Originally Posted by
FlyingMoose
Of which we saw no proof, his successors had to finally launch the profitable routes their home market had been interested in for a decade (LAX/SFO/HND). But hey, we had SVG-IAH for a while with no useful feeder flights!
I think that we agree what (or who?) the problem was.
There was an interesting plot of route profitability and route closures in one of the annual reports. But the devil is in details that we can't see
The challenge for the Swedish market in many areas is that the Swedish consumers are often very cost conscious and any saving is a gain. Cheaper is by definition better. Meaning the connecting competition could often have a very strong case in the market compared to the direct long haul flights.
HND was not in the SK management's own hands. That is under the control of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism over here. Haneda was never a part of the open skies agreement with the EU, nor woty any other countries for that matter. I am actually still surprised that they got it, but I guess it was part of the package for Finnair and JAL to get Helsinki Haneda.
The problem as I see it is mainly a zig zag course on what they actually wanted to do, there has not been a clear direction since Carlzon tore down the pyramids. And then they just got crazily late into fixing their cost base.