Tianjin Sky

“It is an honor for me to be at this press conference, after a month of Tianjin Sky has started operations. We are here today to show a little presentation of the airline” stated Pedro Freitas, the CEO of the new china's airline, fully owned by Tianjin Investment Group (“TIG”), a Tianjin’s businessmen investment fund, which saw an opportunity in the airline market.

Why Tianjin ?

Tianjin is a key city in China, being in the top 5 of biggest cities in the world, the 3rd in China, with the highest per-capita GDP and one of the tops GDP’s anually grownth. The city is also known to their multicultural living-style, as it is an important trade area since the 19th century, being the entrance gate to some european countries, reflecting at old downtown with remainable european style buildings, such as churches and villas. By contrast, nowadays at district of  Binhai, due to the important role of Tianjin in business, the city has more than 200 companies’ headquarters in diversified market segments.

Airline Market

China's airline market has been affected as the biggest national airline crashed and left plenty of free slots on major airports and in a demonstration of the Chinese market power, after only one month, China has got 8 new airlines, which had a meteoric growth and quickly expand their fleet and participation on China’s major airports. It was in such context that Tianjin Sky has been founded, after a market research, that evaluate the availability of slots at airports, the importance of the airport and availability routes, with the final choice being Tianjin.

The Airline

Tianjin Sky has been founded to serve the city of Tianjin, and eventually some ground traffic from Beijing, through a spoke-hub system connecting Tianjin to another cities in China and later to the world. The airline main value is to provide to each passenger a comfort and quality flight, connecting them even to the smallest airport in China, to promote the cultural diversity and to fight against any kind of prejudice. The airline has a solid and planned administration, with determined goals for the short, medium and long term, which are:

• Establish an airline in Tianjin, owning at least 50% of market share at this airport and fly to all major airports in China.

• Renew the entire fleet with new narrow-bodies jets (to be determined), start medium-haul international flights and fly to over 100 airports in China

• Start long-haul international flights and dedicated cargo flights through China.

Logo Design

Tianjin Sky's logo, which consists of the company name in Chinese characters and the stars forming the aquarius constellation, was inspired by one of the stories for the origin of the city’s name, that it honors a former name of the Girl, a Chinese constellation recorded under the name Tianjin in the astronomical section of the Book of Sui,the official history book of the Sui Dynasty (A.D 581-618). The Girl mansion one of the mansions of Chinese constellations has an equivalent version in the european constellation, that is the Aquarius constellation, found in the airline's logo.

Fleet

The airline’s fleet is composed by 3 types of aircrafts (detailed below), with a cabin configuration , divided in 2 seats class, designed to give passengers more comfort through the flight. On-board service is also a concern for Tianjin Sky, as the airline offers full meals and a diversity options of entertainment on every flight.

The fleet list:

• 27 BAE 146-200 - The british regional jet with a range of 2000 km is the backbone of our fleet, as it can reach most of destinations in China.

• 12 Mcdonnell Douglas 82/83/87 - The american narrow-body appeared as an opportunity in the market and due to their capacity, fly over routes with high demand.

• 5 Boeing 737-300/400/700 - The other american narrow-body flies to longer destinations and high demand routes.

In one month of full operation, having 30% of market share in Tianjin with a SLF of 81%, transporting more than 300 k PAX and serving more than 50 airports, Tianjin Sky is proud to serve the Chinese nation and hopes to have a successful future.

After the presentation, the CEO answered some questions made by the press:

Q: How will the airline deal with the competitors ?

A: It’s obviously that we are aware of all the competitors in China and we want to take a significant piece of the market, but Tianjin Sky believes that a fair competition is the best strategy to deal with competitors and at the moment we are negotiating interlining agreements with anothers Chinese airlines, to reach some destinations that we are not flying.

Q: Does Tianjin Sky have plans to fly from other airports ?

