orbitmic

callum9999 doesn't have further information; he just went to the New York airport authority from whom the statistics come from and saw that this is merely based on arrival statistics. Unless BA have started throwing their transfer pax off the plane mid-air before it lands which they have not done to me as yet, then yes, we are counted as part of arrival passengers on their flights into New York

https://www.panynj.gov/airports/

orbitmic

You keep making that accusation and it is a very serious one. Could you tell us what makes you think that Norwegian have anything to do with this? The statistics are "signed" as was the original information release and all those things came from the New York airport authorities. If you have reason or evidence suggesting that this is made up and that in fact the figures were 'made up' by DY, it would be quite good to explain what the basis of your accusations is.



Oh dear, are you sure you really want us to go there? BA which once tried to call itself the "world's largest international airline" had to retract quickly in view of problems with that claim and had to replace he slogan by the "world's favourite airline", a claim which was based on such flawed hand picked data as to be grossly misleading (had you asked "the world" "what is your favourite airline?" BA would not have been top answer either then or now?)

Or are you saying that BA should have the right to pick the categories in which it is to be compared with others and the others should just shut up and accept whatever BA decides is a fair basis for comparison however idiosyncratic?

orbitmic

I think there are two points really.

The first is that some of us just don't understand why some of the answers here (and to clarify I am not pointing at you) are being so defensive on this. The NYC airport authority published their statistics, someone noted that DY has now transported more passengers from Europe than BA into the NYC airport system thereby becoming the first non-US transatlantic carrier into the NYC area. Someone saw the article, and posted it here and that's it. Nobody made particularly extravagant claims about it, nobody claimed that DY would replace BA in 10 years, nobody claimed (on this thread at least, we do have the occasionally lunatic prediction in the forum, but as it happens not here ) that this is the beginning of the end for BA or that they will never fly BA again or whatever. It is just one particular statistic, with its own meaning and its own limitations like any solitary statistic, something a bit quirky and symbolic which shows that somehow, DY have become an important player in the NYC transatlantic market in which they were almost entirely absent a very short time ago.

That basically could have been the end of it and the thread would have gone on for 20 posts before dying its natural death, except that in a way, negative reactions trying to pretty much rubbish whatever small thing DY achieved here in a such a way as to bizarrely suggest through this very denial that BA should take the situation (and therefore the statistic) a lot more seriously than any of us did. This, in and by itself, is strange. In practice, when you feel that something is meaningless, the typical reaction of a human being is to just ignore it. If one makes a big case of it, one paradoxically conveys the impression that he/she feels that this is a lot more threatening than anyone thought, that it has a lot more meaning than he/she cares to admit, and this is really paradoxical.

The second point is that people have pointed out to the limitations of the metric. Absolutely fine. But that is just true of this metric as of any others. Why does it make more sense to look at "biggest carrier with a single hub" or "biggest carrier between city x and city y" (I mean, would we feel that it would make great sense if QR boasted about being the largest carrier between Doha and New York or something?) Or how would "largest carrier between London and the US" be more logical than between NYC and Europe? Or even largest carrier between Europe and the US. We've been told that BA should get credit for those flying on BA codes operated by other airlines (which would be a complete departure from traditional air traffic statistics which always stick to operators only) but it was rightly answered that if this were the case, passengers carried by BA on AY, AA, or IB tickets should symmetrically be excluded and I'm not sure that would benefit BA, etc.

In other words, as someone who looks at statistical data on a daily (understatement) basis, I don't see anything uniquely challenging about this particular stat compared to any other routinely used in the field. The truth is that at a scientific/professional level, nobody would ever infer anything from a single statistic on anything. You would index a lot of different things and consider a lot of both individual and composite figures before deriving any conclusion, and you'd know that whatever you add to or withdraw from the basket will "pull" your analysis in one direction or another. I often read that you can "make statistics say anything". That is completely wrong. Any individual statistic will say something quite specific. You can however read them very wrong, and you should take the time to look at the basis for the figures you are provided, consider metrics and/or question formulation consider the context the data corresponds to. Effectively, when you are in a position to do so, you would also decide which figures you want to look at rather than wait and you which one you are given, and you would decide how they should be pooled together. This is as true of this as it is of any other figure, and I certainly would not encourage anyone to infer a whole lot from this. Equally, however, I find it unconvincing and unsubstantiated to suggest that this particular figure is in any way "more" biased or "more" misleading than hundreds of others that have been discussed at length on this forum without anyone raising an eyebrow. If the only specificity of this particular metric is that it does not "advantage" BA, it is worth remembering that others do and that is not, in and by itself, any better.

