[Sparepocket]

So, who exactly is flying the England Rugby team to and from NZ in September?EK?SQ?…NZ? I would hate to be a member of a losing squad coming back home on the national carrier of the country that beat mine in a crunch match.

[BABenji]

It’s a winning formula! This years Ashes winning squad departed London with Qantas.

[sparkyflier]

The rumour, which came up in another thread on this website, said that some, a handful, but I imagine maybe 3-5 767s could allow expansion, for the rationale/criteria that VK came up with above.

He is and others are right about cold hard economics, and BA is there to make a profit. NZ is just not going to happen, when you have CX/QFdoing it and EK have 3 flights, 773, 773 & 380 a day into Auckland.

However, there are some opportunities that BA are missing. The lowest growth economies are Western Europe/North America, where as Africa, South America and Asia are doing rather OK and that momentum and money needs to be captured.

There could be feed into south american routes, not only from the established Asian routes, but remember Russians like to travel to do business and for nice holidays, and S7 is now in oneworld, with a codeshare into T5! In addition Air Berlin coming on board and their frequent flyers may want to try BA for their air miles …

Likewise, people in South America also want to travel now , and many have the means. I know Avianca is loking to get slots into LHR from Bogota!

[canucklad]

Imagine the year is 2021

I predict the way that airline economies of scale are currently evolving Star/One World/Skyteam members will converge into mega marketed carriers—interiors the same,national identy fading on exteriors,cabin crew & pilots shared as needed

Star competing against Oneworldon Hub to Hub routes & regional feeders taking over

No more LHR to MEL—you have to fly to SIN or SYD & downsize

It’s a logical evolution of codeshare,look at departure boards just now ,5 airlines leaving at the same time to the same destination, from the same gate—–When did Cathay start to fly to Scotlands capital ??

[SBTadvice]

in my opinion and to carry on the” NZ because it is a “Commonwealth Country” theme.There are 2 ways it may and could work for BA
SIN-AKL is not served by AIRNZ using the codeshare with QF BA could extend the 747 service onto AKL picking up Traffic from SIN and the far east .
QF and codeshared with AA alread fly LAX-AKL. As part of the JSA and oneworld could be replaced with a BA LHR-LAX-AKL again codesharing with QF and AA

[Sparepocket]

SBT…the success of this routing would depend on pricing. Would BA be able to undercut SQ on the SIN-AKL leg and, more importantly, provide a similar standard of service?

[BABenji]

To the best of my knowledge, SQ doesn’t provide a fully-flat bed in J on its SIN-AKL service, meaning BA could differentiate from a hard-product perspective.

That said, I think BA would be on a hiding to nothing adding this route. As posted elsewhere on this thread: “why would you take a 777 or 747 to Auckland to get £5000 from a First passenger when you can get that from the JFK route.”

…It doesn’t make sense.

[continentalclub]

Auckland probably would not stack-up commercially, but there again the commercial proposition on these ultra-longhaul stopping routes rests not so much on through-traffic as on selling fares between the far ends of the route and the midpoint.

If you look at the fare structures, a given LHR-SIN fare plus a SIN-SYD fare, will almost always come out as a greater revenue-generator than an LHR-SIN-SYD or vv fare. This situation applies as much to Emirates via Dubai as it does to Cathay via Hong Kong as it does to British Airways via Singapore or Bangkok.

The New Zealand market is an interesting one though, for sure. Although it’s a country with a relatively high proportion of longhaul travellers amongst its population, it’s still a tiny, tiny market, with a total population of 4.4 million (about half the size of New York City).

It tends to punch above its weight in PR terms in the UK (and other English-speaking countries), and has done well from associations with The Lord of The Rings films and suchlike. It’s a network point for quite a few carriers, but usually with only once-daily service to a maximum of two cities and, as alluded to above, regularly using ‘regional’ configuration aircraft.

For the year ending March 2010, NZ Government figures show a total of 2,499,102 arrivals were recorded into New Zealand (an average of a little under 7,000 per day), of which just 236,289 were ‘on business’ – the latter being a decline of 4.5% on the previous year. Almost half of the total number of arrivals were from Australia (up 14.5%), but arrivals from the UK, USA, China and Japan fell by 3.2%, 0.1%, 11.4% and 17.8% respectively.