A: Actually, we already have some flights from other airports, like Lanzhou and Harbin, but all of them are connected with our flights from these cities to Tianjin, so it is a leg from our spoke-hub system. We do have intention to fly some point-to-point flights, on routes with high demands, but now we are working on building our hub at Tianjin.

Q: About the last part of your previous answer. Does the low slots availability on China’s majors airports worries the airline ?

A: I would definitely be lying If I said that is not a thing to worry about but we are always with an eye on slots availability on major airports and evaluating profitable routes from theses airports.

Q: What are the nationally and internationally expansion plans for Tianjin Sky ?

A: Nowadays, we have flights from Tianjin to almost all major airports in China so, nationally, we have plans to expand our connections to medium and smaller airports, but there is not much else I can say about it. Talking about our international flights, we have some experiences going on South Korea and Japan, but not with expected results. Our next step is to look for some partners in Asia and Near East.

Q: On the presentation, the medium term goal is to renew the fleet. Does the company already know the manufacturer? Is there any negotiation going on?

A: No, we are not negotiation at the moment. We are currently evaluating the size of the fleet that we will need and some BAEs and MDs will arrive before we can ever think about renew the fleet.

Q: Could you not even tell which manufactures you bear in mind?

A: Well, we are looking for high-quality narrow-bodies, so it’s obviously that Boeing and Airbus are competing head to head. You may say that we did not mention Bombardier with the CSeries and Comac, but we want a diversity of aircrafts within the same maintenance category to fly routes with differents demands.

At the end of the press conference the PR of Tianjin Sky announces that a report of the business will be released each 2 months and any other relevant information will be announced as soon as possible.

This is a fantastic press release, well done! I would love to reward you for it. I would love to help grow your fleet and get you to 60 planes. I can offer you through Global Banking Corporation 4 MD82, 10 MD83 and 2 more modern MD90 at 10% of costs for the coming three months. Just contact me ingame and we will establish a time for me to put them up. Keep up these press releases!

This is a fantastic press release, well done! I would love to reward you for it. I would love to help grow your fleet and get you to 60 planes. I can offer you through Global Banking Corporation 4 MD82, 10 MD83 and 2 more modern MD90 at 10% of costs for the coming three months. Just contact me ingame and we will establish a time for me to put them up. Keep up these press releases!

Thanks for your words !!! I took a lot of inspiration from your topics and real life listed companies press release.

Tianjin’s Sky August 20 Announcement

As said before, any relevant matter that could impact Tianjin's Sky business will be reported. This week Tianjin Sky acquired 10 MD-82 with the cabin configuration similar as the others MDs on the airline fleet. This improvement on the fleet has occurred to raise the capacity on high demand routes that was flying with BAE 146-200 and to replace the Boeing 737 fleet, as a first step to renew the fleet.

The replacement of the BAE-146s results on new routes from Tianjin, Beijin Nanyuan, Guilin and Urumqi, all of them with connections to our HUB in Tianjin.

Lastly, to eliminate the rumors, Tianjin Sky is not looking to join an alliance, as the CEO said “It is not on our time [to join an alliance], we do believe on cooperation, but we have some priorities now that we could not even think of it. At the moment, we will prioritize strategic partnerships with others airlines/lessors.”.

Tianjin’s Sky September 14th Announcement

WE ARE 1 MILLION !!!

Tianjin Sky proudly announces that it has reached the milestone of 1 million passengers transported by our fleet in 2 months of operation. At a cocktail party hosted by company the CEO, Pedro Freitas, stated “We certainly have to celebrate this milestone, but that’s one small step for the company, it only shows that we are following the path that we had determined before”.

Following the cocktail party celebrating the milestone, as part of our monthly report, the airline announces new additions to their fleet, reschedule of operations outside Tianjin's Hub, changes in on-board service and prospecting of the new aircraft type, all of these 4 will be detailed below.

