Originally Posted by
pbarnette
Just so we are clear, you are saying that Austrian is deliberately undercutting LH to pump up their own business at the expense of LH? If it is true that LH is so mismanaged that they let this happen, and if this is common across the other groupings, then I think we might be getting to the root cause of why European per capita GDP is so low...
Absolutely, happens every day. Austrian is there to satisfy the lower end of the scale, Swiss and LH for the premium traffic. Has nothing to do with missmanagement, if OS is pumping up their business the money will go directly to LH. There is a reason why most major european Airlines which took over another, smaller one kept them as a separate company with their own branding.
There are several markets whithin europe were both AF and KL fighting each other, for instance the prices for flights from BER-IST can vary as much as 200% between AF and KL. As long as i book any of the two the money stays with the family.