Outbound numbers were 1,943,330 for the same period, with Australia being the destination of almost half of New Zealanders.

More recent figures for December 2010:

http://www.tourismresearch.govt.nz/Data–Analysis/International-tourism/International-Visitor-Arrivals/IVA-Commentary/

– show arrivals from United Kingdom down 9.1%, the USA down 8.3% and Japan down 6.6%.

At least some of the uplift in Australian arrivals can be attributed to the significant increase in Emirates flights from New Zealand’s near neighbour. None of Emirates’ flights to NZ are direct from Dubai though; they all make use of downtime that aircraft would otherwise spend in the bigger country. Emirates flies about 2,000 seats a day each way into and out of New Zealand, including flagship A380 First Class suites. If full, that would be almost a third of all traffic into and out of the country, and the entire population could be evacuated in under six years…..

[transtraxman]

ContinentalClub – interesting post …. but ….

Is not the point of this forum concerning what the customer wants? Taking note of that I call service.

VK is, of course, right when he says, “If it doesn’t pay, it won’t fly!” but should we not be more concerned with the question,”If it is feasible, is it viable?”

Binman62 said…
….., “BA is now a long haul point to point carrier and has little interest in developing multi stop flights”. That is unfortunate but true – when it means working the aircraft more hours out of the 24 instead of being on the ground, thus being more efficient. It certainly is not service.

DavidArnold complains about having to fly from non-London airports through mainland Europe airports to a final destination. If the choice is between (a)Manchester-Dubai-Melbourne and (b) Manchester-LHR-Singapore-Melbourne… I certainly would choose the former as being less stressful, probably quicker and probably cheaper.

BA has lost the plot by dropping its long distance routes from Manchester-Birmingham-Glasgow or Edinburgh. If other international carriers can make them viable then they are feasible but BA is not interested. Where is the service from the “national carrier”?

BA threw in the towel with BA Connect without giving it a chance to make a profit. This is not the case with LH or AF/KLM where these airlines are in for the long term with their subsidiaries. In fact the paltry 15% which BA obtained in Flybe is now being used to fill AF seats. Could Flybe not have been used as a franchisee? BA is not interested. They have decided not to develop non-London airports just when that is the coalition Government´s policy. What a lack of service!

As a last point, nobody has mentioned flights from London City. Using A318s, either as all business or mixed class flights, which destinations would be feasible(without a fueling stop)?

Now that Willie Walsh has been booted upstairs maybe we will get some logic back into BA route development, let us at least hope so.

[VintageKrug]

Erm..there have been more new routes launched in the past 18 months than have been launched in the previous decade.

And don’t forget BA owns 15% of flybe.

I think the real change will be once BASSA’s power is ended. Today they are ogling for a fight over Mauritius when it moves to Gatwick:

——-

16th February 2011 – LGW – MOA – MRU – MOA – LGW

LGW – MOA – MRU – MOA – LGW

We are aware that many of you have increasing concerns about the future of your MOA agreement and protections it affords you as part of your terms and conditions of employment. You will see that the first pages of your MOA refer to this quite expressly. As we know from the recent court case relating to our LHR colleagues WW agreement, terms set out in collective agreements may be contractual if they have the characteristics to make them apt for inclusion in the contract. Terms relating to pay and benefits and hours of work are more likely to be contractual than working rules or policies. On that basis we are concerned that until today, the company have announced that they are introducing another new route to LGW which is in clear breach of your MOA, without approaching your trade unions.

It is as a result of your support and requests that we have now been invited to attend a meeting with the Company to discuss the MRU route (due to start in November). We shall ensure that you are consulted on any proposals as and when it is appropriate to do so. Rest assured, we are minded to achieve the best possible outcome from negotiations in relation to the development of the MOA.

http://www.uniteba.com/LATESTNEWSUPDATES.html

—-

[continentalclub]

Thanks transtraxman.

There are a couple of points worth mentioning there.

Firstly, the figures show a declining number of passengers currently apparently wish to travel to New Zealand. Accordinly there is less serving of the customer required, not more. The only growth is from Australia, which hasn’t been a suggestion in this thread for British Airways to serve (ie a tag-on from Sydney etc).

Secondly, BA is known as being one of the less obsessive carriers when it comes to aircraft utilisation. That’s why, in general, it offers more social/business-friendly flight times than some others. Look at Newcastle to Hong Kong, for example – Emirates may be cheaper and has high equipment utilisation, but the connnections are much longer than BA via London.

