WOK, you said;
BA are not dropping services - we fly 7 JFKs in Summer and 6 jfks plus one BGI in Winter. Occasionally, a JFK is left out of the timetable (not cancelled) e.g. Christmas or when the extra BGIs are run near xmas.
Not quite true. With only 2 of the aircraft current serviceable out of 5, BA are cancelling services in March.....so that they don't have to cancel services in March, in order that they can produce a rubust service. So they are pre-cancelling services so that they can point to the operation and say "Look, it works". Mickey Mouse or what.
Someone said Load factors had been low - we ran all Summer, Autumn and most of the Winter with LFs in excess of 80%. Break even is dependent onfuel prices but is 15-25%. There are hard times ahead, which is why there are no plans to restart a double-daily at this time.
Load factors were at 70-80%, but the majority of those were upgrades from passengers who had paid for a full fare Club World ticket.
The Fes are a more sensitive matter. The fleet was deliberately over-established with FEs when the classic retired in order to maintain the programme to 2010-2015.
Actually, to 2007.
The FEs had nowhere to go and 10 are apparently not going to be required owing to the reduced flying programme. They have our utmost sympathy.
So BA kicked them out just one day before they were due to get a pay rise on the Concorde Fleet.
Getting back to the thread topic, the remaining Flight Engineers on the Concorde Fleet will be able to provide one flight a day only up to September 2004 - 18 months away. This is due to retirements. So the original posters comments about Concorde about to retire may very well come true within the next 18 months or so, won't it?
regards