In my view the last three postings get right to the heart of the problems of airlines in Europe. But there are a few comments that I would like to add.
Shafted@work- I think you overstate the value of alliances. My onservations of them (which include managing some key elements of one) are that they are a gross waste of management and company time. The costs are high and the benefits illusory. When the going gets really tough the first thing that airlines seem to do is get out of those alliances. They are of little interest to customers. I think that under increasing competition they will fade away. If Rod Eddington were to ask hard questions of his alliance managers he would learn that going to junkey meetings in exotic places was an important part of their agendas.
2 infinity& beyond. You are absolutely right about product quality. Does Ryanair ever publish the number of complaints it receives direct from the public? I think it is quite simple. If you do not care about your customers they will not care about you. MOL does not care about his shareholders so is it likely that he cares about his customers? If he does not they will start to go someplace else.
Thunderball 2. I think the best thing that EZY did was to go to direct phone and then Internet distribution. That is by far the biggest cost reduction that they have been able to make. Prior to thr Internet all aspirant carriers were held to ransom by travel agents usually through the cancer of override commission. If you look at CAA financial statistics for the period 1980-1993 you will see that carriers like BCAL, Air Europe, Dan Air British Midland etc had to pay commissions of around 20-23% to get their products sold. That eliminated any flexibility that they had. EZY did a great job finding an alternative to that nonsense.