staraviation,
The XL 737-400 a/c started the season off very badly, but it did get better during the course of the season. However pax have noticed the difference to the -800's that NCL had last summer. I.E no ife, instead portable DVD players. I agree with you that the 734's can do the job, but only those to the shorter destinations such as PMI, ALC etc, but the longer Turkish/Greek flights justify the -800 or even 757.
If the -400 does return, surely it will not be operating the XL SSH flight? And lets not forget that companies like MyTravel, Thomson etc charter some of these flights and it will reflect on them what happens with the aircraft etc
I fear that XL's name at NCL has been tarnished by the long haul operations during the course of the summer. Pax tend not to notice the difference between short and long haul.
XL is welcome at NCL, providing a decent service is offered, which more often than not they do!!!
On the Servisair front, improvement is needed but between the two agents in NCL, which is the lesser of two evils. If one agent got all the contracts then service levels will decrease, so maybe if XL re-negociate the contract with Servisair service will improve. Servisair's reputation in recent years has gone down as a number of contracts have been lost to Swissport, eg AEA, BGH, FCA, BE, SK, PGT plus a few more.