Open Skies Agreement

RE: Open Skies Agreement

well, I’ve never flown on an airline that gave out anything but minatures, so I can’t comment on Lufty.

With regards headsets, fair dos to United, then. (Do you think they’ll refund me for the $5 I gave them for a headset five years ago, though?… Spot the stereotypical Scot ;))

RE: Open Skies Agreement

I can’t vouch for the majority of U.S. carriers, as I don’t fly them frequently. But I always vouch for United, and vouch negatively for America West, as I have flown them 2 the most. America West sucks. Anything bad that is said about U.S. carriers is valid, with them, on any front. Hell, they don’t serve meals on any segment less than 4 hours, even in 1st class! I’m sure there are shitty Euro airlines like HP, as well. United is a while different ballgame. First of all, they don’t charge for headsets on domestic flights, the only U.S. carrier to do so. As far as meals on segments around 2 hours, they will at least serve a snack, if not a meal, which usually includes a little sandwhich, some chips and a candy bar, or something. One thing that United does, that no Euro airline that I’ve flown on does, is give you the entire can of soda with the ice in a plastic cup. Also, they will give you the miniatures, whereas Lufthansa, pours the booze from a bottle. I prefer the mini’s. Anyway, I just had to protect my airline. Amazing how talking about open skies led to this!

GD1

RE: Open Skies Agreement

ok, fair enough, but virgin blue/virgin red are low cost carriers, so you’d have to compare them with Southwest or jetblue or something.

What I would say about domestic flights in the states is that you don’t get a meal on flights of less than two hours on some airlines, because of cutbacks post 9/11? BA offer meals (of sorts, anyway :S) on their one hour flight from LHR to MAN.

I dunno, maybe I’m not comapring like with like, but on a transcon flight in coach, if you don’t want to shell out for the headsets, there’s nothing to do. The flight’s just too long.

Ah hell, I don’t jnow where this srgument is going, really :S

RE: Open Skies Agreement

No Bhoy, I don’t think I know how bad the U.S. domestic service is, enlighten me please. I fly United trans-con all the time, and even on shorter routes, and it’s comperable to any European airline I’ve flown on, which include Lufthansa, Austrian, KLM, and Olympic. I’m sure we could learn a lot from the likes of Virgin Blue, right? I flew them too. There service was adequate, nothing spectacular. I’ll take the service on a UA flight of around an hour over theirs anyday. At least I won’t have to pay for my soda or peanuts, of even water!! I’m sure VirginRed would be just as comperaple as VirginBlue, and they’d show us a thing or 2 I’m sure! You guys need to get over this whole issue of U.S. domestic travel not being up to par with yours, real quick, because it’s a bunch of B.S. Sure, our any U.S. carrier service isn’t going to be as good as the Singapore’s or the Emirates’ or the Virgin Atlantic’s of the world. But other than them, they’re just as good. Oh, and by the way, thanks for the explanation on the Open Skies agreement, and no, I’m not being sarcastic on this front. It was actually pretty good, and very informative. Lots of things I didn’t know, like the Virgin LAS slot.

GD1

RE: Open Skies Agreement

and yes, I’m aware that you’ll never get 14 airlines competing on one route, but it would allow the market to regulate itself, meaning profitable routes have competition on them, and less profitable routes could be niche marketed (if not just cancelled).

Also, I’m aware BA or bmi will never enter full blown into the US domestic market, if anything, they’d cherrypick routes, but it could still give the US Carriers the added competition to improve their Domestic product. At the end of the day, most passengers are just looking for the best price/comfort ratio they can get (if it earns miles through either oneworld, Star or Skyteam, all the better).

This should see prices come down, and the comfort improved as they try to out do each other for amenities.

Here’s hoping.

RE: Open Skies Agreement

Saab with regards your query about Virgin red…

As I understand it, openskies would look to take away the current 25% maximum stake in a US airline owned by non US-citizens, so theoretically Virgin red could be a fully owned subsiduary of, say, VS. They are unlikely to do so, but it would make it easier to raise the finances to start the airline in the first place if Richard Branson was allowed to put up more than 25% of the startup costs.

