Virgin Atlantic has recovered a little thanks to the participation with Delta Airlines have increased their services to North America, in addition to DL has several JV with other airlines that could be new markets for VS, with the Alliance with WestJet VS has the opportunity to rotate to Canada to destinations like Toronto (YYZ) and Vancouver (YVR), with sister Virgin Australia (VA) could venture on the LHR-PER route to Qantas has done quite well this route, between VS and VA could work on shared code and manage many connections from LHR to BNE, SYD and MEL via PER, other destinations could be Mexico City (MEX) where it has Aeromexico (AM), Seoul (ICN) that has Korean Air (KE) and even increase its frequencies to Shanghai (PVG) where is the largest hub of China Eastern (MU)

On the part of Alitalia, Delta (DL) will do the same strategy with VS more expansion to North America, where it could add new routes such as Atlanta (ATL) and Seattle (SEA) or grow in strong Delta Hubs where it already flies like Los Angeles (LAX ), New York (JFK), and Boston (BOS), also expand in high demand markets such as San Francisco (SFO)

Alitalia is going to be a sick airline until labor costs are dealt with, very difficult in today's Italian political climate. Alitalia needs to merge into a larger European airline group, but does anyone want them ?

Seasonal add to MSP

Antoli0794 wrote:

Seasonal add to MSP

Source?

sonicruiser wrote:

Antoli0794 wrote:

Seasonal add to MSP

Source?

Sorry I meant to say they should add Seasonal MSP if the are expanding

Mex is already served by AM. It would be an overkill.

Surprised they haven’t gone back to Brazil though

santi319 wrote:

Mex is already served by AM. It would be an overkill. Surprised they haven’t gone back to Brazil though

AZ does fly to Brazil; daily to GIG, twice-daily to GRU (at least during this season).

Italy is not London. Alitalia will in no way expand in any significant way it's North American coverage. Just New York, Miami and Los Angeles cover half of U.S.-Italy demand. Maybe San Francisco and Montreal. That's all that's really left for it.

I could definitely see AZ serving ATL, MSP and maybe DTW seasonally.

Ages ago AZ was to announce IAH service and regretfully it never happened -- they they hooked up with Skyteam.

Who is flying between the US and secondary Italian cities this summer? Perhaps AZ can do something like VCE-JFK/ATL is no one else is doing it.

Seasonal MSP-FCO on DL was a flop just a few years ago; I’m not sure why a carrier with higher costs would work now. As MAH4546 said, demand is highly concentrated and the pickings in the US are slim.

braniff2hav wrote:

I could definitely see AZ serving ATL, MSP and maybe DTW seasonally.

Ages ago AZ was to announce IAH service and regretfully it never happened -- they they hooked up with Skyteam.

Is there high yielding traffic for a non-stop, even seasonally? For ATL/MSP/DTW, you have to overfly multiple SkyTeam hubs that make for easy and multiple 1-stop options. This leisure route is going to make it hard to fill with high enough paying traffic.

MAH4546 wrote:

Italy is not London. Alitalia will in no way expand in any significant way it's North American coverage. Just New York, Miami and Los Angeles cover half of U.S.-Italy demand. Maybe San Francisco and Montreal. That's all that's really left for it.

What about Chicago?

caliboy93 wrote:

MAH4546 wrote:

Italy is not London. Alitalia will in no way expand in any significant way it's North American coverage. Just New York, Miami and Los Angeles cover half of U.S.-Italy demand. Maybe San Francisco and Montreal. That's all that's really left for it.

What about Chicago?

Alitalia flies there already.

In terms of Virgin, it could also be worth keeping an eye on Manchester.

As you may be aware, Virgin are in the process of buying Flybe, to enable a robust feeder operation. Throughout the purchase, Virgin have made clear that the emphasis of Flybe is to feed LHR and MAN.

With LHR basically full and no real room to build that hub operation, it means MAN could see a bit of growth. No point having a huge feed operation for 6 flights a day at MAN, so, long haul could see some growth.

While I’m not going to speculate on potential routes, it would be naive to think there would be no growth. Yes, MAN isn’t London so won’t be able to come anywhere near that scale, but, there will be reasonable growth, no doubt about it.

South American routes are the only routes that make a profit for AZ.
EZE and GIG have high occupancy rates.

Edinburgh has been added every Saturday this summer from MXP!

RainerBoeing777 wrote:

DL has several JV with other airlines that could be new markets for VS

True in some cases that you've mentioned, but just because DL has a JV/equity stake in VS in addition to other airlines doesn't mean there's a commercial relationship or feed between VS and those other airlines.

