Originally Posted by
NickB
The bases de province model is very clearly point-to-point. If they started to mess about turning them into mini-hubs, it would create a level of complication which is against what the model seeks to achieve. It may or may not have been successful (out of MRS - or should I say base to Provence
- it seems to me that fares are often very low, suggesting that they struggle to fill them at higher yields and they closed quite a few of the initial routes but this is, admittedly, purely anecdotal) but it is a coherent model, at least, if you take it in isolation of the rest.*
*
:San Gottardo and others have rightly pointed out the lack of a clear coherent strategy overall so I will not go over that again.
I very much agree - to me the Bases can make sense but only for point-to-point operations and it would be absurd to transform NCE, MRS, or TLS into additional AF mini-hubs. Indeed, in many ways, the LYS hub was probably a very poor choice for AF at the time and they are trying their best to move away from it.
Whether the Bases will close or not remains to be seen. If they lose money then they may close indeed, but one should always remember that there is a cost in ending an operation. Invariably, you anger people and that has a cost too including on the routes on which you want them to continue using you. Regardless of whether the Bases model is workable, I'm pretty sure that a connecting short haul-medium haul or medium haul-medium haul operation is not. If AF-KL are losing money, then most likely they will need to close some of their least profitable European routes from CDG and AMS too. I very much suspect that we will see further reductions in frequencies on the likes of London, Barcelona, Frankfurt, etc. and the closing down of a number of destinations altogether which will remain either AMS or CDG but not both. My guess is that they won't close the Bases but will only keep the routes that are fully sustainable and I would question whether the Hop base in BOD will ever emerge.
And I would personally suspect that the MiNi/Classic distinction will disappear sooner than later. If I were to make a guess, it would be that it will all become MiNi in Y, will see the generalisation of NEO seating on flights under 2 or 2h30, and quite possibly the disappearance of PE or C or both on a number of routes where premium traffic is not here, entrenching the slow but sure conversion of AF into a low cost operation within Europe (France included). However, this is only a guess and a totally uninformed one at that.