"nobody" wrote in message
...
Colin W Kingsbury wrote:
travel will grow. There are to the best of my knowledge no 747s
operating in
domestic service in the US (except the occasional repositioning flight)


It wasn't that long ago that United was advertising 747 service between
JFK and LAX on TV.

Actually, it is a few years ago. For the past several years, they were
flying 767-200's mainly. Only a few months ago did they retire these birds
and replace them with their "p.s." configured 757-200's.

Since then, the airline stopped competing on service, and competed on
frequency. So that meant downsizing aircraft and putting more of them.
And that has led the airlines to very inefficient schedules and costly
fleets that have far more planes in them than necessary.

United's "p.s." stands for "premium service." They've upgraded the inflight
service in all three classes, and have a 34" pitch in economy - not just
Economy Plus. And they still serve food (for the time being, at least) in
cattle class.

the 737 is also Southwest's achile's heel. Legacy carriers might come
back with 747 or 38 to serve betwene large cities with fewer
frequencies. The lower operating costs per passenger would allow them to
undercut Southwest.

Not going to happen. The legacies remember the old days when one airline
would bracket another's jumbos with smaller jets and ended up eating their
lunches (Braniff did that to American with 727's vs. DC10's in the late
'70's). Business travelers want frequency.

In other words, the minute the legacy carriers stop competing on
frequency and number of cities served, you might find the return of the
big planes in the USA between the large cities.

And if Virgin can undercut the other carriers on USA-London flights,
what will BA and AA and UA do ? Lose money on the runs by matching
Virgin's fares ?

They'll have no choice. They can't aford to lose market share. Don't
forget that Virgin, for example, has limited feed beyond London; American
and United have tremendous feed beyond their U.S. point of entry. They need
to match frequency to have decent onward connections. That's why most AA
and UA flights between London and the U.S. are on either 767's or 777's
rather than 747's.

They should know by now that you can't charge a premium for higher
frequency. Passengers will flock to the low cost carrier to such an
extent that the LCC will have to increase it frequencies to match demand.

Hub-and-spoke carriers are being bled to death by the point-to-point
LCCs,
who mostly operate 737-size planes.

But the 737 size plane has become the de-facto norm within the U.S. these
days (except for the MD80's AA, AS and DL fly).

The whole "hub and spoke" thing is a sham. Southwest is probably just as
hub-and-spoke as legacy carriers are. They just know how to operate a
hub efficiently and they only serve profitable routes and only have the
capacity that demand can fill.

When you look at the TV programme "Airline", it seems clear to me that
both LAX and Midway are operated as major WN hubs.

They really aren't true "hubs" as the percentage of "connecting" vs. "O&D"
passengers is less than elsewhere.

[snip]

I think the differences in the 380 have more to do with real comfort.
For instance, if they have a duty free shop, instead of trolleys, if
they have a snack bar instead of pax having to wait for FA to come to
their seat etc etc, this would change the way people experience air
travel. It would be more akin to train travel than to conventional air
travel. And in terms of premium classes, the added floor space will
allow the ailrines to give pax much more than on smaller planes.

How so? At best it will reduce costs by say 25%, so instead of
paying $500 for a ticket to Heathrow I might pay $375,

Look at what happened when Southwest and now Jetblue started to charge
less. Not only did people flock to them, but the legacy carriers have
been bleeding to death because they try to match the prices without
equivaoent reduction in operating costs.