Originally Posted by
elitetraveler
My gut on the LCY-JFK is BA has pre-sold in some fashion enough capacity to go forward with it. With only 32 seats, there is significantly less capacity than EOS, Maxjet or Silverjet which ranged from 48 to 100 seats.
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I guess the last guess as to why BA are moving forward, is I wonder if BA xxd the service before the launch, if the liquidators for EOS, Maxjet and Silverjet would have a Laker moment. After all, AA launching double daily flights JFK-STN and the BA announcement over a year in advance of the LCY launch made it much more difficult for the business airlines to raise new funding.
Given the number of times that BA has referred to the support from a client based at Canary Wharf, I would be surprised if there isn't some deal of some sort, even if it might not technically be legally binding. Banks like that have a daily need for capacity across the Atlantic, and their suppliers doubtless know and track the volume of business being done, just like in any other supplier-customer relationship.
LCY-JFK is far from being novel. For example, it's often said that AA's RDU-LON flights are a corporate shuttle operated for GlaxoSmithKline on which members of the public are allowed to buy any spare tickets.
In doing this, BA has three advantages over the failed business class-only airlines: It has that "corporate shuttle" element which the others lacked, which provides a great deal of support. In turn, the customer is supported by the rest of BA's offerings, which provide alternatives and backup - if LCY should be closed for some reason, you only need to trek over to LHR rather than wait until the next day. And the numbers are small, in relation to the route: 64J per day on a city pair on which BA was until recently routinely flying something like 700J per day.
And it's different from AA's JFK-STN, too. That was just a classic AA predatory tactic: operate the route at a loss until you kill the competitor.