New aircrafts on our fleet

• As a part of our growth program, adding new routes to our Hub and focus city, we had adquire 2 MD 83 and 10 BAE 146-200, on our standard seat configuration that we already used on this aircrafts type.

Fleet list update:

• 40 BAE 146-200

• 24 Mcdonnell Douglas 82/83/87/88

Reschedule of Routes

• Being part of our business strategy, we are always looking for profitable and/or unserved routes, and as a part of that, we can not ran away from the trial and error. As a result, we closed the operations in Beijing Nanyuan and Guilin and increased our operations in Lanzhou, Urumqi and Harbin.

Changes in on-board service

• Due to the following rises of fuel prices, we had made some changes on our economy on-board service. It is important to say that we do not lower the quality, we only made some adjusts on the preparation resulting on a saving of 20%.

New aircraft type

• As part of our medium term goal, we are evaluating a new and modern aircraft to be the backbone of our fleet. Currently, we are testing a 6 years Airbus A321-200 Standard on our route to Beijing (PEK). We do not have a final decision on the Airbus family, we are on a Airbus x Boeing comparison, but recently we are looking with good eyes for the Bombardier’s C-Series as we are concerned with the cargo flight related costs.

Tianjin Sky Monthly Report - October 2017

It’s been a month ago since our last report and we have some big announcements for this month, said the Tianjin Sky’s PR at the opening of the monthly press conference.

As part of our monthly report, Tianjin Sky announces some goals achievements, the opening of a secondary Hub, new international destinations, new wave times, additions to the fleet and the the final decision on the renewal of the fleet.

Goals achievements

On the airline business plan we set some short and medium term goals, which are “Establish an airline in Tianjin, owning at least 50% of market share at this airport and fly to all major airports in China.” and “Renew the entire fleet with new narrow-bodies jets (to be determined), start medium-haul international flights and fly to over 100 airports in China”.

After just 3 months of operations, we can proudly say that Tianjin Sky completed all the short term goals and are on the path to complete the medium term goals.

As we can not miss this opportunity, Tianjin Sky in the last month reached the milestone of 2 million of transported passengers.

Secondary Hub

As Tianjin Sky grows the company aims new markets and through our market research we found that it could be profitable to fly to some destinations in the southeastern asia but, with Tianjin Sky Hub in Tianjin and with the current fleet we do not have the range to fly directly to these destinations and then we start to think to solve this problem.

As we have a qualified team, we found the answer quickly “Why not start another Hub in south China?” and just after a few days we found Haikou Airport on the Hainan island as the perfect airport to be our secondary hub. There is a lot of pros on this airport, is one of the southernmost airports in China, less than 1000 km away of some of our international destinations, good amount of available slots and finally less than 2,200 km from Tianjin.

Our operation in Haikou does not only have flights to international destinations but also to major airports in south and central China as our passengers does not have to fly to Tianjin if they want to go to one of these airports.

International destinations

As mentioned before with the opening of our secondary hub in Haikou we started our operations to Hanoi and Da Nang in Vietnam, Bangkok and Phuket in Thailand and finally we are currently evaluating for 2 weeks a flight to Jakarta in Indonesia. It’s important to say that we did not change any cabin or on-board configuration of our aircrafts using the same that we fly over China domestic destinations.

New wave times

At our Tianjin Hub we already had 3 waves time that connects almost all of our destinations to each other but in order to give to our passengers more options of connections to our flights and also to our partners flights we have added 3 more waves time.

Additions to the fleet

As mentioned before, with the secondary Hub in Haikou and with the addition to new waves time in our Hub in Tianjin, we had a great addition of aircrafts to our fleet, it was more than 50 used aircrafts!. You can find below the current fleet list, with the same seat configuration and on-board service that we already used.

           Fleet list update:

• 47 BAE 146-200/300

• 63  Mcdonnell Douglas 82/83/87/88

All the aircrafts are used, on average with more than 25 years, and was acquired by a leasing contract from Aircraft Trade and Leasing Organization.

