OpenSkies
 

A lot of people have put in a great deal of hard work to get OpenSkies off the ground. Congratulations on a successful launch an all the best for the future :ok:

Yeah- really well done. Honestly. Fantastic. All the way across the Atlantic. Amazing.

Must be pretty tough to have the financial clout of BA behind you, get given all the aircraft, engineering, training, advertising etc and operate one aircraft.

And to have seats available at the lowest prices only 1 week from now, despite only having 82 to fill. Its a triumph.

I would hardly call 32 passengers (if the papers are to be believed) on the much publicised 1st flight a "success".

32 Pax
 

I believe the first flight is made up of invited guests. You probably wouldn't want to fill the flight to the brim and it would be a bit awkward deciding who to stick at the back?

Wrong. Monday's flight was the non-revenue one. Today's was commercial.

typical pprune and typical english reaction - all queue up to bitch about it, no wonder this county is in such a mess with such negative people in it.

whatever you think of the openskies politics a new UK branded airline can only be good news in these tough times, and like it or not, airlines will be competing on these 'open skies' type routes so why not have some of the business come the UK's way? we certainly need it right now.

I often get the feeling that most people in the uK will only be truly happy when the whole country goes bankrupt, all the business goes elswhere, and then they can sit smugly and say "see, I told you so".
For those knocking this new business - what have you ever done to help UK PLC?

sorry for the abrupt tone, but I'm getting peed off with people continually knocking the entrepeneurs and businessmen that get off their backsides and create the jobs and tax revenue for the very people that moan about it all the time

well said.
 

:DIt is true we seem to love failure so we can bitch away. I wish openskies luck!

wll said
 

757 driver

well said, there is an awful lot of moaning whinging and general negative comment/atitude on PPRUNE posts recently

well done to BA for making this happen... great to see

goldcup
 

Are you telling me that he Mayor of Paris, amongst others, went onto the website and bought a ticket?

Some of the work seems to have been done by TCX crewing and rostering, at the considerable frustration of our own crews!

packamack-

Even better- so the mayor of Paris got a freebie, meaning they only sold 31 tickets. Pretty commercially viable.....

Info on load is accurate.

goldcup
 

As previously stated, the inagural flight was for invited guests. The flights on Monday and Tuesday were proving flights to test service, process and systems.

OK in fairness there are threads that people can search through and read on Open Skies. I suggest google "QANTAS, Jetstar and terms and conditions" as keywords and do some reading why BA crews are really concerned about what this new operation with the full backing of BA's managment may be able to do in future.
Peak summer and couldn't fill a B757? Not looking good. Air France will annihalate them.

Summer is off-peak for business pax

Logically, many people fly return journies. Therefore it is likely that on the very first flights, passengers are only flying the outbound leg and nobody is flying a return leg.

32 would therefore equate to normal operations of 64 passengers - not bad considering.

Re-Heat,

By the same logic, wouldn't people have booked return flights ex. NY in the first place?

That would negate the need of having to book another flight ex. Paris. Especially as it's a new airline and I doubt the average person would think 'hmm, OpenSkies' first flight coincides with my return trip, I'm going to only book a trip out with airline X, then book the return with OpenSkies'.

"Air France will annihalate them"
...and almost sounds as if you would take great delight in that...why?:confused:

It is a positive move the start up of any airline / service. Now is not the best time and if you go onto the web site the fares are expensive and will be easliy beaten by other EU airlines. We will have to wait and see, they will have to ensure a reliable / punctual service which is not best served with 2 airframes. Bon chance!

Precisely - you would have to wait to see OS passengers flying their return legs with the same airline to see "true" load factors.