orbitmic

I wouldn't say that any of the three examples that you mention is predominantly O/D!! Sure all of them get "some" O/D traffic but I think it is secondary in all of those cases. The few which are predominantly O/D in my view would be the likes of Moscow, Athens, Geneva.

Do you know any business traveller who would do that on a typical business trip?? I agree with you that it is different if you are going to fly F - notably through CDG, but I personally would not bother to take a longer connection than needed when using the regular AF lounges. Still, a 1h30 connection through 2F/2E will typically allow someone with acces no1 time to have a shower (but not to go through the arrivals lounge), while a 1h30 connection through 2G does not.

NickB

I do not think so. I stand to be corrected but, AIUI, the 6 waves in AF's CDG hub system does not mean 6 waves of intercontinental departures and 6 waves of intercontinental arrivals. 7 daily flights is more than is needed just to feed intercontinental flights. If you just wanted a pattern allowing connection to long-haul flights, you could pretty much achieve it with with a 4-a-day pattern (early morning: 6-8/late morning: 10.30-12.00/mid-afternoon: 2.30-3.30pm early evening: 5-7pm). If you look at AF's non-domestic routes, only a handful have a daily frequency of 7 or more.
7 departures is about just as much as you are going to get to any given airport out of CDG. So, unless you want to argue that AF simply does not do point-to-point traffic within Europe beyond one or two routes except at the margin, then I do not think that a 7-a-day frequency can be described as one designed exclusively as a feeder.
What is more, excluding hub-to-hub routes, relatively few international routes in Europe command a frequency higher than 7 or 8 daily flights on a single airline. While there are a few routes which are more than that, a 7 daily flights route is a high frequency international route within Europe on pretty much any airline.

orbitmic

Yes, that (AF has very few domestic and European routes from CDG which predominantly serve point to point traffic) was pretty much my argument. As I mention, I see very few exceptions (like SVO, GVA, ATH, VCE, LIN, some North African destinations) but think that even the "big capitals" are predominantly catered for as connecting, and indeed, that many of those which have rotations functioning primarily as point to point have been switched to ORY as part of the "occupy the slots" AF campaign.

Here is an example: people keep telling me that CDG-LHR is not about point to point at all because anyone with sense does Eurostar. It has 7 daily rotations too. Destinations like LIN have more (and of course FCO or AMS but they are admittedly partner hubs). Many others (MAD, BCN, etc) have 6 which I do not see as very different from 7.

And I was not suggesting that connections are only international: to big international destinations, national/European connections are important too so AF won't only take people from ATL to FRA but also from PUF or CMN, although my focus on intercontinental connections was because I think that they are most affected by the lack of lounge.

stimpy

Early morning flights between e.g. CDG-VIE are indeed probably more through traffic than O/D. But I would argue that late afternoon and evening is mostly O/D. Especially the 5pm VIE-CDG which is always packed with French business people heading home. There are maybe a few people connecting to late AF flights to Asia, but the vast majority are O/D. I picked VIE because that's a flight I've done many many times over the last couple years and it's pretty easy to characterize most of the pax.

NickB

Hold on a minute. The fact that a route does not "predominantly serve point to point traffic" does not mean that it is one which is designed for transfer traffic only and where only a few O&D pax get "picket on the way." Yes, CDG route for AF (or LHR routes for BA or FRA routes for LH, etc...) are not 95% point to point. But that does not mean that they are 95% transfer either. May be you are privy to more information than I am, but I suspect that no route could sustain a 7 daily frequency purely on transfer traffic with just a few O&D pax "picked on the way." If all you want is connectivity to long-haul, then it makes more sense to have fewer, larger planes with a 4-daily frequency.

The idea that a route has to be necessarily for either transfer or point-to-point strikes me as a rather strange idea, to be honest.

Again, this looks to me suspiciously like a non sequitur. The fact that far more point-to-point traffic between LON and PAR is carried on Eurostar does not mean that 99% of passengers on planes between PAR and LON are transfer pax. There are more persons for whom flying between LON and PAR makes sense than you seem to think (ask Jouy31 )

I agree that they are not very different but that it does not follow from that there is virtually only transfer traffic onboard AF MAD and BCN planes. I would expect a solid dose of O&D pax on these flights too (again alongside a large proportion of transfer pax too).

