BA and BCal lowered many fares to stop Laker from grabbing their market share, Laker operated at a loss, and there is only so long you can do that for. Have you also looked at Zoom as a current business model? Also consider Flyglobespan, although they’re fairly new to the game.

From Wikipedia (i.e. type laker airways into google!)..

Skytrain
In 1971 Laker Airways submitted an application to the UK’s Air Transport Licensing Board (ATLB), one of the forerunners of today’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), to launch the world’s first daily transatlantic, low-fare scheduled service between London and New York, charging a then incredibly low one-way fare of £32.50. This was more than two-thirds less than what the major, established “flag” carriers were charging at the time. The proposed service was to be marketed using the “Skytrain” trademark and was to be initially operated with 158-seat, single-class Boeing 707-138Bs that were acquired second-hand. “Skytrain” was to be a “walk-on”, “walk-off” operation that did not require any advance reservations. Instead seats were to be sold to the travelling public at each end of the route on a “first come, first served” basis only.

Although the ATLB granted Laker a licence for a daily London-New York “Skytrain” service the same year itself, it specified Stansted rather than Gatwick as the service’s UK departure/arrival point.

The then newly formed CAA confirmed Laker’s licence at its inauguration in 1972.

However, under intense pressure from the established airlines, including Laker’s archrival and next-door Gatwick neighbour British Caledonian (BCal), against a backdrop of huge losses and overcapacity on the North Atlantic in the aftermath of the global energy crisis caused by OPEC’s oil embargo, the UK’s Labour Government of that era decided to revoke Laker’s licence in 1975.

Freddie Laker took the Government to the UK High Court, which overturned the Government’s decision to revoke the airline’s licence for a “Skytrain” service between London and New York.

It took another two years until Laker gained final approval – including a reciprocal permit from the relevant US authorities – to commence “Skytrain”.

(In the meantime, Peter Shore, the then Secretary of State for Trade, had conducted a review of the Government’s aviation policy and in 1976 announced a new “spheres of influence” policy that ended “dual designation” for British airlines on all long-haul routes. As a result of this new aviation policy BA and BCal were no longer permitted to run competing scheduled services on the same long-haul routes and the latter was forced to withdraw from the London-New York and London-Los Angeles routes, leading to the revocation of BCal’s Gatwick-JFK and Gatwick-L.A. licences. The same year, Edmund Dell, the then Secretary of State for Transport, renounced the original Bermuda air services agreement of 1946 and initiated bilateral negotiations with his US counterparts on a new air services agreement, which resulted in the Bermuda II treaty of 1977.)

Laker’s long-running “Skytrain” application was finally granted in 1977 upon designating the airline as the second UK flag carrier between London and New York under the then just-concluded Bermuda II UK-US air agreement. At the last minute prior to the inaugural “Skytrain” flight from London to New York Laker also received Government permission to use its Gatwick base as the service’s UK departure and arrival point, rather than Stansted as originally specified in its licence.

“Skytrain” took to the air for the first time on September 1, 1977 when the service’s inaugural flight departed London Gatwick for New York JFK. The inaugural service was operated by one of the airline’s 345-seat McDonnell Douglas DC-10-10 widebodied aircraft. The fares charged at the time were £59 one-way from London and $99 one-way from New York.

“Skytrain” became a financial success in its first year of operation itself leading to further expansion over the coming years, in terms of both new routes as well as additional frequencies.

As a result of his clever publicity stunts to market the then brand-new London-New York “Skytrain” service, Freddie Laker himself became popular with the public (“the forgotten man’s hero”) and was regarded as one of Margaret Thatcher’s “golden boys” of industry (along with Sir Clive Sinclair and Sir Alan Sugar). The former Conservative Prime Minister was a self-confessed “Freddie Laker fan”.

However, it was James Callaghan’s “pro-union” Labour Government that awarded Laker his knighthood for services to the airline industry in 1978, rather than Margaret Thatcher’s subsequent “pro-business” Conservative administration.