RainerBoeing777 wrote:

with the Alliance with WestJet VS has the opportunity to rotate to Canada to destinations like Toronto (YYZ) and Vancouver (YVR)

Virgin Atlantic and Westjet have no commercial ties whatsoever. They don't even have an interline baggage agreement.

RainerBoeing777 wrote:

with sister Virgin Australia (VA) could venture on the LHR-PER route to Qantas has done quite well this route

What equipment would VA use? They have nothing even on order that could serve the route. Also, while QF is financially healthy enough to take risks like LHR-PER, VA is not. There's a good reason that DL has invested equity stakes in just about all of their primary partners except VA even though VA constantly has stakes up for sale, and that's because VA management is a revolving door of sadness.

RainerBoeing777 wrote:

On the part of Alitalia, Delta (DL) will do the same strategy with VS more expansion to North America, where it could add new routes such as Atlanta (ATL) and Seattle (SEA) or grow in strong Delta Hubs where it already flies like Los Angeles (LAX ), New York (JFK), and Boston (BOS), also expand in high demand markets such as San Francisco (SFO)

You'll note that Alitalia has been on the brink of complete financial collapse for years now, so maybe not the best time to be thinking about expansion. Let's first see where the joint Delta/EasyJet offer for a portion of Alitalia ends up. Additionally, you'll recall that after Delta bought 49% of Virgin before going into expansion mode they went in and cleaned shop in Crawley while also moving North American corporate functions across the board from Connecticut to Atlanta. I imagine you'd see something similar happen but again we're not even sure where this Delta offer is going to land.

klm617 wrote:

Detroit is a major hub for Delta and would be a good route for AZ to add.

Per your previously stated logic around TK and ORD, if there were a market for a nonstop between Italy and DTW for AZ wouldn't they already be flying it?

User001 wrote:

In terms of Virgin, it could also be worth keeping an eye on Manchester.

As you may be aware, Virgin are in the process of buying Flybe, to enable a robust feeder operation. Throughout the purchase, Virgin have made clear that the emphasis of Flybe is to feed LHR and MAN.

The feed at LHR will be anecdotal. Given it's just former EDI/ABZ routes (already tried by virgin as little red) and the PSO route from NQY. This time at least, the operations are done in-house rather than having to wet-lease another operatior's (Aer Lingus) A320s. A franchise operation with Flybe could improve profitability of the feed flights but still.... Also domestic ops have to be handled at T2 while VS-DL are at T3.
It's a pity that former Heathrow East phase II isn't yet built (or even started) so VS longhaul and BE domestic could be under one roof.

One funny thing that could happen. Right now the BE NQY-LGW also carries the BA* code. It would be amazing to see a Virgin branded NQY-LHR flight operated by FlyBE also wearing a BA* number as a codeshare

User001 wrote:

With LHR basically full and no real room to build that hub operation, it means MAN could see a bit of growth. No point having a huge feed operation for 6 flights a day at MAN, so, long haul could see some growth.

While I’m not going to speculate on potential routes, it would be naive to think there would be no growth. Yes, MAN isn’t London so won’t be able to come anywhere near that scale, but, there will be reasonable growth, no doubt about it.

But to achieve a meaningful Hub operation, the departure bank has to be well timed to allow for connections. A 10.30am departure to ATL (like tomorrow) won't help.
Don't know the Minimum Connection Times at MAN but I guess no less than 60 min UK->Intl and quite longer for Intl->Intl as passengers have to re-clear security. Hopefully T2 will soon bring them down.
Inbounds from continental EU would benefit from a 1hr time difference but hardly achievable if the airplane is MAN based (required to do MAN-XXX-MAN unless it nightstops at XXX).

What these franchise flights will do, is increase brand awareness, as suddenly all BE coded flights will change to VS and show the Virgin logo on the screens. Let's see if that helps build up a bigger operation.

winginit wrote:

Per your previously stated logic around TK and ORD, if there were a market for a nonstop between Italy and DTW for AZ wouldn't they already be flying it?

DL has a non-stop DTW-FCO in the schedule April-October. It has run for a few(?) years now. Italy demand from the U.S. is very seasonal. I'm not sure what destinations AZ adds from FCO not already served from AMS & CDG. When you start looking at double-connects -- xxx-DTW-FCO-yyy -- yields crash.

directorguy wrote:

Who is flying between the US and secondary Italian cities this summer? Perhaps AZ can do something like VCE-JFK/ATL is no one else is doing it.

