Originally Posted by
brunos
Regarding Japan, I am not sure why AF would be affected more than BA or LH.
Regarding Tunisia (and possibly other NA countries), AF is more impacted than BA & LH, but many flights are done by charter airlines, not AF which only has few daily flights.
Regarding Middle East, the historical links are quite strong with UK and BA is probably more affected.
Overall, I find it hard to use these events as justification for performance differentials among European airlines.
Japan was (and is) a very important and sucessful/lucrative market for AF and with high yields. Among the "big 3", AF has the highest market shares and capacity between Japan & Europe. Consequently, AF is hit more by this disaster. And it seems that this market is revovering slowly as the return of the A380 to NRT has been again postponed (was originally scheduled for beginning of september - no new date announced officially). A parallel with BA and the US market after 9/11 : they were more badly hit than AF & LH because of the capacity they had to the US.
For North Africa, it's not only Tunisia who was affected in AF network but also Algeria and Morocco, albeit the greatest impacts were in Tunisia.
For Egypt and gulf countries, yes I think we can reasonnably say that the 3 carriers were impacted similarly.
For AF, Damascus flights are also impacted severely for the last 2 months. It is not even served non-stop at the moment (flights make a stop in BEY). I don't know if LH and BA fly to DAM.
Originally Posted by
brunos
Let's hope for AF that the quarter is just a "unique" event, but the profitability over the past three years has not been good, to say the least.
yes, let's hope
