Originally Posted by
kalia960
Very interesting. I wonder why BA failed to fill its planes on that route and announced its withdrawal. Stiff competition from Emirates, of course, but that's the same for LH.
PS ORD-FRA may indeed be a heavily traveled route, but I don't understand why there is a lot of FRA-CCU traffic. CCU is not a major destination for international business, and Germany doesn't have Indian ethnic minorities the way the UK does.
BA's biggest drawback, if I recall correctly, is that their flights leave CCU early morning at about 5-6 AM, some 5 hours after LH. This leads to a later arrival in Europe and consequently the US, limiting same day connections.
You are right, the UK has a much, much larger Indian community than continental Europe, but London travelers have more options (9W, AI).
Plus, LH has always had a much stronger presence in India than BA. The only problem I was told for CCU flights is that profitability is lower due to a larger percentage of bookings in lower economy fare classes (W etc). But business class bookings are very strong.
There was already a good amount of traffic from CCU on LH prior to direct flights, routed through BOM/DEL. Additional data was collected through travel agents and the local German consulate. So, it was not so difficult to project passenger yields for their direct flight.