DL flies from JFK to VCE (and from ATL as well) during the summer season. UA flies EWR-VCE in high season, and AA flies PHL-VCE in spring/summer season. AA is launching 4 weekly PHL-Bologna flights this year, and UA is adding EWR-NAP. There's plenty of Italy secondary cities served. No real need for AZ to fly these routes. They can't fill a plane on the VCE/NAP end as well as the US carriers can from their hub point of origin.

alfa164 wrote:

santi319 wrote:

Mex is already served by AM. It would be an overkill. Surprised they haven’t gone back to Brazil though

AZ does fly to Brazil; daily to GIG, twice-daily to GRU (at least during this season).

I am sorry, should’ve specified, I was talking about VS.

The feed at LHR will be anecdotal.

Indeed, and that’s why I said......

User001 wrote:

With LHR basically full and no real room to build that hub operation,.

Anyway...

But to achieve a meaningful Hub operation, the departure bank has to be well timed to allow for connections. A 10.30am departure to ATL (like tomorrow) won't help.

VS has said they will retime Virgin Connect flights to fit into the long haul feed, so, they is nothing to suggest they would be against retimes of some long haul to fit those times too.

Don't know the Minimum Connection Times at MAN but I guess no less than 60 min UK->Intl and quite longer for Intl->Intl as passengers have to re-clear security.

T1/3 allow 40 minute connections, T1/3 to T2 is one hour purely because of the distances involved. The size of the transfers area also currently slows things down as it’s too small, the new T2 facility will be much bigger so will speed things up there too. (Its worth noting that Singapore Airlines is exempt from the standard transfer facility, and instead uses a dedicated transit suite in T2. This eliminates any need to bus lax from T2 to T3 and back again,)

MIflyer12 wrote:

winginit wrote:

Per your previously stated logic around TK and ORD, if there were a market for a nonstop between Italy and DTW for AZ wouldn't they already be flying it?

DL has a non-stop DTW-FCO in the schedule April-October. It has run for a few(?) years now. Italy demand from the U.S. is very seasonal. I'm not sure what destinations AZ adds from FCO not already served from AMS & CDG. When you start looking at double-connects -- xxx-DTW-FCO-yyy -- yields crash.

This is why I am still struggling to see the value of DL buying a portion of AZ. What is really in it for DL? Yes, there is obviously some value in keeping LH from buying out one of your partners... but beyond that? Is it mainly for the asset value of AZ’s newer widebody aircraft?

Basically, I am really struggling to come up with any XXX destinations that make more sense (from DLs perspective) to be flown as NorthAmerica-FCO/MXP-XXX, as opposed to NorthAmerica-AMS/CDG-XXX.

VS is a different story because, coming from the US, Ireland or Great Britain both involve back tracking from CDG/AMS. Plus VS provides a good hedge going forward depending on how Brexit shakes out. But AZ, I just dont see the value that offsets the headache.

kavok wrote:

This is why I am still struggling to see the value of DL buying a portion of AZ. What is really in it for DL? Yes, there is obviously some value in keeping LH from buying out one of your partners... but beyond that? Is it mainly for the asset value of AZ’s newer widebody aircraft?

Basically, I am really struggling to come up with any XXX destinations that make more sense (from DLs perspective) to be flown as NorthAmerica-FCO/MXP-XXX, as opposed to NorthAmerica-AMS/CDG-XXX.

VS is a different story because, coming from the US, Ireland or Great Britain both involve back tracking from CDG/AMS. Plus VS provides a good hedge going forward depending on how Brexit shakes out. But AZ, I just dont see the value that offsets the headache.

I'd venture to guess that the AZ portion of the JV is an incredibly profitable part of Delta's Trans-Atlantic portfolio. If they can negotiate the right deal, they maintain that, and potentially grow it. And they preclude anyone else from coming an and trashing the market for them. You can be sure that whatever DL invests in it will be commiserate with the potential risk/reward they are looking at. I suspect that Delta's part of the deal is not as cash intensive as EasyJet's.

jfk777 wrote:

Alitalia is going to be a sick airline until labor costs are dealt with, very difficult in today's Italian political climate. Alitalia needs to merge into a larger European airline group, but does anyone want them ?

If you have the participation of Delta it may be absorbed by Air France-KLM with passage with Virgin

MIflyer12 wrote:

winginit wrote:

Per your previously stated logic around TK and ORD, if there were a market for a nonstop between Italy and DTW for AZ wouldn't they already be flying it?

