Making money they are but no I don’t doubt they aren’t making vast fortunes at the moment.

Now where did I read recently that loss making US airlines such as ATA and US Airways see their transatlantic routes as being their best source of income and that they see their “financial salvations” in these routes ?

Continental and American are currently discussing increasing their UK regional services, Continental in a big way as has been reported widely. So my question is why can US carriers identify a market that BA can’t or won’t see?

The demand is clearly there and at GLA in particular, more so than it was in the early 90’s when BA operated it’s JFK service.

Which is exactly why we see US expanding and announcing new transatlantic routes, even with such a dire outlook.
BA, or bmi could quite easily operate from the regions more. EDI, GLA etc.
VS may have more trouble due to the lack of connectign traffic they would generate, having said that they could offer flights through Virgin Holidays, as at MAN, flights to MCO during the summer even.

Your last point that US airlines “are regularily making money”, can you name a profitable US carrier? Not many of them that’s for sure. BA and VS are making money, so maybe they are doing it right after all.

As has been said before, if an airline can operate a route profitably then one will surely do so. I’m sure BA and the rest would love LHR size bases at every UK airport, but it’s not going to happen. Shame really.

1L.

I believe that most if not all US airlines’ international(i.e long haul US-UK) routes are profitable, which are what are in question here.

My point about the North-South relationship was that a particular aircraft being based at MAN was not in any way a conscious decision to be detrimental towards the North by an airline based in the South, which was what RIPConcorde had implied in his opening post. Hope I didn’t offend anyone.

Said on a tongue in cheek manner, hence the ‘ 😉 ‘ I would be equally disappointed if they were operating an aircraft in that state from any of the airports down South.

I think we just get fed up with the London centric approach by BA to long/medium haul services. As I’ve asked many times… Why doesn’t BA offer transatlantic scheduled services from other UK regions including Glasgow/Edinburgh ?

Why must we either route through LHR/MAN/LGW or use a US carrier, not that there’s anything wrong with US carriers mind you?

Because if they did the aircraft they used would be filthy and would let down their image even more? :diablo: