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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Does Southwest ever sell A-B-C cheaper than it sells A-B ???? The legacy
carriers often do that. And they probably lose lots of money just trying
to match another airline.

If B is a large city, than it is only normal to have A-B and C-B
flights. It makes B a hub. But that doesn't force that airline to sell
A-B-C ticket for a low price to matych a LCC that does A-C on a smaller
aircraft that matches the actual demand between A and C.


But compared to Asia and Europe, the US
is larger and more sparsely populated, so similar patterns may or may not
emerge. Growth in East/Southeast Asia alone may well make the A380 a
success.

On the other hand, the window for trans-atlantic flights is fairly
narrow and it becomes less economic to run multiple flights at about the
same time of day compared to running one bigger plane.

In terms of having diverse fleet, consider that even Southwest is
starting to have it, with 737s of different sizes and range. So they
can't subsitute any 737s for a broken on at an airport.

Compared to this, the 7E7 is as close to a sure thing as aviation offers, if
it meets performance goals.

The 7E7 is a sure thing because the market to replace aging 767s is there.

However, consider long haul flights of more than 8 hours. They require 2
crews. Running 2 7E7s on a 14 hour flight instead of 1 380 requires
double the number of pilots (8 instead of 4) and probably more FAs as
well (but less than double).

And because this is more than 12 hours, you require even more planes,
and thus more crews. For very long range flights, it doesn't pay to
fragment your schedule and serve smaller towns. For very long flights,
the transfer costs at the hub/gateway are smaller than the savings from
operating less aircraft on the very long stretch across the ocean.


You're basically taking a proven design and
making it substantially cheaper to operate, which is always without question
a winning combination. All other things being equal I expect both planes to
succeed, but the 7E7 to be more profitable.

The 380 is to the 747 what the 7E7 is to the 767.

However, the 7E7 is far from a proven design. composite fulselage and
bleed air replaced with all electric systems. It may look promising, it
but itsn't proven yet.

We'll know in a few months if the 380 has delivered on promises or not.


What I do question is the notion that this will somehow "transform" air
travel.

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.