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Old Jul 5, 2018, 10:21 am
  #1  
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Highest revenue airline routes in the world

I came across this recently: https://viewfromthewing.boardingarea...llion-dollars/

With BA being at the top for revenue and nearly at the top for revenue per hour, perhaps that explains why there has been no hurry to update CW - they are raking in the cash already, why incur additional cost for a product that is selling well ? Not that I agree with that strategy, but it seems to work...
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Old Jul 5, 2018, 10:39 am
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Originally Posted by Jagboi
why incur additional cost for a product that is selling well ? Not that I agree with that strategy, but it seems to work...
Well, this is revenue, not profitability. BA have by far the most seats LON-NYC but it doesn't really help them all that much if they are making a much lower profit per passenger than competitors (I'm not suggesting BA are, I have no real insight into BA's profitability levels on LHR-JFK). However, yes, I think as long as BA can maintain their strong position on TATL and UK-NYC in particular, they won't be in any rush to update the hard product.
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Old Jul 5, 2018, 10:42 am
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Also, what is interesting is out of the top 10 routes on that list there are four other ones (possibly three if excluding LHR-DOH which is largely connecting traffic BA isn't targeting) where BA have ceded huge amounts of traffic to a competitor that offers a superior product, precisely because BA's whole way of thinking is to design their product for the TATL market.
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Old Jul 5, 2018, 10:45 am
  #4  
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Interesting, and shows why BA can be lethargic about CW improvements.
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Old Jul 5, 2018, 10:49 am
  #5  
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What this actually says is that BA gets the top spot route but none of the other nine, four of which involve LHR... but not for BA (EK for DXB, SQ for SIN, CX for HKG, QR for DOH).

in other words, LHR is a goose that lays the five golden eggs, but BA only manages to get one of them in its own hub...
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Old Jul 5, 2018, 10:54 am
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Originally Posted by orbitmic
What this actually says is that BA gets the top spot route but none of the other nine, four of which involve LHR... but not for BA (EK for DXB, SQ for SIN, CX for HKG, QR for DOH).

in other words, LHR is a goose that lays the five golden eggs, but BA only manages to get one of them in its own hub...
But they are all to the relevant airline hubs. So it makes sense that LHR would be at the middle...
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Old Jul 5, 2018, 11:00 am
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I wonder how OAG obtained the revenue figures, and how reliable they are.

Taking EK on LHR-DXB, for example: a very high proportion of the traffic on this route connects at DXB to myriad different places. I'd be impressed if OAG has managed not only to extract reliable revenue numbers, but also to have performed a reliable apportionment of each trip's revenue between the LHR-DXB and the DXB-XXX sectors.
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Old Jul 5, 2018, 11:07 am
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Originally Posted by Globaliser
I wonder how OAG obtained the revenue figures, and how reliable they are.

Taking EK on LHR-DXB, for example: a very high proportion of the traffic on this route connects at DXB to myriad different places. I'd be impressed if OAG has managed not only to extract reliable revenue numbers, but also to have performed a reliable apportionment of each trip's revenue between the LHR-DXB and the DXB-XXX sectors.
My bolding. I doubt the info is accurate. Airlines do not advertise their money making routes.
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Old Jul 5, 2018, 11:19 am
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Originally Posted by Sealink
But they are all to the relevant airline hubs. So it makes sense that LHR would be at the middle...
well you could have both airlines doing well or city pairs, or it could be random in which case BA would typically get 2.5 out of 5. They are getting one instead....
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Old Jul 5, 2018, 11:26 am
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I don't think I trust these figures at all. Even if you're able to infer capacity on the routes, how do you apportion connecting flights as Globaliser suggests, and airlines certainly don't release load factors and yield by route. In the comment section at the bottom, the question was asked and the response was "Yields are a combination of local and prorated fares based upon industry conventions as reported by our supplier." That doesn't really answer the question, does it?
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Old Jul 5, 2018, 11:37 am
  #11  
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Couldn't revenue be obtained from GDS?
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Old Jul 5, 2018, 11:40 am
  #12  
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Originally Posted by Jagboi
Couldn't revenue be obtained from GDS?
Which bit of the GDS?

Even if you could break in to each reservation and add up the fare information for every booking on every flight on every route, you'd still have the problem that a lot of bookings don't have fare information because the operating airline only has an operating PNR and the fare information is only held in some other airline's prime/marketing PNR. Or the ticket has been sold on a net basis so the GDS doesn't record anything of what the airline has been paid.

Or if you just looked at the fare listing in the GDS, that would tell you nothing because you'd have no idea how many seats were sold in each booking class or at what fare within that booking class, and in any case many tickets are sold on fares that are not listed in the GDS.

If the information is reliable, it has to come from somewhere else. I'd love to know where, and whether or not it is reliable.
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Old Jul 5, 2018, 12:08 pm
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Am I right in saying that 50% of this top 10 revenue list is OneWorld?
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Old Jul 5, 2018, 12:22 pm
  #14  
 
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Originally Posted by lost_in_translation
Well, this is revenue, not profitability. BA have by far the most seats LON-NYC but it doesn't really help them all that much if they are making a much lower profit per passenger than competitors (I'm not suggesting BA are, I have no real insight into BA's profitability levels on LHR-JFK). However, yes, I think as long as BA can maintain their strong position on TATL and UK-NYC in particular, they won't be in any rush to update the hard product.
They wouldn’t be updating the product if they only did LHR-USA flights. Going East the ME3, TK, SQ and CX has decimated them with better seats and services so change has to happen.
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Old Jul 5, 2018, 1:04 pm
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I'm surprise Air Canada YYZ-YVR made it to the list.
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