greenarmy

Medium long/long haul by A3 I think really is unlikely, particularly TATL, because if it were to start, it would need to be summer seasonal to be profitable.
But A3 is already a very seasonal business geared towards squeezing out the peak 3 months of summer everything they can because there is a lot of money to be made for them there. Adding further imbalance by having planes and crew that don't have an obvious use in the winter doesn't seem ideal.

Counter intuitively perhaps, I would find them buying 321XLRs to do European winter only seasonal flights on longer routes to (spins wheel) Cape Town/Seychelles/Maldives/Bangkok more likely, and then keeping them in Europe during summer. But that is a substantial risk that I doubt pays off, or is risked unless they have serious data to suggest it might work.

djjaguar64

So do alot of their Gold's & Silvers!

djjaguar64

Does not make sense for them to fly to BKK & Capetown. We do not have any Greek airline in N. America, besides their codeshares.

KLouis

Isn't it a safe assumption that the A3 execs have made some kind of market research and that they concluded that making money on long hauls to the US or elsewhere ain't presently going to be making money? In last analysis, the airline is no longer owned by the Greek government and neither is it run by employees who got their jobs because they were members of the, then, ruling party.

East_and_West

When having such discussions, people often disregard some key statistics. First, about 2/3 of pax on long-haul flights are transfer passengers, and about half of them their trip neither begins at the flight's origin nor end at the flight's destination. In other words, direct demand for the XXX-YYY segment is not sufficient to fill the aircraft, and this includes big cities and financial centres like London, Paris, Amsterdam, etc, with much more traffic than Athens. How many pax from Western/North Europe are going to take a flight to ATH to go, say to, NYC/EWR or YYZ, when there are so many other airlines flying the those routes? The same is true for travellers from the Middle East. Europe-East Coast is already a highly satiated market...

Eastbound long-haul is a different case, but still risky. Apart from the high quasi-fixed costs of establishing a foothold there, A3 would have to face a very different kind of competition than what they are used to. Notwithstanding that they would be subject to predatory pricing from the already well-established Middle-Eastern/East Asian airlines, targeting the pax from ATH. (Geographic price differentiation is pretty straightforward and easy to implement on long-haul routes, even taking into account hidden-city ticketing, etc. Especially since ATH is not such a major hub anyway.)

Exactly that. Plus that A3 up to now has followed a quite cautionary/conservative expansion strategy.

I like A3, and I would like them to survive in the medium-run at the very least. I don't live in Athens, so perhaps I underestimate the importance of having a truly international airline hub close to one's home. But at the same, I would like to have close to my home an airline that can get me almost anywhere in Europe directly, and that's something that I wouldn't like to risk losing. For my half a dozen long-hauls per year, LH, LX, TK, EK, SQ, even QR, would be (at most) one short hop away...

Plus, that if A3 ever went long-haul, the 12,000 miles *G re-qualification threshold would almost certainly change... To the dismay of lots of current A3*Gs, I guess

Carpacchio

Actually, I remember taking this flight in 2003 from GVA (via ATH to BKK). Wondered already about the strange routing. Especially on the way back, when we landed in ATH around 5 am, where transfer passengers were kept in a closed departure area (without any food or beverages, let alone enough seating space) while the plane was refueled, and then led back to the plane together with people boarding for the ATH - GVA segment.

irishguy28

I don't think anyone here is reasonably assuming that A3 would start ATH-NYC and expect it survive solely on O&D traffic.

However, if they partnered with UA at EWR or B6 at JFK and/or BOS, they could offer a slate of North American destinations that would certainly be of interest and use in filling up the A3 transatlantic sector!

(This article claims that 30% of TAP's BOS customers are fed from B6)



And no, I am not saying this is likely to happen - just pointing out that A3 is not limited to O&D traffic either, although it is indeed poorly positioned to scoop up European connecting pax.

irishguy28

While such "tag" flights are less common now than before, they certainly are not unusual. Current examples of fifth freedom flights (where the airline can carry customers between points on the "short" leg) include LATAM's FRA-MAD-SCL, Singapore's ARN-DME-SIN, Hainan's DUB-EDI-PEK and Emirates' MLA-LCA-DXB. They allow airlines make two "thin" destinations viable by combining service to both locations in a single flight. In some cases, they are served in triangular fashion (Hainan's service operates PEK-DUB-EDI-PEK on some days, and PEK-EDI-DUB-PEK on others) while others follow the same route (such as LATAM; SCL-MAD-FRA is always followed by a FRA-MAD-SCL)

A real favourite of mine from the recent past was Garuda Indonesia's AMS-LGW-AMS service (operated with a 777 originating from/returning to CGK)

It's not clear to me whether TG had local traffic rights on GVA-ATH, but whether they did or not, the goal is to have people on the ground for these stops for as short as possible; providing food and beverage on the ground between flights, even while on an enforced offload mid-trip, is not what airlines specialise in and would unnecessarily delay the flight; these services are better provided by airlines in the air, while the pax are "captive" and in need of diversion.

Dover2Golf

Any region can only support so many long haul hubs and IMO ATH is too close to IST to do anything but be a poor relation. It was not ever thus but as has been recounted above the decades of mismanagement of Olympic Airways weakened the position of Athens which could have been a regional hub while TK quietly built a huge and pretty successful business. ATH-IST is only 555KM.

Bear in mind that TK offer more destinations than any other airline and there isn't much scope to start up to anywhere that isn't already served. TK also have a very good on board product and a very smart new hub.

A3 are an excellent regional airline and for me they should keep building on their strengths while working with their *A partners to consolidate their position.

Knobbgb

I said this in the previous thread and I don't think the new XLR aircraft change the argument much at all. I think the only realistic way A3 MIGHT make some long-haul work would be with one-stop services, either via places they don't serve or places they only fly to seasonally. I mean routes like ATH-DUB-BOS, ATH-GLA-JFK, ATH-LIS-MIA, even SKG-LGW-YYZ. OK I just pulled those from the top of my head but I'm just demonstrating the general idea. I think many of the 'loyal' Greeks wanting to travel on a Geeek airline would accept the direct one-stop flight over an actual connection. The pax. travelling through the entire route could help support the low loads on the European sectors and the extra pax. they'd pick up for just the transatlantic leg could help mitigate the "O&D Greek diaspora factor". In the summer they could limit sales on the short European sectors to try to pick up as much through traffic as possible. Being able to offer a proper business class product on the long 3.5-4.5hr European routes would be an added bonus. Don't get me wrong, I still think this wouldn't work, but it might be slightly less disastrous than opening a year-round direct flight to JFK or wherever.

daiseiko

If A3 starts long hauls, it would be changed the rule to keep M+B Gold membership.
Absolutely much more than 1.2K +4 A3 or 2.4K.
Then better to keep A3 as a best regional airlines.

GUWonder

yurtripper

If A3 offers TATL flights then the US credit card bloggers and their points-rich acolytes will be all over it - probably won't end well for those of us currently enjoying the easy requal terms in M&B.

A3 flights to Asia is fine though so please go ahead with that!

Yreal

I don't see the problem with the a321xlr. Aegean already does some flights that go quite far, so if they see a market, why not?

I think Kuwait is the furthest now? If it works, it works. I could see a case for Addis Ababa for connections. South Africa? Bangkok? Doesn't sound farfetched to me, it's basicly the same reason that aer lingus works for eu-usa. I know a lot of people connect to South Africa in Dubai, Athens would be a lot faster.

makes more sense to me then Casablanca or Tunis. But then again, I don't run an airline, so what do I know.

KLouis

Exactly!