Renewal of the fleet

As part of our mid-term goal, we had to choose a new modern narrow-body jet to be the backbone of our fleet and after a month evaluating the Airbus A320 family we came to a decision.

In a meeting on October 2nd in Toulouse, Tianjin Sky had taken the final decision and choose the Airbus A320 family as the future backbone of the airline’s fleet. “We were impressed with the variety of aircrafts sizes and range within the same aircraft family” said the Commercial VP at the end of the meeting.

Tianjin Sky have plans to utilize the A319, A320 and A321 variants on domestic and some international routes on a 2 class seat configuration with even more comfort than our current seats. At the moment, we have already flying 6 of the Airbus family, 1 A319, 3 A320 and 2 A321 on some routes from Tianjin and Haikou.

We expect to make a slow renew of our fleet and new MDs and BAEs additions to our fleet may still occur. Another important information is that we expect to acquire only a few new aircrafts, being a good part of the Airbus fleet from used aircrafts. “We heard from Airbus that with the A320neo a lot of A320s are returning to the lessors and we are aiming these returned aircrafts” said the the Commercial VP.

We could say that we are currently looking for a lessor to negotiate a leasing of A320s.

I have already returned my last a320ceo some time ago but I’m in the process to return 150 A321CEOs right now. Many are leased from Tao Aviation Services who I presume is more than happy to lease them to you. Otherwise you will see A321Es popping up on the market as I plan by the end of the year to have most of them returned. I really like the plan to use semi new second hand planes as it is exactly what I did. But with the rise in fuel prices I need the latest which means that these almost new planes need to leave.

I have already returned my last a320ceo some time ago but I'm in the process to return 150 A321CEOs right now. Many are leased from Tao Aviation Services who I presume is more than happy to lease them to you. Otherwise you will see A321Es popping up on the market as I plan by the end of the year to have most of them returned. I really like the plan to use semi new second hand planes as it is exactly what I did. But with the rise in fuel prices I need the latest which means that these almost new planes need to leave.

Thank you for this advice. Tianjin Sky will definitely look to Tao Aviation Services for their leasing services.

There are a couple of key points on the plan to lease second hand aircrafts and the returned aircrafts are certainly one of these. The leasing depot and leasing rate is another point, as Tianjin Sky can not afford a renew with brand new aircrafts (CEOs or NEOs) and by our analysis less than 10 year used A320s is on average 20-30% cheaper, the airline can lease more aircrafts.This is important for the airline on a competitive market like China, as we understand that we need to expand quickly.

I would also recommend Tao Aviation Services for leasing services, they have provided countless cheap leasing deals for Turkey National Airways' main aircraft of choice, the Boeing 737. 

Tianjin Sky Monthly Report - November 2017

As the previous months, at the Tianjin Sky’s auditorium, the Tianjin Sky’s PR and Investor Relations department releases the monthly report followed by a coffee break.

The subjects of this monthly report are: (i) New international destinations; (ii) Additions to the fleet/Renewal of the fleet and (iii) Point-to-Point flights.

I. New international destinations

Whereas the airline keeps growing following our business plan on one step at a time, and, furthermore the new additions to the fleet and the growing rates of the AGEX it was decided at a board meeting held in early November that it’s time to expand our flights to international destinations.

Although Tianjin Sky already have some international destinations, like Bangkok (Thailand) and Jeju (South Korea), we are aware of the existing demand from our passengers to fly to another countries within the quality of Tianjin Sky’s service and thanks to this we are currently prospecting new international destinations from our Tianjin Hub and regional hubs like Urumqi, Haikou and our newest addition Fuzhou.

At the moment, the current plan is to connect Tianjin to the world through our regional hubs, as explained below:

• Urumqi (URC): We consider that we have a good market share at this airport connecting the remote region of Xinjiang to the rest of China. Being the westernmost airport in which we operate, we are evaluating the airport as a connecting point to Near East and Europe. At the moment, we are successfully flying to Dubai (DXB) and Almaty (ALA).