DL has a non-stop DTW-FCO in the schedule April-October. It has run for a few(?) years now. Italy demand from the U.S. is very seasonal. I'm not sure what destinations AZ adds from FCO not already served from AMS & CDG. When you start looking at double-connects -- xxx-DTW-FCO-yyy -- yields crash.

Delta works with Air France-KLM for the large number of connections that both airlines have with a good DL plan can maintain the service all year and AZ can fly during the summer to DTW

winginit wrote:

RainerBoeing777 wrote:

DL has several JV with other airlines that could be new markets for VS

True in some cases that you've mentioned, but just because DL has a JV/equity stake in VS in addition to other airlines doesn't mean there's a commercial relationship or feed between VS and those other airlines.

RainerBoeing777 wrote:

with the Alliance with WestJet VS has the opportunity to rotate to Canada to destinations like Toronto (YYZ) and Vancouver (YVR)

Virgin Atlantic and Westjet have no commercial ties whatsoever. They don't even have an interline baggage agreement.

RainerBoeing777 wrote:

with sister Virgin Australia (VA) could venture on the LHR-PER route to Qantas has done quite well this route

What equipment would VA use? They have nothing even on order that could serve the route. Also, while QF is financially healthy enough to take risks like LHR-PER, VA is not. There's a good reason that DL has invested equity stakes in just about all of their primary partners except VA even though VA constantly has stakes up for sale, and that's because VA management is a revolving door of sadness.

RainerBoeing777 wrote:

On the part of Alitalia, Delta (DL) will do the same strategy with VS more expansion to North America, where it could add new routes such as Atlanta (ATL) and Seattle (SEA) or grow in strong Delta Hubs where it already flies like Los Angeles (LAX ), New York (JFK), and Boston (BOS), also expand in high demand markets such as San Francisco (SFO)

You'll note that Alitalia has been on the brink of complete financial collapse for years now, so maybe not the best time to be thinking about expansion. Let's first see where the joint Delta/EasyJet offer for a portion of Alitalia ends up. Additionally, you'll recall that after Delta bought 49% of Virgin before going into expansion mode they went in and cleaned shop in Crawley while also moving North American corporate functions across the board from Connecticut to Atlanta. I imagine you'd see something similar happen but again we're not even sure where this Delta offer is going to land.

klm617 wrote:

Detroit is a major hub for Delta and would be a good route for AZ to add.

Per your previously stated logic around TK and ORD, if there were a market for a nonstop between Italy and DTW for AZ wouldn't they already be flying it?

I'm not talking about VA taking the route but VS have several Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners plus you have orders of several A350-1000 that these will replace the Boeing 787-9 on high demand routes such as Los Angeles and Newark leaving B787 free , VS can make LHR-PER and VA handle the connections in PER to BNE, MEL and SYD since VA has grown a lot in cabotage

Also VS already has the Canadian permits to fly to Canada, when DL takes over VS what did it do? it made it grow in the main Hubs of Delta New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Orlando and Seattle, besides Air France-KLM has participation with GOL where DL also participation and shared codes in the same way with Aermexico, AM has codes shared with VS in routes to Cancun via USA, maybe DL wants to make a bigger JV with the participation of Air France-KLM, Alitalia, Virgin Atlantic and Aeromexico and can compete with the major competitors of Oneworld and Star Alliance

How did VS grow? DL eliminated their routes where they lost too much money where they did not have anybody, and as I mentioned before, I grew up in large Delta Hubs the same can happen with AZ and can work well FCO and MXP are very good hubs and you have to work them properly. impressive American is stronger in Italy than the same DL

caliboy93 wrote:

MAH4546 wrote:

Italy is not London. Alitalia will in no way expand in any significant way it's North American coverage. Just New York, Miami and Los Angeles cover half of U.S.-Italy demand. Maybe San Francisco and Montreal. That's all that's really left for it.

What about Chicago?

VS could return to ORD with the route Manchester (MAN) - Chicago (ORD), since American left the market

santi319 wrote:

Mex is already served by AM. It would be an overkill.

Surprised they haven’t gone back to Brazil though

And why not get British Airways (BA) out of the market? the approach is that AM works with VS as a whole which would lose BA, thanks to the return of AM they reduced capacity from B747 to B787

RainerBoeing777 wrote:

If you have the participation of Delta it may be absorbed by Air France-KLM with passage with Virgin

AFKL have a host of their own problems to sort out before they even think about absorbing a dumpster fire of a carrier like AZ. If they had any interest there would be an offer on the table. There isn't.