Other than that, I don’t think it makes any difference whatsoever, as the idea would be for it to be US registered, anyway.

RE: Open Skies Agreement

gd, I do agree with you that it’s nonsensical. I’ve tried to do a little more background reading into Bermuda II on the web, but haven’t found much up to date stuff.

Basically, in 1946, the Bermuda agreement was signed in Bermuda between the US and UK, pretty much liberalising air transport between the UK and the US. In the early 70’s, when Transatlantic travel became widely avaliable with the introduction of the 747, the UK objected to the amount of freedom US airlines had in their operations to the UK, as, because of the number of US airlines (remember, at the time BOAC was the only major UK airline), the UK airline (ie BOAC) was being swamped in the market. Thus, in 1976, the Bermuda II was signed, limiting the carriers permitted to fly from LHR to the US to three (the fledgling British Airways, Pan American Airways and Trans World Airlines) as of 1977. There were also a limit to the destinations that could be served from London.

There are no such limits from the UK regional airports (although all such services are mainly to the East Coast, particularly Florida) and are (or rather, were the info I looked up was pre 9/11 and I’m not sure how many routes have since been cancelled): from Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow (Glasgow Prestwick until the early 90’s, Glasgow International since) and Belfast (Aer Lingus with en route stop at DUB).

The Agreement stayed pretty much as was until 1991, when Pan Am ceased flying. As a tradeoff for changing the US airlines from PA and TWA to AA and UA, Virgin Atlantic was also granted permission to operate from LHR (Previously, they had been limited to LGW).

Now, that basicaly explains the situation now. With regards to your query about BA’s service to Denver, they did stop serving a few destinations, although I couldn’t tell you offhand which one this was for. I have been able to check up that when BA stoped their LGW-PIT service in 99 (BA had exclusive rights to PIT as a gateway), rather than give the route to US Airways, who wanted a route to London from their Pittsburgh hub, the ‘gateway’ was given to VS, as an alternate UK carrier, who used it to start their flights to Las Vegas.

Now, were there openskies now, VS could have started a route to Vegas anyway, and PIT would still be served direct from LGW (actually, I think US Airways got it later, anyway. I think)

There are (or were when the report was written, anyway) 14 carriers operating scheduled passenger services between the UK and the US:

British Airways
bmi british midland
Virgin Atlantic
American
Continental
Delta
Northwest
United
US Airways
Aer Lingus
Air India
Air New Zealand
Kuwait Airways
Pakistan International Airlines

just think of the choice you’d have if the market was liberalised! 14 airlines, all competing for your custom, trying to offer the best servic and the cheapest price. the market would look after itself, and US airlines could operate European services, and UK airlines could operate domestic services in the US. Again, definate benefit. We all know how poorly the service on domestic US flights is… imagine they had the competition from BA and bmi, whose domestic service on flights that rarely last longer than an hour and a half is of better quality than that of a 4 hour transcontinental domestic flight in the States.

Make sense now?

see also: http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm199900/cmselect/…

RE: Open Skies Agreement

So United can’t allocate one of their slots for the Denver flight, but BA can. I’m curious as to whether BA had to eliminate one of their gateways, when they began serving Denver. I would think, ‘probably not.’

GD1

RE: Open Skies Agreement

gd, the current argreement, the Bermuda II, limits not only the number of airlines that can operate from LHR to the US, but also the amount of gateways each airline can serve. So UA can’t serve Denver unless they stop serving one of their other destinations.

This is why I’m saying it is in everyone’s interest that openskies gets given the go ahead.

RE: Open Skies Agreement

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 22-09-02 AT 07:46 AM (GMT)]Ok,I get you there now.Thanks.
Just a question,if Open Skies did come about would that help,for example,Virgin expand in the US with their proposed low cost airline Virgin Red?Is part of the current agreement preventing them from doing this or am I on the wrong lines here?

