Originally Posted by
orbitmic
But I never said "95%" or "99%" or "either/or"
Apologies. I clearly misunderstood what you meant. You referred to "a few O/D pax picked up on the way". I read that as meaning that you considered that planes were overwhelmingly filled with transfer traffic with only "a few" O/D pax, hence my reference to 95%.
nor did I say that the 2g lounge is not a problem for o/d passengers.
I am perplexed by this. I never said that you did but merely that your argument about the
particular unsuitability of 2G for CDG-FRA was premised on connection to long-haul connections, not short/medium-haul ones. Is that not what you explicitly say in the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs of post #250 or have I misunderstood that too?
I have to say that, to me, the notion of "route primarily designed for transfer traffic" is not a particularly useful concept if it is meant to embrace routes on which a substantial number of O&D traffic is also expected. If that is so, then you must design your timetable and facilities to satisfy the latter just as much as the former. The O&D traffic is not just a bonus of a few passengers "picked up on the way" (with the potential implicit sub-text that one could do without them)* but a necessity to maintain the viability of the route.
The implication of the argument of FRA being predominantly being a O/D destination would be that small planes with multiple rotations is a choice that fits an O/D pattern. I would have personally argued the exact opposite. In my view, if FRA was "predominantly" aimed at being OD, I would imagine that you would get a big A321 in the early morning and again in the evening and then one other rotation around midday because O/D traffic either tends to peak at specific times of the day or be large enough that you can fly large planes throughout. To me, a destination which uses the same Embraer at business peak time of 7.30am as it does at 15.10 is unlikely to have been organised as primarily O/D. Again, it does not mean that there is no O/D traffic and that the 7.30am flight won't be busier because it will also get the bulk of the O/D traffic but I simply do not think that AF is organising it as such, and therefore, based on the data that they have, they must estimate that the O/D traffic potential is less than its connecting traffic in my view.
You've got to make up your mind: a few posts ago, you said that the change to an E190/Hop/2G service was especially unsuited to transfer traffic. Now, you are saying that the change to an E190/Hop/2G service shows that this should be regarded as a service designed for transfer traffic.
In truth, it seems to me that the move to the E190/Hop/2G tells us nothing whatsoever on the transfer vs O&D issue on that route. It just reflects the difficulty of AF in capturing sufficient traffic, whether transfer or O&D.
Incidentally, I find the suggestion that just a morning and evening heavy service together with a midday one is a business-friendly schedule intriguing. I would have thought that a frequent service, allowing you to jump on an earlier or later flight if needed was the hallmark of a business-oriented O&D route.
Let me rephrase even further: I don't think AF fly ANY single route where they do not think that there is some o/d potential. Paris is a large city and economic centre, both as a point of origin and as a destination and I think that if there was any town/city where they think that the O/D potential to/from Paris is in fact near 0, they will not bother and either replace by codesharing on train connections as they do for BRU and the like, or only offer the train connection to CDG and minimal o/d service from ORY as they do for SXB. My contention is thus that all the services that remain "live" at CDG have potential for some O/D traffic, which, as I have argued time and again on both this and other fora is indispensable to make a route profitable as you cannot survive on "pure" connections. That is also why people do not build airports in the middle of nowhere.
Yet, my contention is that AF do not see themselves as keeping a large short and medium haul network at CDG for primarily O/D reasons.
OK but that is a truism and the very point for the existence of a hub. That would be true for BA or LH just as much as for AF and why it is not particularly useful to talk of a route "predominantly designed" for transfer traffic: pretty much all routes to hubs are designed with transfer traffic in mind
AND with point-to-point traffic in mind.
*:
for the sake of clarity, I am not saying that you said that but rather that the phrase is likely to carry that connotation.