German multinational travel and tourism company TUI Group has announced it will rebrand five of its airline subsidiaries under the single "TUI" master brand. As such the Arke Fly (Amsterdam Schiphol), Jetairfly (Brussels National), Thomson Airways (London Luton), TUI fly (Germany) (X3, Hannover), and TUI fly Nordic (6B, Stockholm Arlanda) brands will disappear. TUI's other subsidiary, Corsair International (SS, Paris Orly), has been excluded from the project.
In its Capital Markets Day prospectus, the group said that while the five carriers - based in the Netherlands, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Sweden - will continue to operate under separate Air Operator Certificates (AOC), they will be consolidated into one "central organization" employing a singular "engineering and maintenance function.”
“A strong one-brand policy will make it considerably easier to use the aircraft of the European fleet and the crews across the individual countries, as demand requires it. The resulting increase in the effectiveness of TUI airlines is to enable TUI to deliver operational efficiency improvements worth EUR50 million (USD55 million) per annum by 2018,” it said.
According to the firm, the transition to TUI will begin with Jetairfly and Arkefly in the initial phase followed by TUIfly Nordic and Thomson in the second.
The new model will result in enhanced cost efficiencies by allowing for the full interoperability of fleet and crew across the five carriers. This will have the added bonus of facilitating common fleet deployment, joint long-haul planning to optimise utilisation, and a common capacity planning process. A single, uniform “IT landscape” serving all five AOCs will also further enhance carrier integration.
The overall size of "TUI" will also offer greater economies of scale in terms of purchases while an homogeneous structure will ensure a common “supply chain & process”.
In total, TUI will operate a total fleet of 140 aircraft including three E190s, twelve B737-700s, eighty-nine B737-800s, fourteen B757-200s, eight B767-300(ER)s, and fourteen B787-8s.
In addition, TUI Group has also finalized an order with Boeing (BOE, Washington National) for one B787-9 with an option for another of the type. The order is valued at USD257 million at current list prices.
TUI Group also announced that it will substitute two unfilled orders for B787-8s for two B787-9s.
