That is a shame we used the service at the end of last month as we live just down the road from Stansted. Earlier they were talking of putting on a second flight from Stansted to JFK. Our flight was full.
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That is a shame we used the service at the end of last month as we live just down the road from Stansted. Earlier they were talking of putting on a second flight from Stansted to JFK. Our flight was full.
You will find there will be a lot of this going on as they try to manouvere themselves into a stronger position for the UK -US routes. Seems silly that they will can the route if there is a lot of demand for it.
Jet.com did a trial sevice from Leeds - Dusseldorf 2 years ago and this was full all the time, so they kept it on. You will find that a lot of airlines will only commit to a few months to test the water, if it does not work out financially they will withdrawl the route.
<blockquote id="quote" class="ffs">quote:Originally posted by domster
You will find that a lot of airlines will only commit to a few months to test the water, if it does not work out financially they will withdrawl the route.
[/quote]
My point was that in this instance there are strong indications that American introduced the route specifically to kill off the competition for their Business Class customers from the likes of Maxjet, Eos & Silverjet. It may well be that they didn't care if they made money or not and that's evidenced by the very cheap premium fares.
Although Jill's flight was full, on the whole the service wasn't that popular amongst the passengers American was targetting.
Silverjet suspended operations this morning.[msnsad]
Katys Grandad
You are i think quite right about the AA policy of trying to kill off the opposition. They are very aggressive and predatory and have been known to employ this tactic in the past in particular in the caribean/south ammerican region.
Flew back yesterday on what must have been one of the last Silverjet flights. Where as the flight out, nearly 3 weeks ago, was about 80% full, the flight yesterday was only about 40% full. I guess that once the press start to report the potential financial problems, booking rapidly decline.
Pity, they were offering a good service.
<blockquote id="quote" class="ffs">quote:Pity, they were offering a good service.[/quote]
Sales-wise they started to irritate the big boys, which is why they squashed them.
It is the downside of a free market, the big boys can afford to stand the losses and undercut them, as they did with Freddie Laker* many years ago.
*Freddie Laker pioneered cheap flights to the USA some 30 years ago, much to the annoyance of BA and PanAm TWA etc.
Initially it was a huge success and he took a big share of the market, so the big airlines 'squashed' him and his airline collapsed overnight. However they acted as a cartel and lost a court action - but it was too late for Laker.
History repeats itself.
It is a terrible, terrible, terrible shame that this has happened. They have fought their way through from BAA not wanting them as they wanted private facilities - no retail purchasing opportunity, to AA and their tactics.