[first_class_please]

Indeed John. From Manchester EK have 3 flights a day including one A380, all with First class, Etihad twice a day and Qatar i think 10 times a week.

Yet BA cancel all flights Manchester – Gatwick so no feed to their routes from there.

[canucklad]

The word you’re looking for gents is………Capitulation.

[Tallinnman]

Maybe the word is yield.

Perhaps it is more profitable for BA to allow customers who are willing to pay more than what EK, QR an EY charge to fly on their airplanes.

[PegasusAir]

Indeed BA have capitulated as far as Manchester is concerned regarding its network out of LGW following their cancellation of the MAN-LGW service. They also have no interest in providing any sort of service between LHR and LGW relying on flights to and from LHR and then catching a Nat Express coach which sometimes have 50 min gaps or an expensive taxi – the rip-off ‘in Terminal’ taxi service in LGW charges £95 to LHR. With other FlyBe routes going later this month LGW is cut off certainly from the English regions. Their easterly routes out of LGW (MRU, MLE etc) are much better served via the Gulf routes and the Caribbean has more options than BA think – or care about. Pity, as there is more premium traffic out of the regions than people think.

[BusinessBabble]

BA operates long haul out of a principal hub at London Heathrow with connections to local regional airports, exactly the same as:

– Air France at Paris Charles de Gaulle
– KLM at Amsterdam Schipol
– Iberia at Madrid Barajas
– Lufthansa at Frankfurt & Munich
– Emirates at Dubai
– Qatar at Doha
– Etihad at Abu Dhabi
– Basically every other long haul airline world-wide

Anyone complaining about the lack of BA long haul flights, or connections for that matter, from a UK regional airport is living in Cloud Cuckoo Land.

If any other airline can sustain services to regional UK airports due to their network feed then good luck to them.

The same could be said for BA operating to any airport that is not the principal long-haul hub of that countries “national carrier”, such as Austin, Cape Town, Rio de Janeiro, Chengdu, Chennai, etc, etc, etc

[PegasusAir]

The problem is that a number of BA long haul flights are not out of their LHR hub. AF operate regional flights into ORY which has similar routes to that out of LGW AND they operate dedicated buses between the two airports. They also give you free vouchers for the bus if your routing involves a transit between the two airports. As a result AF remain responsible for the transfer unlike BA. I am not putting AF up as a paragon as obviously they are not but this element just demonstrates that BA could do more with not much effort.

[canucklad]

Hi BusinessBabble
I’m in general agreement with you regarding you’re hub point, however there are airlines that successfully fly internationally from their regional airports.
These include Swiss, TAP, Alitalia, SAS, not forgetting Lufthansa, albeit using their new model, and remarkably even Aer Lingus from Cork.
If the foreign carriers keep exploiting / expanding outside LHR there will come a point that BA’s feeder traffic is going to be so weak, that they might re-evaluate totally their domestic connections into LHR !

[JohnHarper]

” BusinessBabble – 18/03/2014 10:42 GMT

BA operates long haul out of a principal hub at London Heathrow with connections to local regional airports, exactly the same as:

– Air France at Paris Charles de Gaulle
– KLM at Amsterdam Schipol
– Iberia at Madrid Barajas
– Lufthansa at Frankfurt & Munich
– Emirates at Dubai
– Qatar at Doha
– Etihad at Abu Dhabi”

Given the size of many of the places sighted, where else would you have hubs in Abu Dhabi, Doha, Dubai or the Netherlands? You might as well include SIA and CX in your list for good measure but goodness only knows where they would put a second airport.

Lufthansa have two hubs and it works very well, SAS have three.

The point stands, BA have abandoned any sort of regional services unless it is to LHR. That others are captialising on that can only be a good thing as their products and services are superiour anyway.

[BigDog.]

You are somewhat correct, John – though if you look at Lufthansa and Germanwings they operate many direct flights originating from Berlin, Stuttgart, Hamburg to other non-German European destinations and a few inter-continentals (eg TXL-TLV)

http://lufthansa.innosked.com/(S(j4fkdf45k04c1u55hwkt43ut))/Default.aspx?lang_id=en&country=uk

Lufthansa Grp have certainly not abandoned the German regions in the way BA has.

[TominScotland]

Just an observation. I have flown GLA – LHR/LGW/LCY return maybe 30 times over the past year – both connecting and point to point. It is very rare indeed that the flights are other than full or very close to full. This suggests to me that, in part at least, BA’s strategy continues to work for them – of course, my observations tell me nothing about yield or the level of connecting traffic although this appears to be high.

[Cheeryguy]

To imply that BA should fly long haul from regional airports because Emirates flies to UK regional airports is not a sensible argument.

[BusinessBabble]

PegasusAir – Agree a transfer from LHR to LGW must be a nightmare. I thought that when BA de-hubed LGW it’s purpose going forward was to serve point-to-point traffic, with long hail being mainly leisure. If BA are now promoting and advertising flights from, say, Leeds to Barbados which would involve an airport change then I totally agree they should improve the transit experience you describe.

Canucklad – I agree with you, I was only referring to long haul travel. It’s worth noting that AF and Lufthansa are both restructuring their non hub short / mid haul traffic through their lower cost divisions of Transavia (& Hop or is that gone now?) and Germanwings respectively to make these operations sustainable. Maybe IAG will use Vueling to improve their offering in this respect.

JohnHarper – I mentioned that Lufthansa operates out of two hubs, and successfully. The geography & population of Germany is 1/3 bigger than that of the UK so more passengers to fly places to maintain those two hubs and they have a far more protectionist government to look after their interests. For example, Emirates are not currently allowed to fly to the capital Berlin, from which Lufthanse operates no long haul flights. Thankfully that does not happen in the UK. The point of national geography is irrelevant to global businesses, BA has a subsidiary flying long haul out of Paris, if KLM thought there was money to be made they could equally set up a long haul subsidiary based in Manchester but the fact is this is not viable for them or BA. SAS does not do anything particularly well, approx 2 long haul destinations from Stockholm and 8 from Copenhagen, and on the verge of going bust last year.

Cheeryguy – Agreed it is not a sensible argument.

[SimonS1]

Everyone has their own model, clearly. IMHO if you live in the regions KLM is the best model. About 18 regional airports into AMS which I much prefer to Heathrow.

[TominScotland]

SimonS1 – the 18 includes code share, I think

“KLM operates in its own right to 14 different destinations across the UK from Amsterdam Schiphol offering 194,229 seats in each direction this month (it also offers codeshare services with partners CityJet and Flybe to Inverness, London City and Southampton). This represents a 14.5 per cent decline on the capacity it offered five years ago when it also offered its own operated flights to Cardiff and London City. In this period it also introduced and ended flights to Liverpool John Lennon Airport”.

[BusinessBabble]

Hello SimonS1 – the point I was trying to make is that essentially all long haul airlines operate exactly the same model, being a hub airport with a feed network to collect transfer passengers to fill up all those long haul flights.

Yes, KLM have to work a bit harder than most on the feed network as they rely on more transfer passengers due to the relatively low population their hub airport serves for point-to-point passengers (like the Gulfies).

If travellers wanted BA to increase frequency or add more destinations to regional UK airports I think we need a new runway and terminal capacity at Heathrow so they have the slots available at the right times.

[Author]

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