RE: Open Skies Agreement

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 22-09-02 AT 03:13 AM (GMT)]Kabir, first of all, I don’t need to chill out. I had every right to declare my amazement. Had I posted something about U.K. charter airlines(which of course I never would), there would have been like 50 replies. Or perhaps, post a pic from airliners.net, and get 20 or so replies of, “nice pic,” “beautiful pic,” “lovely pic.” That’s fair enough, but considering the controversy of this particular topic, not one lousy response one day later? Anyway, good to see there was about 10 or so eventually. And I was well aware Mongu was out of town, hence the statement “Where is he when I need him?” If he was in town, I wouldn’t have needed to said that, he would have more than likely been the first to respond. So now my take on the subject. To my understanding, only 4 airlines are allowed to fly from LHR to any destination in the U.S. I’m not quite sure where the source of that is, but that’s fair enough. Given that United happens to be one of those 4, they serve LHR from LAX, SFO, IAD, JFK, EWR, ORD and BOS. Four of these seven being only once daily. Why the hell shouldn’t they be allowed to have one daily from DEN as well? Prior to 9/11, they had 3 dailies to LHR from JFK, and now only 2. Also, LAX and SFO both were twice daily. So theoretically, why can’t they use one of those slots for a Denver flight?

GD1

RE: Open Skies Agreement

I still browse du temp au temp, especaially when I’m in the office on Saturdays!

United’s position that BA and VS are the causes of the UK government’s commie stance surprises me. Both airlines have repeatedly said they would welcome open skies. In fact BA pushed hard for open skies when it was triying to semi-merge with AA.

I think it will, eventually, happen. But I am not sure if United have the capability to exploit an open sky market? I have similar doubts on BA, which was shoved out of the top 100 companies on the London Stock Exchange recently. Virgin are perpetually in poor financial health, but they do have the backing of Singapore Airlines. Virgin will be one big beneficiary of open skies.

The one I am unsure of is BMI. Neither United nor Lufty will want any actual competition from them – just to boost their ability to sell transatlantic tix from LHR – ie. to build up the Star presence at LHR.

RE: Open Skies Agreement

ah, but it isn’t an issue of slots… it’s a case of destinations for each airline being limited.

Once open skies comes, bmi could transfer some of it’s european slots to transatlantic slots, Continental and Northwest could buy slots of one of the bankrupt companies, eg Sabena in Europe.

But BA, Virgin, United and American could fly to anywhere in the states, and not just the designated ‘entry’points, as now…

So the passenger would profit by having more point to point routes, a wider choice of airline, and more competitive fares.

RE: Open Skies Agreement

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 20-09-02 AT 03:57 PM (GMT)]Did I say that it was because of slots at LHR?No.All I suggested was, that if all these 5 airlines are allowed in to LHR through the introduction of Open Skies,then how do they get slots at LHR because to me it looks pretty full.If this agreement did come about,then enough slots have to come for the new airlines so they can viably compete.

RE: Open Skies Agreement

no, no, no… it’s not about LHR being full… it’s about where airlines can fly to from Heathrow.

The sooner openair gets the go ahead, the better.

RE: Open Skies Agreement

Although I would like to see all the major US airlines operating into LHR,I really think that the interests of both countries must be protected,for example having US Airways,Continental,Northwest and Delta all coming in to LHR,where does that leave bmi who want to compete on the US routes?
Also the amount of slots avaliable for these airlines is a problem,LHR is full,how are 4 new airlines going to find slots?

RE: Open Skies Agreement

I may be completely ignorant on the subject, but it seems to me in one sense the UK is protecting the interest of its carriers (3 vs how many?). However, I think it does go a bit far in favour of BA. I think the other two British majors (Virgin and BMI) should have access also.

I know in Canada from Toronto to London AC has five direct flights a day and BA has two. I don’t know if that is all BA wants, but have had a healthy trade relationship with UK for a long time (Commonwealth).

Not sure if those comments are worthwhile or not.

RE: Open Skies Agreement

>It’s absolutely amazing to me, that I can’t get one lousy
>response to this, from a predominantly U.K. forum. Where’s
>Mongu when I need him?
>
>GD1

chill out GD1 … i would have replied if i was familiar with the topic, and Mongu is off for 5-6 weeks.

RE: Open Skies Agreement

It’s absolutely amazing to me, that I can’t get one lousy response to this, from a predominantly U.K. forum. Where’s Mongu when I need him?

GD1