Bluekjp

And the Mon and Thu LCY to LSI from 09 May that touches down in DND before continuing

BlueThroughCrimp

I wouldn't be on it weekly, but that would have been fantastic for the City to be linked to Dundee.
London's loss I guess.

skipness1E

Willie Walsh did not like franchisees, although for some reason, SunAir survived....

salut0

Which other franchisees did he kill off? Anything you recommend reading about the history of this period of BA? I’d be interested to know more

Bluekjp

The service does exist. You can fly it now. It just isn't sold as a BA codeshare that's all.

BlueThroughCrimp

I know. I see the landings from my living room
I think the attraction of TPs and Avios, with London gaining the privilege of being linked to Dundee by "BA" are considerable.

skipness1E

The model had been dying for some time, Birmingham based Maersk(UK) had broken away after a fall out with BA, then quickly went bust after a brief period flying on their own as Duo. Gatwick's CityFlyer Express was bought out by BA and merged with Gatwick short haul, BA also bought British Regional and Brymon, merged them under the BA CitiExpress banner then latterly BA Connect, and then sold the struggling remains to flybe. The Loganair franchise survived and was IMHO a good fit, but I believe BA wanted a measure of control over their own operations rather than franchising them out to people who actually knew the markets better.....

Of course history shows everything that BA touch outside of London based ops ends badly, even LGW's never ending "we just need to cut your wages for the nth time" model is hardly a stellar success story. I guess the counter to that view is the near monopoly that BA CityFlyer now have at LCY, but that's again a London-centric business model. And that was inherited from BACON, they intentionally didn't sell the LCY routes to flybe and held onto 10 RJ100s. So that's a good example of bringing something in-house and making a success of it, albeit one kept far away from Waterworld and run from a business park in Didsbury with no pretentions to the glamour of aviation. The lesson was that as soons as BA's internal accounting and cost allocation squad worked their magic on anything bought in, the whole operation became loss making overnight due to different accounting practices. The British Regional Jetstream 41 fleet was a money maker on Friday evening and when BA took ownership by Monday they had to sell the whole loss making fleet to Eastern to fly independently on the same routes BA had just paid money to take over!

That leaves Sun Air of Scandinavia and Comair flying in South Africa as the surviving franchises.

salut0

Thanks for the detailed post. I wonder why regional subsidiaries/franchises are so prevalent in the USA (like Envoy, Pinnacle, Republic Airlines, Mesa, Colgan…) and why there the model has worked. Is it that they can pay much less and that they also aren’t tied to flying solely for one mainline carrier? Many regionals there fly for several carriers using different branded planes. Wonder also how the economics of small town flights compare between UK and USA — USA has essential air service with subsidies for especially small routes and I know the UK has a similar setup in rural Scotland, for example…

In the USA the low pay has led to some dreadful incidents — like the Colgan Continental Connection crash at BUF — which stem from overtired and underpaid pilots. Not sure how much that had changed or whether recent lack of problems is merely luck and not an improvement…

ajamieson

Hard to compare because the UK regional market is so much smaller and isn't serving the same hub as the 'parent' so we're talking small market-small market rather than huge hub-small market. Even then, it's difficult - CityJet lost eye-watering sums flying for Air France from Paris CDG to regional UK markets despite busy and well-marketed flights asnd much lower costs than AF so who knows what went wrong there.

skipness1E

They were squeezed out by easyJet and Ryanair. The likes of Belfast-Scotland used to be flown by BA franchisees on turboprops at business class rates when the LOCOs came along and offered faster jets at a fraction of the price. Hence many longstanding BA routes became uncompetitive overnight. EZY took GLA-BFS, BRS, BHX, LGW, CDG for their own, all one time BA operated. Also killed the BA EuroHub at Birmingham as the turboprops from Scotland used to feed 99 seat jets into Europe, easyJet simply flew you from Scotland directly at half the price. So the volume dried up and the low volume high yield routes saw fares rise!
Loganair were so niche that competition never really drove volume or dropped prices within Scotland, they survived by being needed in market.

WLX

Presumably the reason BA couldn't just implement their own point to point strategy to 'fly customers straight from Scotland to Europe' was because of crew contracts or hyper-focus on feeding connections at LHR – clearly if they wanted that market they had the planes/expertise/money to go after it. It makes you wonder whether the emergence of BA Euroflyer – if proven successful at LGW – could result in some better coverage of UK regional airports, albeit not to London but to Europe, given that the crew costs will be less of an issue.

skipness1E

BA couldn't compete because back then they had a relatively expensive cost base, they had quite recenty been a state owned flag carrier. The road to Accenture Alex's cost base was a very long one. easyJet stimulated the Scotland-Europe market by offering low fares to drive volume at a level BA couldn't compete against back then. Added to that BA had fed ABZ/EDI/GLA over both MAN and BHX for years, rather than LHR. Scottish feed made those bases viable, to fly direct would have been changing their own business model completely and buying a whole new fleet of jets. There was no business case as ROI would have been negative with BA staffing costs.

salut0

Do you mean that BHX and MAN are close enough to London to make train travel and then changing to a plane from LHR/LGW workable, whereas trains from Scotland to London take much too long for that to be attractive for multistage journeys?

skipness1E

No I just mean the business model was buit to support MAN and BHX bases by feeding European bound traffic from Scotland where possible. They had a fleet of 99 seat BAC-111s based at both airports that were reliant on Scottish feed, as well as supporting the IGS (Internal German Services) routes. BA flew from Berlin to West Germany and rotated airframes through MAN and BHX. It was a high cost model that broke the day easyJet was launched. From that date BA was reliant on it's Scottish business over LHR and was reduced in the eyes of many to "London Airways", which is accurate but unfair IMHO as they were never ever going any other way from that cost base.

salut0

Was this what used to be called Deutsche BA?