Dear Alex,
I recently flew with Korean Air (KAL) between Tel Aviv and Seoul. On both legs the A330 aircraft had the old “cradle-style” business class seat.
I am curious about how an airline decides on which route it will allocate its newer lie-flat seating. Each of my flights took more than 11 hours, which certainly qualifies as
long-haul.
As KAL is the only Asian airline serving Tel Aviv, I can only assume it’s because of a lack of competition. Am I right?
Richard Barr, London
Alex replies:
In a nutshell, yes. If you check the schedules you will find few links between Tel Aviv and Asia. As you say, KAL is the sole Asian carrier (and is the only airline serving Tel Aviv-Seoul), while Israel’s El Al only offers a limited network to that part of the world.
Many factors determine where carriers place their best products. These include the level of competition on a route, yield (earnings per seat), prestige (capital or business cities will normally experience the best product) and market demand.
I tried to make some sense of this in two recent articles – see “Bad for business” and “The long and the short of it”.