Thirdly, BA’s connecting traffic is enormous – both shorthaul to longhaul and longhaul to longhaul. I’m sure I read something when the 777-300ER was launched last year that said Chicago-London-Mumbai is a hugely significant connection for them. Point-to-point is important, but connections are the key and presumably that’s why Madrid is of such interest.

The Birmingham and Glasgow operations were valued by those that used them, but they flew (sorry!) in the face of modern airline business thinking – thinking which airlines like Emirates have pioneered.

They (Emirates) have a single hub; as does Singapore, as does Cathay, as does Etihad; the list goes on. The current philosophy is to centralise as much of your operation as possible in one place, serve myriad destinations from that point, minimise costs and maximise revenue. What Emirates is doing from Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle and Glasgow to Dubai, BA is doing from Doha, Abu Dhabi, Muscat, Dubai, Bahrain, Kuwait City and Riyadh. What Continental is doing from Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh and Glasgow, BA is doing from Phoenix, Las Vegas, Houston, Denver, Dallas and soon San Diego. There are plenty of other airline, country and city pairs to choose from to illustrate the point.

The previous thinking of maintaining bases in Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow, with limited, low-yield routes therefrom has therefore been superseded by the Emirates-style hub model.

There are also a real benefits in connecting through London from, say Newcastle, rather than say, Dubai – irrespective of airline. For a start, Dubai only makes sense if you are travelling to the Middle East and further East and South East. It is at best a dog’s leg for Africa and clearly not appropriate for anything to the West. Secondly, if you suffer a misconnect in Dubai, you may well be looking at an up to 24 hour delay until the next direct flight back to Newcastle. If that happens in London, then there are four or five flights a day to get you home or, if the worst came to the worst, you could drive or take the train. If you misconnect in Dubai, that’s it – you are limited to flying.

There’s also the matter of on-board product. If flying Business from Newcastle, you’ll be in a big seat to Dubai, but not a bed. If your ultimate destination is served directly from London, then a short hop there and an uninterrupted flat bed flight onward is preferable for a significant number of people.

And, if you’re carrying more than the standard baggage allowance then you’ll pay very significantly more for additional pieces and weight on Emirates than you will on some other carriers.

Emirates is noted for cheap one-way tickets and good ticket flexibility, though the latter cannot be serviced by its comparatively limited online functionality.

It’s clearly a balance, and individuals can make personal decisions, but the airlines have to work with the desires of majorities as they operate in the mass-market.

London City is indeed an interesting one, and there are persistent rumours on BT about new routes, but nothing is confirmed yet. Westbound is clearly where the money lies, so the Shannon Shuffle looks set to be a feature – in other directions I am not sure that the A318 would get much further than Nice without a fuel stop outbound; if it would go further then perhaps only Moscow would have the demand for the Club World London City product. A318s with economy or even a non-bed business class product (like Iberia’s forthcoming midhaul seat) would presumably bump up the take-off weight to the detriment of fuel capacity and therefore range.

[transtraxman]

continentalclub : Thanks for the information. Your points are taken and understood.

My point, though, is looking beyond the hub and spoke system. With no third runway at Heathrow, and Gatwick restricted to one runway (until 2019 at least), from where does BA expand?It has even had to give up slots to JFK, Miami and Boston.

BA being the British part of IAG gives it two possibilities (a) from non-London airports in GB or (b) by blowing open the market with long haul flights from Amsterdam (Vueling is setting up a base there), Copenhagen (SunAir providing the feeder flights) or even from Düsseldorf (Air Berlin providing the feeds) or wherever.

The last long term solution is to offer fewer frequencies but use larger aircraft. This would mean only A380s to JFK, Chicago, Los Angeles and Miami- it is a luxury to fly into/from Orlando, Tampa, Miami and Fort Lauderdale as has been suggested. Each flight/destination is a slot and if you cannot obtain the slots you have to reduce the choice, either in frequency or in destinations. That is BA´s dilemma.

[VintageKrug]

Not really. It will expand at Gatwick, it will expand at Madrid.

[Sparepocket]

When exactly is BA’s first A380 due to be flown?

[Potakas]

If there are not any further changes the first A380 is to be delivered by the 1st quarter of 2013

[Author]

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