orbitmic

It is useful, but to illustrate what I was saying before, do bear in mind that the figure you report here is based on a single week of traffic. If you look, airlines with strong links to the South Atlantic (AF, IB, Latin American airlines) are not doing well here, but that is because peak northern summer is ultra peak on US-Europe flights (which advantages US airlines, BA, and DY alike), but not high season for either South American (winter) or Central American (bad weather) destinations Both would be a lot stronger in the Northern winter. As I was saying, different stats, different advantages, different stories, and different limitations.

Also for those who thought that not taking a JV view was unfairly disadvantaging BA, note that DL+AF+KL > AA+BA+IB by quite a margin here as do DL+AF+KL+AZ > AA+BA+IB+EI (I'm not even counting VS in the former but obviously they have another JV with DL).

hfly

Orbitmic. They called themselves the "World's Favourite Airline" because Maurice Saatchi coined the phrase as it was one that could not be disproved, in fact they specifically used this line because it was NOT dependent on any numbers, and Lord King got a kick out of it, plain and simple. I have never ever heard of them calling themselves the "World's Largest International Airline", but what do I know, I have only been an EC member since 1990. Can you please show me where and when they said this?

I did NOT at any time say that the FIGURES were made up, I said that it was a made up STATISTIC. Big difference.

Ldnn1

Care to explain?!

Prospero

I know I will end up regretting getting drawn into this discussion, but here goes. In for a penny, in for a pound

By my count (someone please please verify), DY has 40 weekly flights out of JFK to Europe:18 weekly fiights out of EWR to EuropeSubtotal: 58 weekly flights out of PANYNJ

What the heck (as its only a 70 mi drive from Penn Station) add to this 26 flights out of SWF to EuropeGrand total: 84 weekly flights

Kettle on; tea bag in cup..... discuss

Ldnn1

So what are you saying is made up / incorrect?

Prospero

I am weighing up the mental effort to double check this against the intellectual return. This thread is more exhausting to follow than today's Telegraph reader comments section.

Maybe I should just get back to stuff I know and care about, like resin floors

Tea is nice though. Wish I had a biccy

Ldnn1

Go for the tea. To comfort you, my "Care to explain?" was asking what hfly meant by his assertion that there is a big difference between 'figures' and 'statistics' - I wasn't seeking an explanation of the figures/statistics themselves.

hfly

Once upon a time the Mayor of Mexico City promised that he would increase the amount of highways in around the city, the first thing he did was essentially redo the medians and walls around the Periferico AND narrow the lanes, BUT he repainted them six across in each direction, up from the four that were previously there. In his next campaign he claimed that he had increased CAPACITY around the Periferico by FIFTY percent. in the ensuing year or 2 accidents were up something like 300% as were deaths. His successor reduced the lanes back to four across, and accidents went down again. One of his campaign claims was that he has maintained a 17% increase in road space. Obviously they were exactly back where they started, but a lot of gullible people still believed that there was an improvement when there was none.

This article was obviously written by a Reuters staff writer who was send some spin piece by Norwegian, I cannot imagine that this writer thought up this weird statistic that has never been used by anyone else in this way on its own. That Norwegian made up the spin is not actually my issue, the fact that a News Wire would go for it, spin it some more and then the papers would do it more is what bothers me the most.

simons1

The article is basically a copy/paste of a press release on Norwegian web site. Easy copy for the papers.

Globaliser

And not the first such success that Norwegian has recently had: BA ranked worst TATL carrier for fuel efficiency

ahmetdouas

ahmetdouas