RainerBoeing777 wrote:

Delta works with Air France-KLM for the large number of connections that both airlines have with a good DL plan can maintain the service all year and AZ can fly during the summer to DTW

AFKL connections that are already in place aren't going to magically make DTW-Italy viable year-round.

RainerBoeing777 wrote:

I'm not talking about VA taking the route but VS have several Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners plus you have orders of several A350-1000 that these will replace the Boeing 787-9 on high demand routes such as Los Angeles and Newark leaving B787 free , VS can make LHR-PER and VA handle the connections in PER to BNE, MEL and SYD since VA has grown a lot in cabotage

While VA and VS share a name, Virgin Group owns only 8% of Virgin Australia, and the commercial ties between VA and VS are very limited. What incentive does VA have to assist VS with LHR-PER?

RainerBoeing777 wrote:

maybe DL wants to make a bigger JV with the participation of Air France-KLM, Alitalia, Virgin Atlantic and Aeromexico and can compete with the major competitors of Oneworld and Star Alliance

I'm sure they would love that, but it would be a regulatory challenge to say the very least.

RainerBoeing777 wrote:

VS could return to ORD with the route Manchester (MAN) - Chicago (ORD), since American left the market

Start a route that a competitor couldn't make work with hubs at both ends? That sounds like a great way to lose money.

santi319 wrote:

alfa164 wrote:

santi319 wrote:

Mex is already served by AM. It would be an overkill. Surprised they haven’t gone back to Brazil though

AZ does fly to Brazil; daily to GIG, twice-daily to GRU (at least during this season).

I am sorry, should’ve specified, I was talking about VS.

If your referring to VS when you wrote,

''Surprised they haven't gone back to Brazil though'', and then writing ''I am sorry, I should've specified, I was talking about VS''.

FYI VS have never flown to Brazil in the airlines entire history, VS have never flown scheduled flights to anywhere in South America!

winginit wrote:

RainerBoeing777 wrote:

If you have the participation of Delta it may be absorbed by Air France-KLM with passage with Virgin

AFKL have a host of their own problems to sort out before they even think about absorbing a dumpster fire of a carrier like AZ. If they had any interest there would be an offer on the table. There isn't.

RainerBoeing777 wrote:

Delta works with Air France-KLM for the large number of connections that both airlines have with a good DL plan can maintain the service all year and AZ can fly during the summer to DTW

AFKL connections that are already in place aren't going to magically make DTW-Italy viable year-round.

RainerBoeing777 wrote:

I'm not talking about VA taking the route but VS have several Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners plus you have orders of several A350-1000 that these will replace the Boeing 787-9 on high demand routes such as Los Angeles and Newark leaving B787 free , VS can make LHR-PER and VA handle the connections in PER to BNE, MEL and SYD since VA has grown a lot in cabotage

While VA and VS share a name, Virgin Group owns only 8% of Virgin Australia, and the commercial ties between VA and VS are very limited. What incentive does VA have to assist VS with LHR-PER?

RainerBoeing777 wrote:

maybe DL wants to make a bigger JV with the participation of Air France-KLM, Alitalia, Virgin Atlantic and Aeromexico and can compete with the major competitors of Oneworld and Star Alliance

I'm sure they would love that, but it would be a regulatory challenge to say the very least.

RainerBoeing777 wrote:

VS could return to ORD with the route Manchester (MAN) - Chicago (ORD), since American left the market

Start a route that a competitor couldn't make work with hubs at both ends? That sounds like a great way to lose money.

VS happened the same problem of AZ and now AFKL have 31% of VS

AZ flies to India, many connections from India are via CDG and AMS to North America including LHR, because they do not add FCO, then they complain that the ME3 makes it unfair competition


Everyone said that QF was going to fail with PER-LHR, now it is one of its most profitable routes and they want to add more European destinations, the demand Australia - United Kingdom is too big and VS has excellent products to compete with QF

Many things can happen

American has the bad habit of eliminating routes that are very profitable but they do not know how to make them profitable, hence they eliminate PHL-FRA and now lufthansa will fly this route with Boeing 747-400, reduce ORD-NRT and Japan Airlines increases this route, the same case with SEA-HKG DL leaves the market and CX takes this route and for the high season of summer it will fly with daily flights, ORD-MAN is suspended because it was served with B767 with terrible cabins and also the routes of ORD happen to be operated all with B787 Dreamliner

RainerBoeing777 wrote:

Everyone said that QF was going to fail with PER-LHR, now it is one of its most profitable routes and they want to add more European destinations, the demand Australia - United Kingdom is too big and VS has excellent products to compete with QF

I'll ask again, what incentive would VA have to contribute to a hypothetical VS LHRPER route when VA and VS have very limited commercial cooperation?

