"We remain confident that it is only a matter of time before we secure such a service and together with ONE North East discussions are being reopened with a number of other airlines which had expressed interest in operating services between Newcastle and New York.''
The above was I believe said by Parkin back in mid December when attempting to address the AA NCL pullout debacle. Curiously since this statement was made I have read nothing anywhere to provide any clarification as to the substance of this remark.
"A number of other Airlines" ? had expressed interest... like who ? I can only think of one which would have been capable & that is CO, so who else was the rest of this "tosh" about?
Readdressing CO, who actually can produce anything relevant to suggest that they were actually interested once they had set up BFS,BRS & EDI ?? It is not necessarily logical to suggest that with this amount of exposure to "thin" EWR routes that they never even considered looking any further & that anything else is pure wishfull thinking.
You can even take this a step further as development of any route new or old requires additional aircraft & dissapointingly it seems to me that CO's current strategy is perhaps more akin to utilising any spare 757 availability on further route development from it's existing bases, which when the emotion is removed is perhaps a much more sensible business strategy.
So back to my original question... are any of you readers out there able to enlighten me as to what actually went on ?