But then:
1) the starting point of your argument was the unsuitability for connecting passengers compared to O&D pax of the spartan provisions/lack of showers at 2G . However, the CMN-FRA or PUF-FRA pax do not really need shower facilities at CDG, do they?
2) I seriously doubt that AF expects to pick significant intra-European traffic from FRA to other European destinations. While there is some degree of competition between direct and indirect flights on long-haul, it is extremely small on intra-European.

orbitmic

But I never said "95%" or "99%" or "either/or" nor did I say that the 2g lounge is not a problem for o/d passengers. None of those things are my words.

I said that in my view, cdg-fra is "predominantly" intended for connecting pax (I also use "primarily") and that the 2g lounge is "mostly" a problem for connecting pax and even added that a lounge like that should not be used for anyone in the first place. Maybe "a few" was confusing (re pax numbers) and I should have stuck to "a minority" but I think that the main target are connecting.

As for the Short and medium haul connecting traffic to /from FRA I do think it exists mostly in the form of French and North African airports (I don't mean that much the large French ones but the likes of NTE, BOD or AJA).

As for LHR, as explained, I was not venturing my own thoughts but repeating what this forum overwhelmingly answered when I pointed out that j+w on my Lhr-CDg flights used to take about 20 rows and often more and was now often down to 2-5. I was answered it is all Eurostar, nobody flies to London anymore, to which I said it didn't matter either way has lhr also has the largest long haul premium traffic potential in Europe and even without o/d C it would show that AF does not capture as much of it as it should.

Let me rephrase even further: I don't think AF fly ANY single route where they do not think that there is some o/d potential. Paris is a large city and economic centre, both as a point of origin and as a destination and I think that if there was any town/city where they think that the O/D potential to/from Paris is in fact near 0, they will not bother and either replace by codesharing on train connections as they do for BRU and the like, or only offer the train connection to CDG and minimal o/d service from ORY as they do for SXB. My contention is thus that all the services that remain "live" at CDG have potential for some O/D traffic, which, as I have argued time and again on both this and other fora is indispensable to make a route profitable as you cannot survive on "pure" connections. That is also why people do not build airports in the middle of nowhere.

Yet, my contention is that AF do not see themselves as keeping a large short and medium haul network at CDG for primarily O/D reasons. There are exceptions which could run with significant frequencies even if they were restricted to O/D traffic alone (again, I mentioned a few examples like SVO, ATH, FCO, VCE, GVA, etc) but I think that they are a minority. It does not mean that the rest has no O/D traffic, but simply that it is not the key determinant in the way those flights are organised.

The implication of the argument of FRA being predominantly being a O/D destination would be that small planes with multiple rotations is a choice that fits an O/D pattern. I would have personally argued the exact opposite. In my view, if FRA was "predominantly" aimed at being OD, I would imagine that you would get a big A321 in the early morning and again in the evening and then one other rotation around midday because O/D traffic either tends to peak at specific times of the day or be large enough that you can fly large planes throughout. To me, a destination which uses the same Embraer at business peak time of 7.30am as it does at 15.10 is unlikely to have been organised as primarily O/D. Again, it does not mean that there is no O/D traffic and that the 7.30am flight won't be busier because it will also get the bulk of the O/D traffic but I simply do not think that AF is organising it as such, and therefore, based on the data that they have, they must estimate that the O/D traffic potential is less than its connecting traffic in my view.

jsfr

Wow, passionate debate. My 2C...

I work for a large multinational company with offices all over the world. I have been (slightly) involved in the selection process for two of our regional offices, and I know that the criteria is the same all over the world - quality/cost of the local workforce, availaiblity of transport/housing/schooling, etc., Cost of office space and proximity to international hubs. As a result all of our offices are located much closer to Airports than city centers e.g. Ealing in London, Lyoner Strasse in Frankfurt, Tyson's Corner in Washington (well, Virginia), Handelskai in Vienna, etc... Nobody chooses a corporate/Regional office location because it is located in the 8th Arrondissement.

And our offices always seem to be surrounded by the same set of other FTSE 100 companies.

My point - none of these are downtown and it is almost always easier and more efficient to fly.

Our regional meetings are almost always held in an airport hotel so that everyone can fly-in/out without wasting time (not every European destination can reach every other by train).

Catch the morning flight to Frankfurt and you will see a lot of the same faces on the evening flight back to Paris, same applies to London and Milan and Madrid and.... (and the number of Germans and French will definitely outnumber the Americans).

