Originally Posted by
MeltingAlf
No sensible airline - especially someone as small as Aegean - is going to introduce a new fleet sub-type of four aircraft just to fly 1x/2x weekly to experiment whilst putting the rest on existing routes that is perfectly serviceable with the existing A320/A321s.
Furthermore Aegean's also not stupid enough to reduce pax counts on routes like LHR when the pre-existing product suffices.
It's one thing for Aegean to test new routes with their pre-existing fleet which would incur little to zero capex. It's another thing to introduce a small fleet sub-type to do that.
I mean, I imagine that, as Aegean says, the existing routes that would see this would be some of the middle eastern routes. I imagine they have strong confidence that they can maintain and increase yields to those destinations against stronger competitors while also having the ability to test the waters with a few new routes further afield.
But the point is that I would imagine this small sub-fleet is so small because they have confidence that they could increase their revenues on certain existing middle eastern routes with this fleet, while giving them the opportunity to see if new markets might work for them as well.
Unlike many others, I would be more surprised to see these on London routes as a regular thing with these planes. Because they can fill the London flights easily enough. But I could see them eventually adding some sort of signature service or something geared to people connecting to the more high yield destinations.