Originally Posted by Threy
Basically all Eastern European flag carriers serve New York and all Eastern European carriers are getting nice subsidies which make those flights worthwhile.
There is simply not enough demand ( yet ) for carriers to serve WAW, PRG or BUD in addition to the national carriers, only DL sees enough demand and has announced to serve BUD from Kennedy.But DL sees potential in any international market right now and will apply for domestic flights within Cuba shortly...
Seriously though, some Eastern European gateways are really high yield , but are not nearly big enough to justify nonstop TATL service, a fact which is used by OS or LH nicely to get some feed into their TATL services...
Alitalia is more subsidized than any airline in Eastern Europe and it doesn't stop CO from flying to Italy. (not that business demand is the same...)
Eastern European airlines have relative few wide body planes and they can't afford to add too many daily flights overseas. LO was flying once a day to JFK when number of passengers at WAW was 1 million/year. Three years later 3-4 million passengers go through WAW, but the number of fligts to JFK did not change. Same with CS from PRG. The increased passenger traffic from Eastern Europe was absorbed by AF, KL, LH, SK and BA by adding more connections to their hubs. DL used to do the same thing flying passengers form all over Europe on B727 to their hub in FRA.
This would be a great opportunity for CO. I would love it if CO started WAW service.