As “Skytrain” expanded, the airline placed orders for additional McDonnell Douglas DC-10 widebodies, including the company’s first order for five longer range series 30 aircraft, which were delivered from December 1979 onwards to support its growing number of destinations and frequencies.

The airline also became one of the early buyers of the first Airbus airliner, the A300, ordering ten of these widebodies in 1978 and had plans to deploy the aircraft on a new network of intra-European “Skytrain” routes in a big way.

“Skytrain” came to an end when the airline went spectacularly bankrupt on February 5, 1982.

[edit] Laker Airways’ collapse and the end of Skytrain
In 1982 the company went bust, owing over a quarter of a billion pounds. The airline made its last flight on February 6, 1982, the day after the airline went bankrupt.

There were numerous reasons for what was termed the biggest corporate failure in Britain at the time:

Both Britain and the US were in recession and other airlines who were blaming Laker for the losses they had incurred as a result of being forced to compete with “Skytrain” desperately wanted it to fail.
BCal’s senior management’s intense displeasure at the Government’s decision to revoke its own – at the time unused – Gatwick-JFK and Gatwick-L.A. licences in order to enable Laker to substitute BCal as the designated second UK flag carrier on both of these routes under Bermuda II’s strict dual designation rules undermined BCal’s future expansion plans and, therefore, made it more likely that BCal would join in or lead any campaign to put Laker out of business.
Laker’s outspoken opposition to the anti-competitive practises to which IATA member airlines resorted at the time to stifle any serious attempt to compete with them made Laker many enemies in the IATA camp who wanted to be rid of the competitve threat Laker posed to them in the long term, including many airlines that actually did not compete directly with Laker’s “Skytrain”.
Laker Airways had expanded too quickly in the late 1970s/early 1980s when it took delivery of a large fleet of brand-new DC-10 and A300 widebodies, which had been bought with funds borrowed at too high a rate of interest.
The company was undercapitalised and did not enjoy the financial back-up of any significant assets, which seriously undermined its ability to withstand a concerted and prolonged campaign to put it out of business at the depth of the 1981/2 recession at the hands of its financially stronger competitors.
Laker Airways incurred a revenue loss estimated at $13m when the world-wide DC-10 fleet was grounded as a result of having its certificate of airworthiness temporarily withdrawn in the aftermath of the American Airlines DC-10 crash at Chicago O’Hare in May 1979.
Some passengers may also have perceived the DC-10 as unsafe as a result of a string of fatal accidents involving the aircraft within a short timespan during the late 1970s (including the 1979 AA Chicago crash).
The implications of Laker Airways’ strategic decision to build its business on discount travellers only.
The fallout from the company’s demise descended into litigation.

Regarding the Flybe takeover of BA Connect at Bhx, Ive been told its from the 1st january and they are moving there entire operation to terminal 2?, will flybe continue to operate the existing BA aircraft, If so will they get a repaint into flybe colours, or will they get rid and just intergrate the BA routes into there existing ones.

They are temporarily integrating the BA COnnect fleet, but they intend to replace these aircraft ASAP with their own types. The RJ145s for example could never deliver the seat-mile costs they need for the Flybe business model, hence they need to get rid of them ASAP.

Well EVA have today asked Boeing to change their 777-200LRs to 777Fs. They want 13x 777-300ER and 2x 777F.

Abbotsinch has gained lots of based aircraft and is still in decline – 4 consecutive months of minus growth is officially a recession I believe?

The problem at Abbotsinch is the demise of it’s charter market, folk are no longer ‘sent’ there by the High Street
Travel trade.

CAA figures show that the charter market at Abbotsinch declined by 214,524 passengers in 2004 and by a further 190,278 in 2005.

What figure 2006?

Abbotsinch was particularly vunerable because most High Street bookable Scottish charter flights were only available from there. Look at the travel agent branch closures in recent years, based charter aircraft need strong travel agent arms to feed them.

Folk now have a greater choice of flights from more Scottish airports and of course the opportunity of booking
these flights online.

Based aircraft can and do dictate the popularity of airports.

At the end of the day it’s down to the public if they bow to their own choice of departure airport or someone else’s.?

