I thought that the word was that the pilot and flight attendant base and hours flown would remain the same no matter what the flight situation. So, while some destinations might change, the total seats, pilots and FAs out of NYC airports would remain static.

That's a good point however it's likely that NYC-LHR is probably the route with the highest profit margin among all the TATL routes.

There might not be one specific reasons why AA transferred some of the JFK-Europe flights to PHL. It's probably because that is what their latest math models are advising them to do.


If I were speculate without supporting evidence: I think AA crunched the numbers, which showed that those other JFK TATL routes to non-LHR destinations would have a higher margin if flown out of PHL. Additionally their model also showed that those routes have very little impact on their "money" routes from JFK which is JFK to LHR, JFK to SFO/LAX and possibly JFK to the big South American cities. Also it's possible that the model showed that the people who flies the JFK-non-LHR flights on AA will actually be more likely to switch to JFK-LHR-non-LHR on AA/BA rather than switching to Delta or *shudders* United out of EWR. Of course this all random guessing on my part.

Can't help but wonder if UA's moves at JFK were prescient. Back in the day, UA served LHR, NRT, LAX, SFO, ORD, and I believe SJU. While, UA never had what AA does, this thread seems to me that the UA strategy of retreating to fortress hubs is being followed to some extent here by AA.

deleted - replied before reading the full thread.

I don't see your point in the cyclical logic statement. 'Quality' of service is your argument, not mine.

CHI also arguably supports three carrier hubs. WN doesn't have the flight count but it's all mainline.

AA's problem in NYC is PHL. It can't have big hubs that close together - they compete to aggregate traffic. Even US Air (ways) was smart enough to figure this out and rationalize BWI (with a lot of help from WN) and PIT in favor of PHL. AA can have 400+ flights a day at PHL; that's not going to happen at JFK.

Sticking to hubs is a long-standing AA strategy: AA's term was cornerstone. You can find plenty of references in this forum.

US wasn't much different - it had nothing but hubs and a BOS focus city.

LHR is by far the largest market out of NYC. For finance industry in NYC, their European office in vast majority of cases is London and secondarily in Dublin (due to language/culture similarity and low taxes in Ireland). If Aer Lingus joins OneWorld at some point, then OW would dominate NYC to these two markets. Both LHR and DUB are better located for transit than continental Europe. I don't see how skyteam more than duplicate connections vs LHR, when I can fly to anywhere I care to fly to in Europe with short layover at LHR.

Outside of CDG and possibly AMS, the other locations ST flies to are vacation spots. LHR by itself is more important than those 2.

Eh, I'd think ZRH and BRU would be relatively important business centers (even if *I* fly to ZRH to go skiing ;)). AA dropped JFK-BRU years ago and will be dropping JFK-ZRH.
And of course none of this seems to consider the impact of Brexit on LHR; seems likely that at least some business will shift back to the continent. Are LHR (and PHL) really where AA wants to put its European eggs? I guess so.

You obviously don't have AA's data or analysis and neither do pretty much any of us here, but in my mind the biggest challenge with the analysis is getting the "network effect" right. Walmart years ago started to trim its merchandise offering, focusing on products that weren't selling particularly well. But the people that did go to Walmart for those products then started shopping elsewhere and sales performance was poor. While UA's routes out of JFK weren't profitable, didn't they recently say they regretted exiting that market because of the broader impact (e.g., attractiveness for corporate deals)?

The point is, it's larger than the profitability of individual routes, and the analysis gets more and more complicated, and even if the airline has a lot of data, you need to make a lot of assumptions. These decisions are not a science. If it was so easy, no company would ever make a strategic mistake. ;)

I really don't think BRU, FRA, ZRH, MXP or TLV are mainly vacation spots. I personally don't see how an LHR connection (especially with a T3-T5 transfer) ever beats a nonstop. Unless it is my final destination, I find LHR is a pain to deal with (plus BA intra-europe sucks big time). While AA/BA's position on JFK-LHR is a strength for them it is not the end all of NYC marketplace - lots of business goes on in other destinations...

Did you forget FRA and ZRH? Nobody is going to mistake those for vacation spots! AA and OW don't have a nonstop at all to FRA and soon won't have one to ZRH either...and DL/VS is more than competitive to LHR from JFK, offering flights every 30-60 mins in the evening. At least they are even co-located in the same terminal compared to AA/BA at JFK, so if you miss one flight you can get on the next one without having to switch terminals...

True which is why I mentioned this bit of speculation:
AA for whatever reason believe that the low-hanging fruits at JFK are almost completely decoupled from the money makers. I am not saying that AA's analysis is correct. It may well be that they are making assumptions in their model that are simply not true. It happens to the best of us in the STEM field.

Perhaps if anything, we'll see increased travel until Brexit is executed, as people fly over to "make changes" in the UK. Then, I do agree that DUB and others may become a bigger market once Brexit is done.

14 daily flights from NYC to LHR for Oneworld and 8 to 9 for SkyTeam. Not comparable. Delta has tried very hard and is a distance second place in this market.

the vast majority of European offices for finance firms are in london. Even when I had to deal with UBS, socgen, bnp, and Credit suisse's european desk, I'm still calling their London office. A lof this really has to deal with language and culture.

In fact, Dublin is more important than BRU, FRA, ZRH, MXP, TLV, CDG and AMS based on my experience.

I was focusing on markets that ST dominated in Europe. ST has 1 flight a day to ZRH, FRA, BRU. *A dominates these markets.

London will not get replaced in its role in the financial world. It was important before and will be important after EU. Are rest of Europe suddenly going to start speaking English and become culturally more like US?

If anything, Dublin will benefit. So I think it would be important for IAG to move EI to OneWorld. The biggest challenge to Oneworld from nyc to europe is *A, not ST.

If Brexit is such a game changer, why would Delta spend even more money buying into VS through AF/KL?

JOOC, what is that percentage for PHL?

--woodstock