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.

There are several things here. Firstly, you’re more than welcome to purchase a return air ticket and not use the return….but if you are in a country that wants you out then you’ll be in trouble. Of course a lot of airlines are now moving to a simplified ticketing system in which you pay for each leg at it’s value, such as when you buy with BA. This is one of the ways in which backpackers can get single tickets. However most of them are actually on Round The World (RTW) tickets, offered by a selection of airlines and alliances, along with a number of independent travel companies. Typically you decide in advance where you want to go and when and the tickets are booked and the usual IATA discounts applied acorss the board where necessary, although these are typically cheaper even than the IATA discounts because the independent agents get good deals from the airlines. Each of the big alliances offer their own RTW tickets, all with varying restrictions etc. This is therefore how many travellers overcome the issue of needing a ticket to leave a country, you do not necessarily need a RETURN ticket, but simple a flight out, it doesn’t matter where to.

If you use Opodo or Expedia then these sites typically can put together ridiculous itineraries because they are parts of the international Computer Reservations Systems that we’re all used to in the travel agents, and therefore they can take all the flights available and put them together, with IATA ticketing systems allowing itineraries to be discounted to a reasonable level.

Indeed it was available much sooner. But we have seen plenty of examples of airlines that have been willing to wait for the product they want. As I pointed out in my comments Emirates is only one example. I will concede that Emirates has already stated that it is loking at ordering the 200LR. I think the point still stands with the remainder though, and I have seen it speculated that some of those airlines actually wrote to Boeing stating that they wanted RR engines.

Everything I can find about the matter suggest Boeing is hoping for sales of around 300 200LRs over the next 20 year (I’m just trawling ATI now to see what Boeing have to say…but it is full of the usual masses of articles to sift through)

He has been doing ALOT. And the airline hasn’t even taken off yet. We have to hope he can fill some seats and make some money…or else it counts for nothing, and I’m suprised Martin has been nominated for an award so soon, as I say we have yet to see the business succeed. I share Mark L’s thoughts above.

In fairness it was a very naive opinion expressed by Andrewm, but no doubt I’d get shouted down for that…so maybe I should shut up now… 😉

I’m not honestly sure whether they are likely to purchase the aircraft, or whether they are likely to take at least some of them on operating lease. However, there is one good point about being a state owned carrier such as Biman….when you need money there is usually a pot of gold somewhere… 😉

Ah well then, can’t help.