Originally Posted by
flyboy777
Why do you think BRU isn't that great? It's a relativel uncongested hub lacking a major carrier offering many services to North America & eastwards & it lies more or less on what would be a direct flight path minimising extra journey time.
What I don't understand is that people are assuming that BRU has reached it's full potential & that an alternative is being reached. Of course 9W are going to constantly review there operations & objectives as well as planning for the future. It states the next round of expansion in Europe is around 2009-2010 which is a long way off in an industry like this. Who knows what shocking price oil will be then? I beleive that there are still many city pairs that could work through BRU, & if 9W is at it's peak there then PVG should be heading in a similar direction (eg. DEL-PVG-LAX)
9W is trying to defer the 2 777s it was due to receive in 2009. Also, it has publicly stated that it's putting further intnl expansion on hold and instead is focusing on making its current routes profitable (consolidate first). They have cut the frequency on SFO-PVG-BOM route, so I doubt if DEL-PVG-LAX is in the cards.
The one remaining long haul route they're sticking to is BLR-BRU to connect to the flts BRU-EWR, BRU-JFK and BRU-YYZ. This seems to be designed to improve the load factor on the transcon segments even at the risk of having thinner traffic on BLR-BRU.