He started his journalism career in 1992 as a freelance writer for Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Germany’s largest daily national newspaper and soon specialised in air transport. Jens joined Aviation Week and Aviation Daily in 2000 as one of the European correspondents. Later his role was expanded to cover international air transport. In 2013 he was named Managing Editor Commercial.
Jens frequently appears on radio and TV to comment on industry matters. In 2003, he received the Hugo Junkers Award of the German aviation press for his coverage of Fairchild Dornier’s bankruptcy. He was named the country’s top travel and air transport writer by the Travel Industry Club three times. Jens graduated from the Munich School of Journalism.
New German low-fare airline Germania Express plans to expand its fleet rapidly in the next two years with more used Fokker F100s, posing a significant threat to growth opportunities of other emerging low-fare carriers.
Austrian Airlines is under increased pressure to significantly reduce its operating costs after posting a sizable pre-tax loss of EUR28.6 million (US$31.6 million) on sales of EUR941.3 million (US$1 billion) in the first half of 2003. The results are a far cry from the modest EUR4.3 million profit on sales of EUR1.03 billion recorded in the same period last year. Revenue passenger miles were up 1.9%, but because of drastically reduced average yields, sales fell 8.7%. Capacity rose 5.9%, while load factor dropped to 66% from 68.6%.
Traffic for members of the Association of European Airlines (AEA) in June was down 0.5% over last year. According to AEA, the decline came almost entirely from the Asia-Pacific, where demand was down 21.5%. By contrast, intra-European and North Atlantic market demand was up 1.9% and 6.3%, respectively. AEA said that "figures reflect the beginning of a diminution in the catastrophic traffic losses on Far Eastern routes provoked by the reaction to SARS, and a recovery in other regions from the lingering effects of the Iraq war." -JF
