Low cost Long haul

[RichT]

With all these low cost cells around the world, Ryanair, Easyjet in europe, Southwest in the usa and some starting up in the far east and australia. Wouldn't it be a good idea to join them all up with a low cost long haul service.

If I only had some money

[simonjwt]

Excellent idea Mr Laker, can I interest you in some hardly used DC-10s? :p

[pcgavaghan]

The long flight times would reduce the high utaliation of ac which is critical to the loco model. As stated Sir Freddie Laker tried and failed in this model. He now runs a small charter airline in the opperating between florida and freeport. Economics asside would you want to be stuck in one of FR's new planes where the seats don't even recline for seven or more hours??

[Ace Rimmer]

Funny, I thought ( and so did a court in NY that awarded shed loads of damages to FL) that laker was dun in by a combination of dirty tricks and preditory pricing by BA (this was just a warm up for what was to come), Pan Am et al. Dosen't the story go that on advice from BA Barclays (who were financing Laker's D10s) pulled the plug and stuffed the airline or something like that?.

While conventional wisdom has it that there "ain't no way a low fare long haul airline could work". Of course, this is the same conventional wisdom that said a Southwest style low fare airline could never work in the high cost European environment. Yep got that one right...let's hear it for conventional wisdom

True, the higher utilisation benefits are not going to be there but that is just part of the low fare matrix - the incremental reduction in costs could come from a variety of cost centres.

Take cost of ownership - you can get some pretty good A340-200 deals right now and come to that there are more than a few 744s going cheap about the place. Equally, massive savings are to be had in the back office operation (always a crippler for legacy airlines) and other non-core operations.

Think Jet Blue - which operates sucessfully a number of coast-to -coast services which are getting on for long haul in stage length - they won't be geeting much more in utiliastion than their leagcy competitors so they're getting the margin from somewhere.

Nope I think it's only a matter of time before somebody figures out a way to do it and make a bunch of money.
:ok:

[Torquelink]

I'm with Ace on this. Buy some used B744s for less than $50m apiece, configure them with, say, 500+ seats at 32 - 33 in pitch (Corsair are putting in 590 at 31 in I believe). Internet-only res and ticketing, contract out engineering and link the major LCC nodes around the globe. There is nothing to touch the seat mile costs of a used B744 so you could offer knock-out fares across all seats on all flights: no restrictions etc. I think that this is what Backpackers Express is all about - see separate thread.

[FEBA]

RichT
LCC long haul is an excellent idea, I've been thinking about it for some time now. Some of the comments that your post has attracted reveal a keen lack of knowledge in this sector. Fred was highly successful at long haul with Skytrain, people were queing for miles to get a seat, as rightly pointed out, the major players did for him, I'm sure a condition of his court settlement was that he never return again. PM me for a chat about it.
Cheers

[Findo]

American Trans Air are looking at low cost schedules to UK, Ireleand and possiby some European destinations. ;)

[Wee Weasley Welshman]

It doesn't work because long haul flights are already dirt cheap courtesy of the folk in 1st class paying £2,500 a ticket. If everybody paid the same the low cost long haul airline would have to charge way above basic economy on the full service airlines.

Plus you need food, drinks, entertainment, hotel back up and all sorts with long haul.

4hrs is the max.

Cheers

WWW

[World of Tweed]

Guys/Girls....

You already have low cost long haul carriers in this country that operate to destinations around the world........

....Known as Charter carriers - the orginal low-cost base airlines.

Check out Britannia, they've been doing LH for about 25 years and now they are even beginning to emulate the LCCs in terms of inflight service i.e. pay per meal.

Having flown as cabin crew for them for two years I can tell you, after a ten and half hour flight at 29inch pitch on a crowded 767 most people suddenly see the benefit of going scheduled!!

Long haul LCC is not only difficult to achieve on a scheduled basis because of the economics and lack of premium pax to subsidise the Y-Class fair.......

...there is also an issue of direction. Do you honestly want to erode into an area of the industry, dragging LH down to the level of the LCC "Airline - TV show" culture.

I must sound like a bit of a snob and even a little nieve but fair competion between carriers accompanied by more Open-Skies agreements will naturally lead to lower fares and true competition.

This is where we should be looking to lower the cost of LH travel.

No offence to anyone associated with a LCC, I believe they have done wonderes for the SH market but thats what they are good at and lets face it the EU market was sewn up by the nationals before they came on the scene.

I for one do not want to see any LH aircraft in Ezy/FR colours and I certainly would not pay to fly them. As for low fares, well the last three times I've tried to fly on a LCC and full service route I've always found the full service carrier to be comprable in price by maybe a maximum of £15.

Whilst it may not be the case with every traveller I see that £15 going to good use by providing, food, drink, ground support staff, hotel accomodation if they cancel the flight all the reassurring stuff we take for granted when flying, particuarly LH.

