Originally Posted by
hfly
Oh please..............BA totally missed it on China, kept it to solely PEK for years........did not even apply fro PVG while VS grabbed the slot and were in there maybe a decade too late, then went for Chengdu, which did not work............You want to talk about Australia, it was not just about the half dozen destinations in Oceania, but all that other BKK and SIN traffic as well. KUL, in then out, then in and out again. No presence in ICN for almost two decades? Japan down from 4 routes to one? I could go on.
Blue, OAG may have published that, but I can say with 100% certainty that neither AA nor any other carrier had a Transatlantic flight into GLA in October 1991. 1) Because I remember vividly remember that NWA was the ONLY airline that flew into Scotland prior to GLA (into Prestwick), 2) NWA was the first to then fly into GLA (when they switched airports), and 3) I flew Prestwick-BOS on NWA in December 1991. This was the days before the internet and "printed" schedules often printed things that were planned, but not everything happened the way they were planned and you could have errors extend through several seasons. Now when one looks at the 1990-1992 time period there was A LOT going on in regards to US/UK bilaterals (Bermuda 2), there was the sale of the Pan Am London hub to United, as well as TWA's routes to AA. There were A LOT of negotiations happening, allowing the "new" carriers to operate, allowing VS to operate from LHR, and as a part of this allowing airports other than Prestwick to accept Trans-Atlantic flights, IIRC Glasgow was originally looking to get these flights since 1987 or so, and the negotiations went on and on, there were issues with GLA building out its new terminal, and of course the fact that Scottish aviation obviously took a backseat to everything else they were negotiating.
I think you're missing the point, those destinations you mentioned apart from SIN are low yield destinations with relatively high costs, so like I said in my post, why waste your own resource on it when you can codeshare and get revenue, still have access to the destinations and markets, but not use up your resources? For an aircraft to be efficient, it needs to do as many rotations as possible and make as much money in those rotations, so anywhere which an aircraft can get back to base within 24 hours including turn times is good. Opportunity cost basically.
Where LHR slots are traditionally limited, last two years withstanding due to covid, you have to focus on the markets which makes most money.