Airmale From Botswana, joined Sep 2004, 368 posts, RR: 2 Posted (9 years 11 months 2 weeks 1 day 20 hours ago) and read 1685 times:
What are the disadvantages if any of a nonstop service for an airline, for example in the early 90's Philippine Airlines were flying a 742 on the Manila-Bangkok-Karachi-Frankfurt-London Gatwick route, so they were getting passengers for each onward destination filling up the plane, then they went nonstop around the mid 90's with the A340-300 to London Heathrow, what if there are only a 100 people flying Manila-LHR, arent the rest of the seats going to waste? loss for the airline? what do they do? quit the market or look for one or two feasible enroute stops? or do the stick to the non-stop 'Trend'? this is a hypothetical query using PR and not related to their actual situation.
American 767 From United States of America, joined May 1999, 3321 posts, RR: 14 Reply 2, posted (9 years 11 months 2 weeks 1 day 20 hours ago) and read 1635 times:
It depends if on the onward leg there is a sufficient load factor for the route to be profitable.
KLM flies Amsterdam-Johannesburg-Cape Town, they will add a nonstop Amsterdam-Cape Town flight because after pursuing marketing studies they figure the route all the way to Cape Town can be profitable, in other words a lot of passengers on that flight don't finish their trip in Johannesburg, they continue further down to Cape Town.
Lufthansa, on the other hand, flew at one time Frankfurt-Cape Town nonstop but the route turned out not to be profitable, so they dropped the nonstop flight. Now they just fly Frankfurt-Johannesburg-Cape Town, the route is profitable at least from Frankfurt to Johannesburg and back, it must be that they have a poor load factor between Cape Town and Johannesburg.
Ben Soriano
"Aimer jusqu'a l'impossible, c'est possible". Tina Arena.
CPH-R From Denmark, joined May 2001, 5745 posts, RR: 4 Reply 4, posted (9 years 11 months 2 weeks 1 day 20 hours ago) and read 1619 times:
In the CPT-JNB situation, a lot of airlines don't have the daily flight from either city to Europe, so the aircraft is sitting idle on the ground for around 12 hours (or more). If the route can earn a bit of money, flying the CPT-JNB route and it's not going to cost the airline any money, it doesn't make sense not flying the route.
Luv2fly From United States of America, joined May 2003, 11957 posts, RR: 51 Reply 5, posted (9 years 11 months 2 weeks 1 day 20 hours ago) and read 1603 times:
Also another consideration with each and every stop you make is another chance for something to go wrong! Delays, gates not being available, catering at each stop, crews needing to be replaced, Also with each stops add to flying time, so from a pax point of view the flights with stops would have to be priced below the non stop if offered.
Delta-flyer From United States of America, joined Jul 2001, 2676 posts, RR: 7 Reply 6, posted (9 years 11 months 2 weeks 1 day 20 hours ago) and read 1581 times:
Interesting question, Airmale. When airlines first started, they followed the railroad model, that is, origin to destination with a number of stops in-between. That worked fine as long as low load factors remained profitable and traffic also remained low. This model worked in many of the markets in the US through deregulation, and internationally beyond then, as per your example.
But deregulation in the US resulted in price cuts that made low load factors unprofitable, and the increase in traffic due to lower ticket prices allowed non-stops to more destinations. Similarly in international markets, more liberal multi-lateral agreements increased competition, reducing prices, and thereby inreased traffic to where more non-stops were profitable. Add to that smaller, efficient long-range jets, such as the 767ER and to some extent the A320 and 737NG families, allow for lots of non-stop capability over fairly long distances with high load factors.
My prediction is that in the future, more and more non-stops will replace one/two stop flights.
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