Originally Posted by
GayFriendly
Thanks for the info guys, am amazed that pax route through BHX to get from EWR to MUC and DUS but there you go!
It's not a priority, and most of the time the numbers connecting will be low (naturally, if direct flights are available), but every so often, for whatever reason, there will be blips in demand and thus less capacity available on the direct flight, so - because of revenue management - prices on the direct flight will be higher than on the connecting flight. Therefore Joe Bloggs in New Jersey, who's trying to book a ticket to Munich on Star Alliance for that particular day, will find he has a choice of the direct flight at $900 or the connection via BHX at $700 (for example) and he'll go for the cheaper alternative.
In general this traffic will be made up of price-sensitive passengers choosing the cheapest routing. It's not US tourists who really want to check out the Balti Triangle en route to the Oktoberfest...
As Airhumberside mentioned earlier, this was also the case when SNN-CDG operated. There were passengers routing CDG-SNN-JFK despite the large number of direct CDG-JFK flights. Only a few, but Every Little Helps.