Unless the LCCs were to change their operating policies so far as support and accomodation in event of Canx etc. I fear any entry into LH ops would be foolhardy and unfortunately uncomfortable for the unsuspecting public.

[FEBA]

www
Complete tosh I'm afraid
WoT
It's all about dosh and nothing to do with public perception. Long haul LCC will work and the established carrriers will do their utmost to stop it, since it's their only main source of revenue.

[FOZ]

I support the idea that LCC LH should work, but careful consideration has to be given to the numbers of available consumers.

In the SH LCC model, many people fly on short breaks etc that would not have done so if low cost carriers did not exist. Many that already went abroad began to travel more often with LCCs.

If there is a finite number of "ad hoc" passengers, then offering a long haul service would compete for its passengers with the existing LCCs short haul routes as well as schedule/charter airlines on the long haul routes.

Whilst I would welcome the availability, it may not actually put additional aircraft in the sky.

[Paul Wilson]

More to the point WWW where can you get a 1st class Trans Atlantic fare for only £2500?, sign me up for a dozen;)

[mini]

PW, took the words out of my mouth...

WWW obviously don't pay for his flying.

LoCo is the future guys, get used to it.

:ok:

[Wee Weasley Welshman]

Ok £3,500 for BA 1st class return 4 - 11 May LHR JFK.

Which reasserts my point that the folks up front are subsidising the folk down the back on their £350 World Traveller tickets. Hence low cost no frills long haul on scheduled services doesn't work.

Oh, and Britannia isn't a sheduled service. I don't want to only be able to go on a Saturday at midnight.

Cheers

WWW

[FEBA]

WWW
Pity about Twickenham, the boys in red played well.
Your arguement is arse about face. It's the 1st and 2nd class that contribute the profit cattle are break even contributors as far as the scheduled carriers are confirmed.
FEBA

[AIRWAY]

Hello,

I dont see the need for a Long Haul low cost, i mean prices are already low has it is, return ticket to australia ( my fav destination ) from uk around 500 pounds with taxes already included :} one of many examples.

But hey i dont know the costs of operating a long haul flight, maybe it could work, im not sure.

[Nothrills]

Well, we already have at least one:

www.flyzoom.com

Will be interesting to see if it works...

[colegate]

Before you all get carried away about thelikely chances of success for long-hail low cost(so-called0 airlines just consider that all of them so far have failed. Britain used tio have several of them. The most successful was the pre-merger Caledonian of the 1960's. But in Britain there was also Donaldson, Transglobe, British Eagle, Lloyd International and then Laker. Canada had an excellent low cost airline called Wardair.

Do you remember People Express, run by Don Burr?

Remember also that Virgin majors on its fare levels.

Laker did not fail because of any conspiracy by other carriers to put him out of businness. That proposition was never tested or proved in court. The court hearings never got beyonrd the evidence gathering stages, the only reason for there to have been any out of court settlement was because BA was about to be privatised and wanted the case to be concluded.

Laker failed because the airline had a gross excess of capacity. The only part of Laker that mad emoney latterly was the European package holiday business.

Talk of using a high density 747 is illusory for such operations. Far too much risk. The plane nedsas a very high degree of support. It would be easy enough to fill on a July Saturday but try other days and other months. Downsizing iof aircraft is the name of the game on ling-haul these days.

[Wee Weasley Welshman]

FEBA - my argument is not arse about face. I am saying that low cost no frills long haul tickets would have to be more expensive than current Economy tickets. Due to the lack of Premium fare paying pax.

A simple point.

Cheers

WWW

[Pirate]

I would respectfully suggest that while low cost longhaul may be a viable concept it is a far more difficult business model than the short haul case.

Accepting the well placed arguments that the tenets of low cost, such as cramped seat pitch, lack of food, no IFE, do not translate to longer flights, I feel that the main stumbling area is with the positioning of aircraft. The loco shorthaulers bring their hardware back to base at the end of the working day which is good for both rostering/crewing and maintenance. If an aeroplane is found to be badly tech in these circumstances, it is relatively easy to plan around it to keep the programme going. Having an aircraft and crew stuck on the ground on the other side of the planet is an altogether different situation and a logistic nightmare, if you're not a major flag carrier with company support on the spot everywhere. I rather suspect that this was one of the problems that EAAC found with their 747 operation.

I don't pretend to have answers - I'm a lifelong shorthaul man anyway - but I suspect that a previous post is close to the truth in that the charter airlines do cheap longhaul already.

Perhaps the scheduled airlines could look at the loco booking model, allowing folk who book early to get cheaper seats? If this is already happening, someone will no doubt tell me!

confundemus

[crash_1983]

was there not a "rumour" on here about then New Easyjet venture?? EasyAtlantic??

if you go to www.easyatlantic.com it takes you to the world of Easyland,

[Kanos]

I have just booked BHX-LAX for £350, surely any(supposed) low cost carrier would struggle to beat that.