Originally Posted by
irishguy28
Quod erat demonstrandum.
No, that is not what needed to be demonstrated. What needed to be demonstrated for your assertion to be true was not that one individual in one particular situation is negatively affected but that JVs generally affect individuals negatively. This is still demonstrandum as of now.
Originally Posted by
irishguy28
Are you saying that this is as an indirect result of DL dallying in two separate Joint Ventures?
Where does this notion come from that just because an airline participates in two different JVs, those JVs need to be merged?
VS does not participate in any alliance. They do not participate in any JV other than the one with their parent company. The JV with VS is designed to serve the UK market. VS is not interested at all in the tatl market in general, just the US-UK market. There are pretty good reasons for that. A quick look at VS route network will indicate why. The members of the ST JV are all network carriers with a propensity to serve the wider European market.
One does not need to be a genius to realise that it might not make a huge amount of sense for VS not to be part of the wider JV. One does not need to invoke theories of Machiavellian plotting and scheming by DL to explain why the two JVs are kept separate.
Would it benefit consumers for the two JVs to be joined? Perhaps. It would certainly benefit SEA-Flyer. But even if it is the case that it would benefit consumers as a whole for the two JVs to be merged, it does not follow from this that JVs are anti-consumer. This is an archetypal non-sequitur if there ever was one.
are VS and AF somehow at fault, despite having an interline agreement?
If VS and AF really wanted VS to provide through itineraries on each other, this would have been negotiated. It is not a question of "fault" on anybody's part. Apart from some very specific circumstances that do not apply here, there is no duty on any airline to conclude an agreement with another airline.