Originally Posted by
WHBM
It's not just low-cost long haul that doesn't work, but single-market long haul. The high end transatlantic operators of a few years ago went the same way.
The fact is that a typical legacy long haul flight has a mix of low end, median (eg business travellers in Economy) and premium passengers, plus substantial belly cargo, with O&D, plus connecting pax at both ends, plus significant marketing, plus major corporate deals for substantial users, plus very substantial and honed frequent flyer programmes, plus expert yield managers getting as much as they can out of each.
From all of this, they just manage to do a bit better than break even. Meanwhile the new contenders are missing one or more of these elements (some quite a lot), and then on what elements they do have, offer fares which are lower than those of the operator above, and thus give less revenue. What's not to understand ?
Spoken like a through stuck in the mud. All the above cost money to organise and adds substantially to the revenue needed. Including faff like frequent flyer programs, honing, corporate deals, connections, over-marketing and EXPERT yield managers.
There just haven't been a well funded transatlantic low fares carrier with true low cost principles yet. Norwegian is a half way house that try to be low fares but with a high norwegian cost base, and don't want to sucumb totally to the reputation one gets if one count every coin. Its no transatlantic Ryanair, but it could be. Kjos was after all a pilot and a lawyer and not a penny pinching accountant. And the new chief never hit the ground running but was still learning the airline ropes when the market went off the cliff, after a lifetime spent within retail in an overfunded company,