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True but was only thinking in that regard of city to city as in an upturn thats where competition will want to fly to. It is not economical to do a Stansted to Bari because they don't have economies of scale to do it, where as FR have numbers of flights in and out of there which pay for itself.
Post 9/11 FR tackled the fear of flying by doing mega sales for free and overcome people's fear because they were going for nothing.
This probably saved many companies skin because doing this the sentiment was the US was a one off and confidence returned.
It was betting the farm on this and it worked.