I think BA would eb the airline to suffer given the number of flights it has by comparison to Virgin, and to be honest although SIA owns a decent proportion of Virgin they do not work in close partnership other than some codeshares etc. I also forgot to mention that Air New Zealand has 5th freedom rights between LHR and the US, although I don’t think they excercise these rights, which I guess would only amount to LAX even if they did!

Adding a non-stop to augment the one-stop wouldn’t be a bad idea, in my opinion. Also, what 5th freedom rights do Cathay and Kuwait have similar to this?

Kuwait Airways is permitted to pick up passengers at LHR to carry transatlantic, currently they ahve 3 flights per week LHR – JFK. Cathay Pacific has just gained fifth freedom rights from LHR to the US in exchange for Virgin being permitted to operate to Oz via Hong Kong (and getting 5ths there obviously), this greaves Singapore Airlines who have been lobbying to get 5ths through LHR to the US for a long time (and considering they permit UK carriers to pick up Oz bound traffic from Singapore and have done for a lot of years then it is undertsandable that they are annoyed!

I don’t know why AI don’t go direct but I assume that AI know that DEL-LHR is a good route and then LHR-EWR/JFK is a good route. So really AI are killing two birds with one stone.

Why would AI want to go direct when they currently have an almost unique (apart from Cathay and Kuwait) position in that they have 5th freedom rights to pick and carry passengers on the worlds number one route, and to carry transatlantic passengers from LHR full stop.

I must have missed your previous e-mail, what did you apply to do with Servisair? Are you handling pax or aircraft? Well done anyway.

Having looked in Brassey’s World Aircraft & Systems Directory (99/00 Edition, I don’t have anything more recent) BMW does not appear to produce any aircraft engines in their own right.

DTW may be a majoy hub but doenst have half as many connections through from Ireland/UK passengers as EWR does.

That was my point, NWA’s strategy is very different, airline resources are always quite tight and US airlines tend to have certain primary focuses (this is a historical thing also). Because of the locations of DTW and MSP they will never be as efficient for transatlantic traffic as EWR or other more eastern points, the further west you get the less options can be realistically offered to compete. EWR is in a good position because it is a relatively short hop from Europe. It then doesn’t matter where you fly onto as you will almost certainly not eb back tracking. This means that CO can offer more connections and therefore finds it easier to fill planes, something which NWA would sturggle to do if it operated large scale operatiosn to regional UK and European airports. It all goes back to the hub discussions we’ve had in other threads. You have to understand the benefits and disbenefits of each airlines’ hubs to see why the airlines are doing what they do.

It is extremely important to recognise that whilst CO is offering a lot of connections fromt hese regional airports it is mainly able to do so because there is still large point to point demand from most regional airports to New York. They can increase the overall yields on the flight by charging more for these point to point passengers, and therefore they essentially subsidise the feder traffic to some extent. Because MSP and DTW are not major destinations in their own rights then NWA would struggle to prop up the feeder traffic through the provision of some seats to higher yield point to point traffic.

I think NW could turn DTW into a new EWR but perhaps on a smaller scale.

NW already uses DTW as a major hub, even though services to Europe are not so prevelent. Also remember that MSP (Minneapolis – St. Paul) is NW’s major hub. Both cities have frequent connections to Amsterdam, offering onward connections to an even wider range of regional destinations in that way. It is important to recognise differences in historical long haul routes to understand what NWA is doing through its hubs. Traditionally Northwest has been a transpacific carrier, with more limited trans-atlantic services, whereas Continental was a late starter in the long haul market, and most of it’s operations are trans-atlantic in this respect (although they are expanding West to go transpacific). Basically what you have is a focus by NWA to feed trans-continental and trans-pacific services through its hubs.

With regards to Africa. There are several European airlines with fairly reasonable coverage, and these tend to follow typical patterns based on former colonies. Yes BA has a good coverage, although frequency to some routes is poor (a demand driven issue). Air France has good coverage of Africa, as does SN Brussels (Africa makes up the majority of their long haul flights). Kenya Airways is partly owned by KLM and so is automatically aligned in this way, especially as it has codeshare arrangements with Northwest aswell.

Remember also that BA have an agreement with Comair in South Africa offering a distinct benefit that other European Airlines have not got. The agreements with Comair cover a number of points not only in South Africa itself but in other Southern African countries, the use of this agreement has tended to be BA’s preference compared to direct services.