Hi everyone,
As we ramp up our Winter 16 flying programme, I’d like to congratulate and thank you all for a great Summer 16 season.
As I touched on when I met with 
all the Airline Senior Leaders and Managers last week, we have had many challenges.
We experienced more air traffic control strikes than normal during the summer. 15 days, primarily in June, impacted by French ATC Strike Action, with Italian and Greek strikes impacting five other days. We also continued to encounter major challenges with current on board selling device (bluebird). But despite all this, during Summer 16 alone we’ve flown nearly 4 million customers, taking many of them to and from their summer holiday with Thomson and exceeded our CSQ targets for July and August. Plus during this time we also took delivery of our first 787-9. Thank you to all, it was a difficult summer.
As we move into the winter, we continue to work more collaboratively with our colleagues in the Nordic Region. We will once again be flying a long-haul programme from Scandinavia this winter on behalf of our Nordic Tour Operator. The operation starts in mid-December and ends in early April and is made up of three 787s, flying out of Stockholm, Helsinki and Copenhagen. We continue to enjoy operating with mixed pilots and crew on these flights which is great news for all involved and of course our Nordic customers love to hear their local language on these flights. I continue work with our Nordic team on more collaboration between Thomson Airways and TUIfly Nordic to ensure we deliver the best possible customer experience for our tour operators as efficiently as possible. As you know we have the benefit, between us, of using our aircraft in the peak winter season in the Nordic Region and peak summer season in the UK.
As you know, the Thomson EASA FTL scheme was introduced 12 months ago in November 2015. As part of the introduction of the new EASA FTL scheme, the management of fatigue requires both the Company and individuals to take more responsibility for fatigue and I take this responsibility extremely seriously. As part of our Safety Management System, I believe we have robust processes for managing both our safety and business risks. I am also really encouraged that all our people, especially our front line teams, also take fatigue extremely seriously. Therefore, I have asked Stuart Gruber (Director, Flight Operations) to take responsibility for fatigue for the airline board and lead a review of the work that has taken place so far and to look at options on how we move our business forward. I have also asked Stuart to lead a sub-group of UK airlines across the industry to better understand this subject. I will keep you updated on how this progresses.
As we prepare for our transition from Thomson to TUI, project teams across the business will be reviewing everything that needs to be changed, be that customer facing or internal. We’ll share more about the specifics for the airline over the coming months. One of the big changes is our aircraft livery, we saw the first of this rebranding in June when our brand new 787-9 G-TUIJ arrived from Boeing in the new TUI livery. There has now been six further aircraft repainted to reflect the TUI brand and over the coming year we’ll rebrand the rest of the fleet. This of course excludes GFDZG which is in the Family Life livery, one of our Group concepts.
We need to make sure we do is get things right for our colleagues. Below is a link to a very short survey which is one of the ways to understand how you see our brand and to help plan the right activities over the coming year. This will be revisited every now and then throughout the campaign to help keep track of where we are and to inform what we are doing. You can access the survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/RebrandtoTUI. We don’t expect you to know loads about the rebrand at the moment, all the work is in really early stages but please still fill in the survey. In the new year there will be much more information about the brand change so please keep your eyes open for new info.
Following the announcement of the proposal to establish an airline alliance in Central Europe in which TUIfly Germany will be fully integrated along with a number of aircraft from Air Berlin, negotiations are continuing with Air Berlin and its largest shareholder, Etihad, to establish this airline group which would provide capacity to the TUI Germany tour operator. Clearly this deal is complicated and discussions continue on the final proposed deal. The proposal will be presented to the Supervisory Board on 23rd November 2016 for their approval. I will keep you updated.
Last month I and other members of the board completed our fourth Airport Show and Tell of the year. This time to Glasgow where we met both our Thomson base teams 
and members of the Airport management. These visits gave us a great opportunity to meet people and to find out how each of our airports operate. We were also lucky enough to see some of our retiring pilots on their last trips. We are now planning our visits for next year which includes Nick Longman and I coming to Edinburgh and Glasgow in the Spring.
Next week, on Monday 21st November 2016, the airline has its annual chance to shine as we take centre stage in the monthly Townhall. This year we are focussing on Engineering and Maintenance and will be showing some great footage of work currently being carried out in Hangar 61. Please take the opportunity to either attend live in Wigmore or to view once the recording is placed on the company intranet and crew portal.
Finally, as most of you know, I am a keen sportsman, well I watch mostly, but I enjoy cycling and anything competitive. Well last week, at the Airline Senior Leaders & Managers event, at the end of our first day following focus on our new TUI values Trusted, Unique and Inspiring 
we were fortunate to be able to welcome double Olympic gold medallist Helen Glover who won gold at both London 2012 and Rio 2016. It was great for her to share her experiences with us, and I’ve got a new hero!
Here’s a photo of me with Helen.
Next month as we get into the festive season, I’ll record a webcast so that those of you not in Wigmore will be able to see how much we enter into the spirit.
In the meantime I hope you have enjoyed reading and found this update of interest.
John Murphy
MD, Thomson Airways
johnsairlineblog 