travelers accept the fact that paying lower fares often means traveling to a secondary gateway that, in some cases, can be up to 100 kilometers away from its namesake city. But another major advantage that clickair has over many rival low-cost carriers is its connections to primary European airports, with Iberia even having handed over highly coveted slots at London’s Heathrow last February.

Heathrow success

While a newly launched LCC and one of Europe’s busiest hubs may not seem like the most obvious partnership, it has proved extremely successful so far, according to Cruz.

“At the beginning, I was concerned about Heathrow – especially with regards to operating costs,” he admitted. “But the costs there are not particularly high compared with some other airports we fly to, for instance, in Morocco or Italy. The core of our London service goes through Gatwick, and our on-time performance at both Heathrow and Gatwick are among our best.

"Our London routes are very profitable, and we see opportunities to expand on them in the future. With the pressure of US carriers clambering to get slots at Heathrow, we know Iberia may eventually chose to sell them off. If this happens, there would definitely be room to develop our operations at Gatwick further, but we certainly see no reason to leave Heathrow for the time being.”

However, high-frequency domestic Spanish routes are the busiest for clickair, connecting Barcelona with key gateways such as Malaga, Seville, Bilbao and Palma de Majorca.

Spain’s outbound market still forms the bulk of its route portfolio, and Cruz admits to toying with the idea of launching flights to Madrid. It is the only major Spanish airport not currently served by the airline and Cruz believes he may consider it at some point in the future, “perhaps after easyJet , Spanair and Iberia have battled it out over there.”

International expansion plans

But in terms of expanding clickair’s international route network over the next year or so, Cruz has his eye fixed on very specific markets, with Italy and Eastern Europe at the top of his wish list.

“We are really excited about Eastern Europe,” he confirmed. “Last summer, we decided to launch a number of routes not traditionally flown by Spanish airlines to places like Bucharest, Prague, Budapest and Warsaw, and they have proved tremendously popular. We will definitely be increasing frequency to these destinations in the future and are now beginning to look at new potential destinations in places like Romania and Poland.”

Meanwhile, clickair also currently serves six Italian destinations with about 15 flights a day and Cruz says he plans to increase services to Italy from Barcelona, Seville and Valencia over the next year.

“There is huge growth potential in Italy, and we will expect a small amount of growth elsewhere in the mainland European market next year as well,” he added.

But could the ambitious airline’s plans include flying to further horizons, what with a growing industry interest in long-haul low-cost service?

“I wouldn’t be surprised if, maybe three or four years down the line, we might consider this option. We’re already operating on medium-haul routes like Moscow and Helsinki, and we hope to start serving Cairo and Tel Aviv in 2008, plus we know that our aircraft would comfortably make the trip to Dubai from Barcelona, but we’ll not be looking seriously at anything over six hours for the next couple of years at least,” said Cruz. “We feel that we need to build a strong and significant short-haul network before we could really consider taking that step further and going long-haul.”

Whatever the coming year may bring for clickair as it continues to spread its wings, it’s clear that nobody puts this airline baby in a corner.

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