• Haikou (HAK): Is the southernmost airport which we operate and for that reason we consider this airport as a connecting point to South Asia and Oceania.

• Fuzhou (FOC): It’s our newest addition on our focus cities and we are currently investing in the growth of our operations at this airport. We consider that it would be possible to fly to South Asia, Oceania and even North America from this airport.

II. Additions to the fleet/Renewal of the fleet

As mentioned on previous monthly reports, we are slowly renewal the airline's fleet, replacing the old BAEs and MDs to the A320CEO family, which includes the A319/A320/A321 models, and at the time of this monthly report we already have 53 A320s on our fleet. Under these circumstances we could not see a reason to have 3 different maintenance types of aircraft on our fleet, so on the last month in a further effort, we start a massive replace of our BAE 146s aircrafts, with the last 7 aircrafts returning to their lessor on the next week.

This decision frees up space in our fleet to an additional aircraft type, which will conveniently be used on our future international flights. We are currently evaluating the best wide-body that fits on our needs of range, fuel efficiency, cost per seat and leasing cost. At least, to clarify any further question, we do also intend to fly to international destinations with the A320 family, as some models of the aircraft could fly over than 6000km.

As we are used to do, our fleet list update are reported below:

               Fleet list update:

• 4 BAE 146-200/300 (to be returned on next week)

• 105  Mcdonnell Douglas 81/82/83/87/88

• 53 Airbus A319/A320/A321 (all of them CEO)

III. Point-to-Point flights

Following others Chinese airlines, Tianjin Sky started on the last month direct flights connecting major chinese airports and routes with high demand. This decision, however, will not affect our core Hub operation system as we do not intend to fully operate point-to-point flights.

Tianjin Sky Monthly Report - December 2017

“It was a great semester for Tianjin Sky, we didn’t expect this growth in a semester” stated the CEO, Pedro Freitas, at the opening of airline’s Christmas Party. “We were aware of all the difficulties of starting an airline in a country that was already taken by other giant companies, but we made it. Now Tianjin Sky is an stable airline with an EBT of over 30% and a high SLF of over 90%. We have also reached all the short-term goals and partially of the medium-term goals.” said the CEO.

After the opening speech, the Public Relations VP presented to overlook some points of the Tianjin Sky annual report and some goals and thoughts for the next year. The subjects of the presentation are: (I) Fleet Update; (II) International Flights; (III) Additional flights in our Hub; (IV) Mentoring / Partnership

(I) Fleet Update

As usual, we update our fleet list and make some additional comments about our fleet. The previous month was marked by the retirement from our fleet of the BAE 146, the first aircraft that Tianjin Sky’s flight, we are very grateful for this aircraft but the time has come and we needed bigger and newer aircrafts.

Following our renewal program, we have added 39 A320 family aircraft to our fleet and for the first time we have returned 2 Mcdonnell Douglas 81/82/83/87/88.

We also had an unsuccessful test with 2 different wide-bodies on high-demand routes leading us to stop our evaluation for a wide-body aircraft to the fleet.

(II) International Flights

Due to a low loading on our international flights we are going to terminate on early January all international flights, with exception of Hong Kong, Macao, Singapore, Tehran and Dubai.

We do not expect any new international destination until a completely new business plan is made.

(III) Additional flights in our Hub

We have added new flights from / to our current destinations at our Hub in Tianjin in order to offer all possible connections on our 6 wave-times through the day.

(IV) Mentoring / Partnership

The CEO of Tianjin Sky asked to the Board of Tianjin Investment Group if he could look for a mentor / partner airline and disclosure confidential information in order to receive a feedback, thoughts and advices on how to manage the airline and continue to expand. In a letter received by the Board of TIG on last week, the main reasons for this request listed by the CEO are the lack of experience in managing such a big airline, the difficulties on a market dominated by other 7 big airlines and to fly international flights.