RainerBoeing777 wrote:

American has the bad habit of eliminating routes that are very profitable but they do not know how to make them profitable

... what? if they don't know how to make them profitable they aren't very profitable now are they. Eliminating routes that a carrier does not know how to make profitable sounds like a very good habit. Even so, let's look at your examples:

RainerBoeing777 wrote:

hence they eliminate PHL-FRA and now lufthansa will fly this route with Boeing 747-400

This is not a good example. PHL-FRA was a route that was launched by a US Airways who was then in Star Alliance and thus had access to LH feed and codeshare. What else ya got...

RainerBoeing777 wrote:

reduce ORD-NRT and Japan Airlines increases this route

This is an even worse example. AA and JL are in a revenue sharing joint venture, so they simply swapped the operating carrier. The money still goes into the same shared pot between AA and JL. Anything else?

RainerBoeing777 wrote:

the same case with SEA-HKG DL leaves the market and CX takes this route and for the high season of summer it will fly with daily flights

You have no idea whether CX will be successful on SEAHKG. SEAHKG also has access to HKG feed that DL did not. Let's get to the point:

RainerBoeing777 wrote:

ORD-MAN is suspended because it was served with B767 with terrible cabins and also the routes of ORD happen to be operated all with B787 Dreamliner

That's one reason, but DL/VS would have virtually no viable feed on the ORD side of the equation. Even with a superior product, the combined DL/VS would not succeed on ORDMAN where AA/BA failed.

I don't think that DL will increase AZ TATL flights. It will definitely grow to Italy and neighboring secundary TATL (North Africa, Balkans, etc...) markets with own metal and using AZ as feeder.
I think that DL will look at opportunities for AZ to expand on Europe-Asia, pinching the struggling ME3 where it hurts most, while killing the Air Italy effort by QR in the bud.
It won't be huge though until DL sees positive returns. A few routes to India and China in addition to frequency increases to Tokyo.
With positive results, SIN, MNL, KUL, BKK could be added at a later stage.
That's the smart thing to do.

winginit wrote:

RainerBoeing777 wrote:

Everyone said that QF was going to fail with PER-LHR, now it is one of its most profitable routes and they want to add more European destinations, the demand Australia - United Kingdom is too big and VS has excellent products to compete with QF

I'll ask again, what incentive would VA have to contribute to a hypothetical VS LHRPER route when VA and VS have very limited commercial cooperation?

RainerBoeing777 wrote:

American has the bad habit of eliminating routes that are very profitable but they do not know how to make them profitable

... what? if they don't know how to make them profitable they aren't very profitable now are they. Eliminating routes that a carrier does not know how to make profitable sounds like a very good habit. Even so, let's look at your examples:

RainerBoeing777 wrote:

hence they eliminate PHL-FRA and now lufthansa will fly this route with Boeing 747-400

This is not a good example. PHL-FRA was a route that was launched by a US Airways who was then in Star Alliance and thus had access to LH feed and codeshare. What else ya got...

RainerBoeing777 wrote:

reduce ORD-NRT and Japan Airlines increases this route

This is an even worse example. AA and JL are in a revenue sharing joint venture, so they simply swapped the operating carrier. The money still goes into the same shared pot between AA and JL. Anything else?

RainerBoeing777 wrote:

the same case with SEA-HKG DL leaves the market and CX takes this route and for the high season of summer it will fly with daily flights

You have no idea whether CX will be successful on SEAHKG. SEAHKG also has access to HKG feed that DL did not. Let's get to the point:

RainerBoeing777 wrote:

ORD-MAN is suspended because it was served with B767 with terrible cabins and also the routes of ORD happen to be operated all with B787 Dreamliner

That's one reason, but DL/VS would have virtually no viable feed on the ORD side of the equation. Even with a superior product, the combined DL/VS would not succeed on ORDMAN where AA/BA failed.

Lufthansa in PHL does not have any codes shared with AA, also pennsylvania is one of the largest German communities, it was even a bad idea to move the flight MUC-PHL to CLT, other cases are routes that have been deleted in ORD and JFK can not with the other competitors that offer better services than AA, an example move the route JFK-ZRH to PHL because they lost the contracts of some companies and now these business passengers fly with Swiss and this due to the horrible cabins of the B767, the same with ORD-ZRH AA left the route and Swiss flies with 2 daily flights and with Boeing 777-300ER, abandoned all its Caribbean routes from JFK and JetBlue made gold mines with that route, before 2001 AA had a better network routes than the current unlike DL and UA that its route network has strongly strengthened

Also you must be clear a passenger prefers to fly a thousand times with Japan Airlines than with American, it is unprecedented that AA always fails in Tokyo, the same thing happened with New York suspending the route JFK-HND through the cabins of the B77E was disgusting, unlike of JAL products with their B77W and B787


CX started selling for four weekly frequencies, it has been so successful that during the high season it increases every day that means they have done very well!