I’m not sure I agree completely with a lot of what you say. If you’d read my earlier point then you’d understand the terminal decline in charter traffic. The passengers who previously booked package holiday flights with charter airlines are now booking independent holidays, often to the same locations, but using scheduled carriers, and consequently the terminal decline actually retains the same number of passengers to given destinations, but switching between charter and scheduled. Take a comparison of one of the top travel spots in Europe, Alicante. In August 2006 the number of passengers on this traditionally charter dominated destination was 35% higher than August 2005, and there although there was a decline in charter traffic on the route, there was an increase in scheduled passengers. You need to look deeper than the bottomline sometimes.

I haven’t looked in detail at the overall figures for the first half, it appears that GSM may have as he’s stated that international traffic has not fallen, and the reduction overall is a result of domestic traffic. This automatically dispels Silver Snapper’s points. Many domestic routes have shown reductions in recent months. As I pointed out earlier the WCML upgrade has had a significant effect.

Where Silver Snapper is correct to some extent is that there has been some switching between airports within Scotland, and why shouldn’t there be? There are a wider range of destinations available from the region now because underlying markets and LCCs have developed to finally support more services to similar destinations from scottish airports. Of course people will fly from their local airports if they finally have a chance, but this is nothing to do with travel agents, it is to do with flights being offered. If a passengers living half way between GLA and EDI walked into an estate agent wanting to go from somewhere specific then they would REQUEST to fly from GLA if that was the only available flight. What is a noticeable is that passenger’s decisions are influenced by more factors nowadays, primarily being price driven. Passengers will travel further to airports in order to get what they feel is the best deal, even if it means paying more in petrol and parking!

Yes, this is an example of 5th freedom rights, i.e. carrying fare paying passengers between two points in two different countries in which the airline is not based. The basis of 5th freedom rights started in the principle that airlines of member states (members of ICAO that signed up to each subsequent convention) would be able to make a transit stop at any airport in any other member state. However the airline was not permitted to carry fare paying passengers from that point onto another country without the permission of the member state.

With the exception of only a few routes, nowadays we tend to look on 5th freedom rights as being exclusively related to picking up passengers to take to another country, because the majority of long haul routes can no be served non-stop.

This issue is also related to the 7th Article of the convention which relates to cabotage, in which an airline based in one country can pick up and carry passengers between two domestic points in another country. Although in the Qantas case this is 5th freedom only, not 7th (cabotage) because it is between the US and Canada.

Liberalisation of various markets, including the EU have led to situations in which airlines, through ‘open-skies’ agreements can undertake unrestricted flights between countries in which their not based, including domestic flights.

Thanks for your help you guy’s.

Of course not as there is no flights direct to the island from the UK. But that could all change:) (Proberly won’t but i can hope.)

P.S my friend recently got back from a cruise that stopped in SXM and he said there was quite a few brits there. Not just from the cruise.

The truth is that cultural issues come into play. SXM is dominated by Dutch and French tourists because of historic cultural links. Therefore the hotels and facilities would be specically designed for them, just as ex-British colonial islands in the Caribbean are dominated by British Tourists.

At the VERY best (but also HIGHLY unlikely) you may get a charter operator to put a weekly service into the island, but there is certainly no way that a scheduled carrier would operate it because tourists would need the full package as the majority of travellers would not be willing to undertake an independent journey to this ‘unknown’ desination until it was more established with UK travellers. The few brits that were there without being on cruises would be among the exception, and I suspect they would not fill regular scheduled services.

The Long Haul charter market is very ‘fad’ based, consequently there is always going to be somewhere ‘new’ that airlines seek to search, but SXM isn’t ‘new’ really because it is catering for French and Dutch travellers. It certainly wasn’t a destination that TCX mentioned last time I spoke to them about market development areas.

……Maybe there trying to free up an aircraft to start flights to SXM with. By the way if you would like to see GSM go to SXM or anywere else go onto the link below and fill out the form as apropiate.)

For that HUGE UK-SXM market you mean? Perhaps I may fill in the form because they should put a flight on to TRW. :diablo: