Originally Posted by
sfozrhfco
Until borders on both sides are fully opened without quarantine, there is really no need to offer bargain basement fares—especially if flights have to be temporarily cut if one side or the other further restricts travel once the cooler weather returns.
In addition, VS\BA with another lost year are both going to be more desperate for cash. VS had enough to last through 2021–assuming summer flights returned to a more normal level—which seems unlikely at this point. They won’t be flying around a lot of extra capacity if that will put them in an even more precarious financial position. BA will be losing a ton of money if they keep canceling flights every week as they have thus far.
With summer flights still being cut by competitors and transatlantic business travel unlikely to be up to 2019 levels for another year at least, competitive capacity will remain muted. We will have to wait until 2022 to see which carriers are still standing and in what shape each will be in by the winter 2022 before we see how pricing will shake out.
Very true... I had no expectation of what prices would or wouldn't look like from Jetblue as they open up LON. I have no love for the huge network carriers, and if I can avoid them, I generally do, even though I have (generally useless) lifetime status on one and annual status on another. Jetblue has always been just a tad better than United (Newark based for me), so it was an easier decision for me to choose anyone else.
Oddly, Jetblue's "Blue Basic" maneuver has soured me a bit, as they now price EXACTLY like United on nearly every route, so its basically a wash except for wifi, which I don't use half the time anyway as its profoundly unreliable almost all the time on every airline
I was kind of hoping that they (Jetblue) would play some sort of downward pressure role on transatlantic fares in a way that things like Level, Norwegian and a handful of others did, but early signs aren't pointing that way.
To your point though, as volume ramps, and an actual competitive environment returns, maybe we can expect some pricing action.