I feel I must register my thoughts with regards to the rumours on long haul expansion at NCL. Looking at the current stability of the industry, with soaring oil and fuel prices, together with a global financial downturn (well in the US and partially in the UK) the chances of an established legacy carrier atrting services from what is really considered a small provincial UK regional airport is somewhat slightly slim. IMHO it would be commercial suicide for the airline - not only would they loose money, a short lived service could very well deter future operations.
PIA do not have suitable aircraft (unless A310 could do NCL-Pakistan non stop with a full load) to operate such a service and a PIA 777, whilst a nice thought, would be too big for such a specialised route. This is not taking into account the relatively small asian community in NCL area - maybe only enough to support a bi-weekly service?!
And I aint even gonna get on the NYC topic - it has been done to death!!!
We only have to look at low cost services, probably the most popular type of air service, to see that the industry crunch is pinching everyone, with visible cutbacks from LS and EZY. God even FR are grounding aircraft!