Love to see IAH - MXP on Alitalia or AUS - LHR on Virgin, think their some room for 2 carriers, also since Virgin likes to fly to trendy places.

Cunard wrote:

santi319 wrote:

alfa164 wrote:

AZ does fly to Brazil; daily to GIG, twice-daily to GRU (at least during this season).

I am sorry, should’ve specified, I was talking about VS.

If your referring to VS when you wrote,

''Surprised they haven't gone back to Brazil though'', and then writing ''I am sorry, I should've specified, I was talking about VS''.

FYI VS have never flown to Brazil in the airlines entire history, VS have never flown scheduled flights to anywhere in South America!

My God you are right! It was a charter! I knew I wasn’t crazy.

viewtopic.php?t=364991


A 3x weekly GIG rotation with a little help from Virgin Holidays and a boost from GOL, could work... The UK has lots of Brazilian expats too!

Virgin Atlantic have had every opportunity to fly from London to Brazil but have never undertaken it, why I don't know.

I would have thought that VS might have entered the Brazilian market at some stage especially when the country held the Olympics but it never did for reasons only known to the airline.

I would have thought that GIG would have been an ideal destination for the airline, even Norwegian are shortly starting LGW to GIG.

klm617 wrote:

With that being said it is a very curious thing that BA has not opened up ORD-MAN seems like that would be a perfect fit for them.

AA and BA are in a revenue sharing joint venture. Thus, AA's ORDMAN books are more or less completely open to BA, who have shared in the losses on the route. It seems not curious but clear that BA saw what a bloodbath ORDMAN was for the joint venture and have no interest in touching it. That's extremely telling as to how awful of a route ORD-MAN was.

winginit wrote:

klm617 wrote:

With that being said it is a very curious thing that BA has not opened up ORD-MAN seems like that would be a perfect fit for them.

AA and BA are in a revenue sharing joint venture. Thus, AA's ORDMAN books are more or less completely open to BA, who have shared in the losses on the route. It seems not curious but clear that BA saw what a bloodbath ORDMAN was for the joint venture and have no interest in touching it. That's extremely telling as to how awful of a route ORD-MAN was.

Why are you feeding into KLMs clickbait posts? Here's another thread he has ruined.

gnakra80 wrote:

winginit wrote:

klm617 wrote:

With that being said it is a very curious thing that BA has not opened up ORD-MAN seems like that would be a perfect fit for them.

AA and BA are in a revenue sharing joint venture. Thus, AA's ORDMAN books are more or less completely open to BA, who have shared in the losses on the route. It seems not curious but clear that BA saw what a bloodbath ORDMAN was for the joint venture and have no interest in touching it. That's extremely telling as to how awful of a route ORD-MAN was.

Why are you feeding into KLMs clickbait posts? Here's another thread he has ruined.

Don't fret. I've been doing this a long time

winginit wrote:

AA and BA are in a revenue sharing joint venture. Thus, AA's ORDMAN books are more or less completely open to BA, who have shared in the losses on the route. It seems not curious but clear that BA saw what a bloodbath ORDMAN was for the joint venture and have no interest in touching it. That's extremely telling as to how awful of a route ORD-MAN was.

Maybe AA need to look at why they needed to cut a route that survived for 32 years including a fair number of years of being one of a handful of year-round transatlantic routes out of ORD , Maybe it's because they put a pile of dog poo on the route compared to what other airlines are operating on other US routes to MAN and they had a very iffy on time performance. But given how close ORD and DTW are, it would be more logical for a route to that part of the USA went to a DL hub. Quite why AA/BA seem to be so keen to let other airlines take on the non-stop options out of MAN whilst they prefer passengers to route over DUB and LHR is a mystery to me.

winginit wrote:

gnakra80 wrote:

winginit wrote:

AA and BA are in a revenue sharing joint venture. Thus, AA's ORDMAN books are more or less completely open to BA, who have shared in the losses on the route. It seems not curious but clear that BA saw what a bloodbath ORDMAN was for the joint venture and have no interest in touching it. That's extremely telling as to how awful of a route ORD-MAN was.

