EMA's failure was letting Go and the harps in on an almost unfettered basis. There was room for a downsized alliance-style offer, which bmi had been delivering prior to that on a larger scale, but Bish got scared and changed his fiefdom to baby. All the transfer traffic, and quite a bit of the business market, went down the M42 almost overnight. Over there, they realised the importance of and have really pulled out all the stops to stay on / get on the global alliance maps, and its paying off. EMA now has Brussels! Hahaha! So never mind MAG strategy, the stage was set long ago. Adding to the woes, the big airport down the road never used to offer deals to prospective airlines but now it does. The implications are clear - they can match or beat EMA (and indeed they have done), whereas hands are more tied due to the risk of upsetting the rather fickle incumbents. Twelve new airlines over there in the last year, two (maybe three if Cobalt make it) at EMA. Double digit growth down the M42, stagnation at EMA. Airlines might start viable routes without incentives, but if there is a choice of airports 35 miles apart and one offers a better deal than the other then the path they are likely to take is fairly obvious. Furthermore, Paris won't work from EMA now without AF connectivity - Eurostar is just too easy for point-to-point. Up at LPL (seeing as folks want to compare the two), Flybe's AMS failed because they couldn't secure connectivity with KL and the point-to-point preferred EZY's jets. From EMA, AMS might work if someone made a proper go of it - Flybe's paltry once in the middle of the day with no code share doesn't cut it - but I suspect that market too will become more limited once Eurostar gets its act together up there next year. The test now will be to see how Eurowings does - I suspect it'll get dropped, but I hope not.
Last edited by EastMids; 20th Apr 2016 at 09:14.