User:Gunny01/Osprey Air

Osprey Air is a highly sucessful airline, founded in early 2006.

Business Model
Opsrey Air's unqiue offer was that it's fleet was fitted only with business and first class seats: at a fraction of the cost of regular business and first class seats. Typically, a business class seat on Osprey costs approximatly 1.1-1.4 the times of a typical economy seat, while its first class seats cost a similar amount to those of a typical business seat.

With the introduction of it's Executive Express service in 2007, Osprey began to offered three new classes: 'Executive Economy', 'Premium Economy' and 'Express Economy'.

Mainline
Mainline is the long and medium haul section of Osprey Air. The service opened in 2006 with thrice daily flights between Singapore, Frankfurt and Heathrow, as well as twice daily flights to Doha and Moscow, and flights between Singapore and Sydney and Adelaide. The service began with new Boeing 767-300ER's and Airbus A319-100's.

The service was expanded in 2007 with the introduction of three new aircraft: the Boeing 777-200LR and Airbus A340-500 for flights to North America. It was planned to purchase more A319's to cope with increased demand for flights, but the A319's where not avaliable in satasfactory time and quanitity for Osprey, so as a stopgap measure, Boeing 757-200's were purchased from United Airlines and fitted with new Rolls-Royce engines to fly A319 routes. The 757's proved popular with passengers and crew, so they where kept with the fleet. With many airlines selling 757s, Osprey has purchased them. Osprey's COO, stated that "By fitting 757s with the new engines, they are just as relaible and fuel efficent as a new aircraft rolling off the line. The 757 is especially suited to our larger-seat service."

Osprey had plans to aqquire a undisclosed number of A380's, but these plans have been shelved due to the problems with the delivery of the new superjet, and replace with more orders for 777s and A340s. The CFO said that, "The A380 has just not impressed us: we are not for the sardine stratergy of packing passengers into a airplane. We belive that the team of the A340, the 777 and the 747 on our economy routes is sufficent to compete against the A380."

In mid-2007, Osprey introduced new routes to Spain and Israel. Passengers can travel to both locations from Singapore, and to Spain from Heathrow and Israel from Frankfurt and Doha. Osprey Air is one of the few airlines that will fly to Israel form the Middle East and vice-versa.

Mainline Service
Service aboard Osprey Mainline is among the best in the world. Five seperate meals are offered to passengers, and even wider selection is available if passengers pre-book. Their is a similar amount of cabin staff to those on conventional flights, which means that the ratio of cabin crew to passengers is high. The in-built Linux-based entertainment systems is considered the best in its class.

Mainline Classes
Mainline offers two classes per flight: Club Class and Executive Club (on widebodies) or Premium Club (on narrowbodies)

Executive Club
Offered on all 767, 777 and A340 services, Executive Club is Osprey's first class product. It feature's Osprey's SkyRelax III 'passenger zone', which are 1.5x3m private areas, featuring a seat/bed which can recline 180 degrees, a desk/table for dining and laptops, a inbulit PC running a version of Linux, which enables users to surf the internet, watch the selection of inflight movies, create documents which can be saved on complementary USB keys.

Premium Club
Premium Club is avaliable only on mainline flights not offering Executive Club, which are all A319 and 757 services. Premium Club offers, SkyRelax II, a slightly smaller version of the service is offered to Executive Club. It offers separate seating, with a 1-1 setup on narrowbody flights.

Club Class
Club Class is the standard class on all Osprey Mainline flights: It offers a 2-2 setup on narrowbody flights and a 1-2-1 setup on widebody flights. The semiprivate seats offer the same Linux-based multimedia system of Executive Club. The seats recline to 180 degrees, similar to other airline's "Skybed" services.

Executive Express
Executive Express is the low-cost wing of Osprey air. The cost of the service is similar to that of other airlines economy fares, and the service on these flights is considered top-notch. It was founded in 2007, using Boeing 717's and MD11's to fly various routes.

flyDirect and point2point
flyDirect is Osprey's charter and group charter service. Using a fleet of modified A319's and A340-500's, these aircraft are able for charter service at extremely short notice. In addition, there are regular services conducted using flyDirect planes, called point2point. These specialize in flying in between major business centers. To achieve this, passengers, who are given large carry-on allowances, fly into nearby airports to their destination (Such as London Gatwick for London) and then arrange a helicopter flight or limo to their destination of choice.

Fleet

 * Executive Club is offered on most flights. Narrowbody aircraft feature Premuim Club.

Codeshares
Due to high demand for the Heathrow-Frankfurt route by passengers, Osprey entered a unique codeshare agreement with Lufthansa and British Airways for Frankfurt-Heathrow and Heathrow-Frankfurt routes. This agreement is schedualed to end in 2008 thanks to increased fleet sizes.

Osprey does conventially codeshare with the following airlines:


 * Aeroflot: Domestic Flights in Russia and the former Soviet Republics
 * British Airways: Domestic flights in the UK
 * El Al: Domestic flights in Israel
 * Lufthansa: Domestic Flights in Germany
 * Qantas: Domestic flights in Australia
 * Qatar Airways: Middle Eastern Destinations
 * United Airlines Domestic flights in the US