UK Airport spread of routes in country vs. Everyone else!

[JENNYJET]

I have not trawled the forums to find any kind of answer or general opinion but my restless mind forces me to inquire upon a potential problem underlying BHX ambitions and possibly restricted expansion of services.

Has any of the worthy and great herein undertaken a detailed comparison of services per airport via ranking by nation?

e.g., Germany has Frankfurt, Munich, Dusseldof and Berlin in that order with Lufthansa and it's in house units operating all kinds of routes without a similar snob factor that LHR has over UK airport operations.

If BA cannot bring itself to fly the mainline flag from BHX, why not use Vueling, Aer Lingus, Iberia to operate the long haul flights using the 'fleet' according to need? e.g, Vueling being given a Iberia A340 to operate Barcelona-Birmingham-Los Angeles? Aer Lingus to use it's A330 to run BHX-DUB-JFK-LAX?

The Germans use Lufthansa Cityline instead of mainline services but use the fleet.

Am I waffling or do I make some kind of sense?

 

[User001]

So are you asking if it would be possible that a 5th freedom type route would be likely from the likes of BA?

I'm honestly not quite sure what you mean by the first part of the post however?

 

[Ray Finkle]

I think I know what you mean but it's that phrase 'according to need'. I dare say that an Iberia A340 would make more money flying direct from Madrid than doing the likes of BCN-BHX-LAX. Similar for Aer Lingus out of Dublin.

Lufthansa also have huge short haul networks from Munich etc which feeds pax onto their long haul network. Flybe have started doing feed at MAN, BHX and Scotland but it's quite limited compared to LH. Germany is also much larger than the UK.

The best hope for BHX getting a decent long haul network is get Norwegian to test the water and do everything they can to make sure it works. Their MAX could be ideal to the US east coast and the economics of their 787's could make longer routes viable. If they could get feed from the likes of Flybe that could only help.

The problem is getting them to try in the first place.

 

[JENNYJET]

I clearly was not precise in my thinking but here goes, Fueling, Iberia, Aer Lingus and dear old BA are the International Airlines Group of companies. One and all amongst each other having a fleet of aircraft second only to no one.

As a grouping, operating as individual entities seems odd when together Thay can do almost anything that offers the group benefit to themselves and the people's they serve.

I had thought that as a grouping of airlines they would have the flexibility to allocate any available aircraft to any route as the need arises. e.g., Vueling have a surge of bookings on a unspecified route to BHX, rather than turn away people because the A320 is full, they could, perhaps call upon a unallocated A340 from Iberia or B787/or B767 from BA to operate a flight in demand? Is that too fanciful of me or poor asset management from a grouping of airlines seeking to meet its obligations to shareholders?

Smaller operators when stuck seek solutions by entering the short leasing market when their fleet is exhausted but IAG is huge and I believe ( in ignorance perhaps ) that aircraft sit idle at times.

I recall the stories or myths of BA struggling to operate a routine domestic shuttle flight from Heathrow when some bright spark suggested using a recently arrived Concorde still with warm engines and sufficient fuel to fill the gap and service the schedule. It is that scenario I was thinking about with my opening post to this thread.

Utilizing group aircraft as needed regardless of what emblem is on the tail, do I make any sense?

 

[jfy1999]

Jennyjet, I think you might be imagining the IAG group to have the same kind of operation as the Thomas Cook or TUI groups. Those groups often switch aircraft between their airlines when needed, for example, Thomson 787s fly for TUIfly Nordic, their 767's fly for TUIfly Germany, and Condor, Thomas Cook and Thomas Cook Scandinavia often swap aircraft around too. But they can easily do this because they're all the same brand.

I'd say IAG is more like the Air France/KLM partnership. Air France and KLM are two parts in one airline group. Technically Air France-KLM is one super-airline, but each of its two arms has its own independent hub and they never exchange aircraft. The reason BA, IB, EI and VY never exchange aircraft is because they're all different brands, each with its own hub and market.

 

[User001]

The issue is unions too.

No one at Vueling will be A340-600 trained, and I doubt that the unions would allow the Iberia crews to operate a Vueling route due to all sorts of contract issues.

If ever IAG amalgamated into one big brand, it could happen, however, things are far too political for Iberia, Aer Lingus and British Airways to disappear for an 'IAG Airways'.

In a simple world. Would be great to see what you suggest, but, I doubt it would ever happen in my lifetime.

 

[JENNYJET]

Thank you all for your thoughts but yet again I fear being misunderstood. e.g., if Vueling need the capacity for a A340-600 to meet a need, my thought was that Iberia would allocate the ship AND crew because it would be within the AIG set-up.

Similarity, if Iberia had their A340's grounded BA could step in with a few B747's to help out since Iberia no longer operate 747's and BA never took the A340!

I was just thinking of AIG being as a group of airlines, independently operating autonomously pooling as and when desirable the respective fleets for the good of the group. Otherwise, why do AIG exist?

 

[jfy1999]

From what I can remember, the purpose of IAG was to enable BA and Iberia to make more of an effective recovery as they came out of the economic crisis in the late noughties, basically the "united we stand, divided we fall" mentality. I think Iberia had hit upon hard times and BA had long been looking to form a single airline company with them, similar to Air France-KLM. Vueling and Aer Lingus were acquired later on, when IAG bought a majority stake in both airlines.

Basically all these partnerships: IAG, Air France-KLM, and Delta/Virgin, are all about making a profit. Virgin in particular were running big deficits and might not be with us today if they hadn't formed a partnership with Delta. They share profits and operate routes in tandem with each other, but they don't exchange aircraft.

IAG pools its profits through codeshares and air miles. By keeping each brand separate and under one umbrella at the same time, it ensures that all the airlines share in the profit and, that if one airline goes bust, the others won't go down with it. Each airline manages its own cost structure, crew and aircraft operations while receiving financial support from the group as a whole. Vueling has a very different cost structure from Iberia, BA and Aer Lingus, and therefore its aircraft operations and crew wages, etc. will differ accordingly.

Basically IAG is all about financial support and maximising profit, rather than airlines providing aircraft for each other.