Why are you feeding into KLMs clickbait posts? Here's another thread he has ruined.

Don't fret. I've been doing this a long time

lol

David_itl wrote:

winginit wrote:

AA and BA are in a revenue sharing joint venture. Thus, AA's ORDMAN books are more or less completely open to BA, who have shared in the losses on the route. It seems not curious but clear that BA saw what a bloodbath ORDMAN was for the joint venture and have no interest in touching it. That's extremely telling as to how awful of a route ORD-MAN was.

Maybe AA need to look at why they needed to cut a route that survived for 32 years including a fair number of years of being one of a handful of year-round transatlantic routes out of ORD , Maybe it's because they put a pile of dog poo on the route compared to what other airlines are operating on other US routes to MAN and they had a very iffy on time performance. But given how close ORD and DTW are, it would be more logical for a route to that part of the USA went to a DL hub. Quite why AA/BA seem to be so keen to let other airlines take on the non-stop options out of MAN whilst they prefer passengers to route over DUB and LHR is a mystery to me.

Or maybe, just maybe, an entirely unprecedented move like, let’s say, the UK voting to exit the European Union, lead to the dramatic collapse of the GBP/USD exchange rate, which quickly torched a route that’s majority UK POS.

klm617 wrote:

For the most part though BA has really never done that much as far a secondary cities in the UK to the USA.

Because for the most part - those routes are crap - especially at these GBP/USD exchange rates.

winginit wrote:

Or maybe, just maybe, an entirely unprecedented move like, let’s say, the UK voting to exit the European Union, lead to the dramatic collapse of the GBP/USD exchange rate, which quickly torched a route that’s majority UK POS.

So tha'ts the reason why Virgin is doing a 20% increase in capacity and United is putting 767s on in place of 757 because far fewer passengers are actually flying from the UK to the US.

winginit wrote:

Or maybe, just maybe, an entirely unprecedented move like, let’s say, the UK voting to exit the European Union, lead to the dramatic collapse of the GBP/USD exchange rate, which quickly torched a route that’s majority UK POS.

I must have missed all those swinging cuts to UK-US routes over the last 2 1/2 years, particularly out of MAN.

We've seen new routes launched by Thomas Cook and Virgin Atlantic, as well as Singapore routing Houston flights through MAN over the last 2 1/2 years. The only cuts besides ORD has been MIA on Thomas Cook and IAD on United, everything else has either been airlines shuffling routes (e.g. VS solely operating MAN-BOS and Thomas Cook solely operating MAN-SFO) or expansion (e.g. using 747's on MAN-JFK (partly because of the 787 RR engine issues admittedly), MAN-SEA, SQ routing IAH flights via MAN).

It always pays to check the facts first before jumping to conclusions based on assumptions.

Virgin signed a codeshare deal with Aermexico in December 2018: https://www.businesstraveller.com/busin ... eromexico/

I expect most of the potential for growth is by adding these "virtual" connections via codeshares with Delta partners out the UK adding connections and network destinations out of LHR.

The only one that I would think could be a potential own metal connection is to Brasil to link in with Gol.

David_itl wrote:

winginit wrote:

Or maybe, just maybe, an entirely unprecedented move like, let’s say, the UK voting to exit the European Union, lead to the dramatic collapse of the GBP/USD exchange rate, which quickly torched a route that’s majority UK POS.

So tha'ts the reason why Virgin is doing a 20% increase in capacity and United is putting 767s on in place of 757 because far fewer passengers are actually flying from the UK to the US.

Did I say far fewer passengers were actually flying from the UK to the US? I didn't, so let's please read carefully and use our literacy skills before putting words in my mouth. I said the UK vote to exit the European Union lead to the collapse of the GBP/USD exchange rate, which it did. For US3 airlines who need to convert their foreign revenue to USD, FX headwinds can cripple the RASM and thus the profitability of a route - especially one that leans UK PoS heavy like those in and out of MAN. Maybe I should have made that last bit more clear.

Boeing74741R wrote:

I must have missed all those swinging cuts to UK-US routes over the last 2 1/2 years, particularly out of MAN.

It always pays to check the facts first before jumping to conclusions based on assumptions.

Why yes, it would indeed seem as though you missed the sweeping MAN-US nonstop cuts again from US-based carriers who need to convert their GBP revenues to USD. Let's take a little look at US3 MAN-US nonstop capacity between 2016 (the vote) and today shall we? You know, 'check the facts'?



Oh my... that doesn't paint such a good picture does it? Might you even call those swinging cuts?

I'd expect better from A.net vets like the two of you.