British Airways - I am in awe of you! 21 years old and you know sooooo much! You're obviously destined for politics or journalism.
Promise me you won't lower yourself and join us mere mortals in the flight deck of an aeroplane as I'm not sure I could cope with the enthralling, not to mention opinionated, conversation!
Have you been studying hard at your university or old style local poly and been fed all this stuff by an expert lecturer? Let me guess - an economics student with a PPL or a Air Transport and Management course?
I have based the information on my post on several years of research and this is my opinion alone, I am not suggesting that what you are suggesting is pointless, I am just stating that I disagree
British Airways - I admire your sentiment and certainly your enthusiasm however the only way that BA will absorb VS (Not the other way round) is if VS goes belly up.
VS will no doubt fight tooth and nail to remain independant however it's likely that it will join an alliance at some stage in the future - it's the way aviation is heading. Reason why they haven't joined one thus far is more than likely due to the points I've raised.
I would agree with that, but surely you would also agree that unless they change their insistance that they should retain their independence, they face a losing battle to compete with their rivals
1,915 words of utter tosh mate! What ARE you on about? This statement above, shows the level of your commercial know how. They compete because they have to, they compete where the market will allow. To suggest VS go away and make profits on all those pretendy routes that can make money that BA one assumes just didn't know were there, that's naive bordering in stupid. It really is, let's not beat about the bush.
What VS is doing is not sustainable for the long term, there is a lack of space at our airports, the UK needs to launch routes to emerging markets (like South America for example) and there has been incresing competition in the past 20 years for both BA and VS, BA cannot operate new routes to those markets because there is a lack of space at LHR, hopefully that will be fixed now they have bought BMI, but the problem for VS is that because they failed to buy BMI, they have fallen further behind BA in relation to route network
What? Where's BA gone? Vanished in a puff of whatever you're smoking? You do know good old friendly STAR partner Singapore already owns 49% of VS? How's that investment worked out? Well? No, they've been trying to sell it.
In that option VS has bought BA with the financial help of *A, who would gain from the fact they have a friendly partner at LHR, the reason Singapore Airlines wants out is because they see what SRB cannot see, VS model is not sustainable in the long run in its current form
Wrong, they're replacing A340-600s, several having left the fleet already.
Some A340-600s are being withdrawn, but the entire fleet of A340-300s is being withdrawn and will so by next year, the reason why VS has ordered A330-300s is that the 787-9s they ordered have been delayed several times over
The remaining A340-600s are to be replaced (along with the 747-400s) wth another aircraft
Virgin closing on selection of 747-400 and A340-600 replacement
Not so much domestically, it's the same as having TG and SQ in STAR, they still hate each other.
Despite the fact they have a pretty extensive coadshare agreement and almost merged at least twice (the second time they found a even better partner in the form of CO)
I would describe it more as a love-hate relationship
Nonsense, UA are struggling to manage the CO intergration, a behemouth the size of a combined AA-UA/CO would be frightening prospect for competition. That thing you don't seem to get around which is front and centre of why a lot of what you are writing about has to remain a fantasy.
Firstly I have shown in detail that it is not the case (are you sure you have read what I have wrote on the matter?), they combined domestic share would be barely higher than Southwest/AirTran's domesitc share and the only hubs they have in common and pretty fragmented markets and would remain so even after a UA-AA merger
If you disagree with my detailed statements on the matter, would you mind explaining it in detail?
It wasn't done for "reasons of fairness", BA launched Deutsche BA to try and hold market share when LH got Berlin access but the market chose Lufthansa.
I agree on the reasons why BA gave up on DBA, but the reason they had to do it was that the Germans (this was just before deregulation) felt British/French/American airlines has traffic rights within Germany, they German airlines where deinied at the time
The same reason was why Pan Am was forced to sell their German traffic rights to LH (and well as the fact they where financialy desperate)