NickB

Apologies. I clearly misunderstood what you meant. You referred to "a few O/D pax picked up on the way". I read that as meaning that you considered that planes were overwhelmingly filled with transfer traffic with only "a few" O/D pax, hence my reference to 95%.

I am perplexed by this. I never said that you did but merely that your argument about the particular unsuitability of 2G for CDG-FRA was premised on connection to long-haul connections, not short/medium-haul ones. Is that not what you explicitly say in the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs of post #250 or have I misunderstood that too?

I have to say that, to me, the notion of "route primarily designed for transfer traffic" is not a particularly useful concept if it is meant to embrace routes on which a substantial number of O&D traffic is also expected. If that is so, then you must design your timetable and facilities to satisfy the latter just as much as the former. The O&D traffic is not just a bonus of a few passengers "picked up on the way" (with the potential implicit sub-text that one could do without them)* but a necessity to maintain the viability of the route.

You've got to make up your mind: a few posts ago, you said that the change to an E190/Hop/2G service was especially unsuited to transfer traffic. Now, you are saying that the change to an E190/Hop/2G service shows that this should be regarded as a service designed for transfer traffic.

In truth, it seems to me that the move to the E190/Hop/2G tells us nothing whatsoever on the transfer vs O&D issue on that route. It just reflects the difficulty of AF in capturing sufficient traffic, whether transfer or O&D.

Incidentally, I find the suggestion that just a morning and evening heavy service together with a midday one is a business-friendly schedule intriguing. I would have thought that a frequent service, allowing you to jump on an earlier or later flight if needed was the hallmark of a business-oriented O&D route.


OK but that is a truism and the very point for the existence of a hub. That would be true for BA or LH just as much as for AF and why it is not particularly useful to talk of a route "predominantly designed" for transfer traffic: pretty much all routes to hubs are designed with transfer traffic in mind AND with point-to-point traffic in mind.

*: for the sake of clarity, I am not saying that you said that but rather that the phrase is likely to carry that connotation.

orbitmic

I'm not sure I am getting the contradiction. I said that the move to 2G would be worst for transfer pax (even though it is already bad for O/D pax) and I also said that in my view, regular flights with small aircrafts seem to me to want to cater primarily to transfer pax as a predominantly O/D route would presumably mean larger needs at peak time. One statement is about the implication of a change for the customer experience, the other is about trying to interpret AF's strategy (whether convincingly or not). There is effectively no relationship between the two elements (what AF "intends" and what pax "suffer").

It certainly reflects that indeed, I fully agree.

As for the distinction primarily O/D vs primarily transfer, to me, it is an important piece of information and I suspect it is for AF too, but to simplify, I'd guess the first category is 50-75% O/D vs 25-50% transfer and the second category the opposite. As you point out, in my view, no hub route would effectively be 95% O/D or 95% transfer, and of course, it does not nicely fit into two clear bimodal categories with nothing in the middle. It would be nice if it did from a purely academic point of view, but I simply do not think that it is the case. Still, while I accept that you do not find the distinction useful, I would personally suspect that where a flight fits on this continuum affects such things as aircraft allocation, revenue management strategy and more.

NickB

You are right, I was being somewhat facetious: there is no direct contradiction but a funny juxtaposition because, if you follow the logic of your argument to the end and your view that a "predominantly" O&D service should be served by a twice larger aircraft daily service + possibly a midday one, then this would suggest that is should be out of 2F rather than 2G whereas a multiple flights a day with E190, which you associate with a transfer-type service, would be at 2G rather than 2F. yet, you argue elsewhere that 2G is especially problematic for transfers. Therefore, the "transfer" service is located at the terminal where it is more problematic (2G) since this is where 6-a-day-E190 services operate from whereas the twice-a-day "O&D" service is located at 2F (where mainline A321 services operate from), even though that service has less of a need for the facilities available at 2F than the transfer service.
But if you maintain that almost all AF CDG services are "predominantly" transfer and that AF has almost no "primarily O&D" service, what is the point of distinguishing the two? A taxonomy is only useful if not everything falls in the same category.

Where I think we are closer in agreement is that we are not talking about discrete categories but a continuous specturm and I would certainly agree that the customer profile affects a number of resource allocation and organisation of the service decisions. But saying this is different from saying that a notion of "predominantly" transfer or O&D is a useful concept as such.

