Airplanes

Today we visited Adria Airways, the regional airline for Slovenia. We were given a short presentation about the company and their partnerships. Adria is a member of Star Alliance, whose largest member is United Airlines. The majority of our visit focused on their maintenance operations. Adria flies Bombardier jets and does most of the servicing and maintenance checks in house. They also service jets for other airlines and have been recognized by Bombardier as their most reliable service provider. We were given a tour of their hangars where planes were being inspected and we were all interested to see planes that were partially deconstructed…some of us may now be reluctant to fly home.

After visiting Adria Airways we drove back to our hotel and had some free time for lunch and maybe a nap (my favorite activity). The group that I ate with went to a stand in the park called Hot Horse, which quite literally serves horse meat. We had horse burgers with nacho cheese on them and an assortment of other toppings. The burgers were actually very good, however you might not want to watch the highlights from the Preakness afterwards.

After lunch we visited Triglav, the largest insurance provider in the Western Balkans. They presented to us some of their financial information and business strategy, which includes shifting from a market share strategy, which has previously been their primary goal, to focusing on profit maximization. One interesting thing we learned about insurance companies here is that they repair cars in house instead of estimating the damage and sending your car to a garage. This is very different from what were used to in the states, but it adds a higher level of convenience.

We have the rest of the afternoon off to get dinner and explore the city some more.

Here’s Francis to tell you all about it.

Francis speaks!


Colin