WeirdLinguist From United States of America, joined Jun 2009, 44 posts, RR: 0 Posted (3 years 9 months 2 weeks 3 days 6 hours ago) and read 1804 times:
Pan Am had multiple hubs on multiple continents (FRA/NRT/LHR). Northwest had hubs at AMS and NRT. Delta has multiple destinations out of Mumbai (although the routes will end in September and October. With more airline consolidation (lufthansa being the prime example) could we see something like a Pan Am in the future?
Note: Most of the information here is from wikipedia and other internet resources because I was 1 and a half when Pan Am filed for bankruptcy and have no first hand knowledge
Mutu From United Kingdom, joined Mar 2006, 504 posts, RR: 0 Reply 1, posted (3 years 9 months 2 weeks 3 days 5 hours ago) and read 1699 times:
Not without regulatory framework being stripped back. As with banks and hotel companies and pharma's and IT companies, there is really no reason in this day and age why aviation should be so restricted when it comes to mergers (and start ups).
It is however and would need a WTO type initiative to have all major countries scrap foreign ownership rules ( a bilateral pair agreeing would not necessarily work as third countries could theoretically restrict flying rights to a ,say german owned, United airlines flying LAX/NRT.
Whilst slowly such barriers are coming down (UK/SIN and UK/Canada recently announced) there is no evidence that this has opened doors for any form of airline merger
Of course valid competition concerns would still be an effective constraint on rampant consolidation but eventually it may well be the case that the alliances become the main aviation groups in a more legal way (AA seem to think this is the way the world is headed)
But keep in mind that all those PA flights (except the Internal German Service to/from West Berlin which was a special case) originated/terminated in the U.S. Many of them used smaller aircraft for the within Europe sectors but they were still technically continuations of flights to/from the US using through flight numbers. And they could only sell local traffic where 5th freedom rights existed. With those kinds of restrictions, schedules were often not very attractive for the local 5th freedom markets.
The same applies for all other U.S. carriers with hubs outside the U.S. (NW/UA at NRT etc.). Those flights are all 5th frreedom services continuing to/from the U.S. on through flight numbers (but often with a change of aircraft).
For a foreign carrier to operate stand-alone flights between two foreign countries, with no connection to the airline's home country, requires 7th freedom rights which are extremely rare, except for EU-based carriers within the EU and a couple of other similar "single market" situations. Several U.S. bilaterals with foreign countries permit 7th freedom rights for cargo services but not for passenger.
The only way a foreign airline can operate those types of services is to establish a subsidiary with majority ownership in the country where it wants to establish a new hub, like Malaysian low-cost carrier Air Asia has done in Thailand and Indonesia, and Singapore-based LCC Tiger Airways has done in Australlia. LAN is another example with their LAN Peru, LAN Argentina and LAN Ecuador subsidiaries. Also TACA and their various affiliates operating under the Grupo TACA banner.
DL767captain From United States of America, joined Mar 2007, 2539 posts, RR: 0 Reply 3, posted (3 years 9 months 2 weeks 3 days 5 hours ago) and read 1621 times:
I think the closest you will get to this is partnerships/alliances such as DL/NW with AF/KLM
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