Secondly, I am not so sure that the proportion of O&D vs transfer passengers on a route is more important than the absolute numbers: if you have a large number of O&D passengers on a route, even though you have an even bigger number of transfer pax, you will want to cater for the needs of these O&D pax more than you do on a route which is supposedly primarily O&D but where absolute number of pax are much lower.

orbitmic

More specifically, my point was almost no predominantly O/D short/medium haul flight. So yes, I would agree with you that if it is a case of differentiating between short/medium haul flights (such as FRA) it is indeed of very limited use as a distinction. To me it might be more important when it comes to long haul.

I certainly agree and think of it as a continuum indeed, although my guess/understanding is that AF does create categories along those lines. As is always the case in such situations, some flights will be "very close" to the border. I think that is where the predominantly comes from.

I think both matter for different things, but I think that we have never disagreed on the "absolute number" situation: AF is doing rubbish on CDG-FRA on both categories, and as you pointed out earlier this may well remain the most obvious thing that this move is resoundingly telling us: switching one of Europe's main business destinations (regardless of O/D-transfer distribution) to your low-costish regional airline? What a sad admission of failure....

Goldorak

Absolutely. Only and sad conclusion.

orbitmic

indeed...

NickB

yep...

San Gottardo

I used to do Paris-various German airports several times a week for many many years until not to long ag. The France-Germany market looks *completely* different now than many years ago, and it is not clear who is the "winner" or who is more rubbish.

On the hub route to FRA, Lufthansa still flies 9 or 10 times daily, all with A32S equipment. Air France "retreats" to a 7x daily E90. Having flown that route frequently, one sees quite a lot of O&D travel on them especially during the typical morning and late afternoon/evening flights. One could speculate whether there is more ex-Germany O&D

On the hub route to MUC, Air France has reduced capacities from what used to be 8x A32S to 6x daily, where many flights are A318. Funnily enough I never had the impression that there were lots of transfer pax on the AF flights. Lufthansa, too, went from 8x daily to 6x daily, with a mix of 4x A32S and 2x E90. I often had the impression that there was more transfer traffic on the LH flights. But all in all Air France has more capacity here.

On the secondary German business hubs, i.e. Hamburg, Dusseldorf, Berlin, Air France has kept its frequencies and so has Lufthansa. The big shift at LH is of course that it's now Germanwings doing the flying, which in many cases resulted in an increase in capacity as 4U only uses A32S on the CDG flights. But all in all Air France has more flights to each of these destinations, which is logical, given that AF has connections to offer from CDG whereas 4U only caters to point-to-point. However, on the DUS route, AF has downscaled to ARJ. Given that transfer pax are the reason to keep up all the AF flights, it is surprising they have moved that flight to 2G.

Stuttgart and Cologne used to have Lufthansa flights on CRJs (and STR sometimes even on B737), and then they were the first Germanwings destinations from Paris. Both are now no longer served by 4U, who must believe that the train takes the O&D traffic. So AF still goes to Stuttgart to pick up transfer pax and the few O&D that remain, but again with smaller equipment and from 2G, which is surprising given the O&D proportion on these flights. AF withdrew from Cologne, they must believe that transfer pax can use DUS which isn't that far away, or use KL which still has flights to AMS. There would effectively be no more O&D pax from Cologne, which is 3 hours by Thalys from Paris.

On the smaller German business destinations like Hanover, Nuremberg, Air France has kept all its frequencies (and increased its O&D fares!), and Lufthansa Group has withdrawn completely from these markets which had 3 or 4 CRJs every day. So there isn't enough O&D to justify even CRJs by Germanwings to Paris.

I think the adjustments in frequencies and equipment give quite a good indication of where there is enough O&D and where transfer passengers dominate. I am surprised about DUS, STR and FRA operating from 2G, there is a high volume of transfer pax on these flights.

But then maybe Frankfurt is the new Zurich, which for years was operated by small planes from 2G and only recently got "upgraded" (sic) to A318 and now operates from 2F.

On the mentioning of some other destinations having a high O&D proportion and thus justifying many flights like VCE, BCN, MAD, who see 6-7 daily AF flights now. Yes and no: all these destinations did have more AF flights than now, BCN and MAD for instance had 10 daily rotations, all on A320 and A321. In these markets, easyjet and Vueling have picked up lots of the O&D market. For instance, Vueling flies to BCN 12 times a day now. So AF sees less O&D on its flights than in the past, and the 6-7 dailies are more geared for transfer pax.

So yes, all in all AF has geared its network and capacities more towards transfer pax, and easier connections between 2E/2F and the 2G barrack make it hesitate less about using E90s even for "prime" destinations.