On last monday, in a extraordinary TIG's Board meeting, the board members accepted the request made by the Tianjin Sky's CEO and started to look for a mentor to the CEO. The Board also reminds that are open to receive feedback, thoughts or advice from anyone who feels comfortable to do it.

Major news regarding Tianjin Sky are soon on their way... Keep tuned!

Major news regarding Tianjin Sky are soon on their way... Keep tuned!

Probably the longest cliff-hanger in AS history  :P

The wait is over, Tianjin Sky is finally part of the Global Group! We are very proud to be part of this world wide leading airline group! Together we fly over 5 million passengers per week. Tianjin is a joint venture together with Tao Aviation services we are able to be your best Chinese airline. For the moment being the future is fairly unsure as complete Global Group integration would be both costly and timely thereby Tianjin Sky will keep being Tianjin Sky. We have just signed an order for 100 brand new Tianjin built A320NEOs and we have purchased all our MD80s which slowly will be retired if possible and leased out. We are also planning a long haul expansion with a globe spanning network. The 20,000 staff will be integrated into the Global Group and learn Global principles. In the coming year they will all be trained in Jakarta, Singapore and Surabaya.

A plan has finally been established for the future of Tianjin Sky! The CEO is fairly confident of a complete retirement of all MD80s within the next 6 months. For the time being all leased MD80s have been returned and some of the owned ones are starting to be offered for lease. We will be a great leasing provider and we hope to offer our great planes all around the world. In the time being the MD80s are being slowly retired by A320s. We have also replaced all CS100s with A319s in order to remove a maintenance category thereby freeing up for the future. We have also choose to expand at Tianjin and opening a new base at Kunming. We hope to better our service and improve our world wide reach!

A troubling news just reached Tianjin Sky. The CEO Mr. Christian Pålsson decided to cut staff wages by 1 million dollars per week meaning that each member of staff will get on average 50 dollars less per week. To further mark his harsh rule on the company he had to sadly terminate employment of 500 CSeries pilots as the plane type is exiting the fleet. As the employees are revolting he said in a statement

"Tianjin Sky has been paying way to high salaries for way too long. In order to stay competitive and match the salaries of other Global Group carriers we need to cut the absurd Tianjin Sky salaries. It would be unfair to pay this much at Tianjin Sky while Indo, CBE and American employees receive less. For the Cseries pilots there was nothing to do. we could not have kept them around doing nothing thereby their employment had to be terminated as their job was unnecessary. It is against Global principles to terminate staff but in this specific situation we had nothing to do. In anticipation of a massive strike we have called in 10,000 Indo Employees to cover. Just as Baroness Thatcher did when the miners striked, we will do nothing. If our staff strike they need to know that any member of staff is always welcome to leave at any time, although you wont find better working conditions anywhere else than at Global."

We took the Golden opportunity to introduce a brand new Staff Uniform to mark a new era for Tianjin Sky reflecting the Chinese spirit. This beautiful uniform embodies Chinas class but also give a contemporary view of the new and growing China.

Tianjin has finally started it's Global Integration. Finally Global Plus and Global Ecstasy have been installed on all flights! This is together with new Global created Service profiles and the new staff training and uniforms. The 20 million dollar transformation has finally put Tianjin Sky on track to be integrated with the rest of the Global Group creating a seamlessly assimilated experience for the whole group. Although sounding great not everything about this modernisation has been positive. All prices have gone up in up to match other Global prices and further increase profits for the Global Group. Tianjin is further getting assimilated into the complex Global Group with complete staff transferability achieved this week meaning that Tianjin Sky is connected to the See the World Program (SWP). The SWP means that staff can be transferred between Global companies with only two weeks local training meaning that our staff can discover the world. Each staff member has one SWP opportunity per year (meaning that staff can transfer every year to a different company). The SWP is one of the many reasons why 100,000 happy staff work for us!