UncleDude

Do you think that this will mean the LCY-JFK service will now never get off the Ground?

Nicksta

At worse, it would delay the service. Wall Street, the City, and I will be back.

chris18london

Urgh. Sorry UncleDude, not directed at you.

I highly doubt it. I imagine demand on this route would be somewhat inelastic, or better- relatively insensitive to this crisis which will merely be deepened by sensationalism in the press, the panic-sellers, the average Joe who tightens the purse strings, but doesn't know better when people like the BBC are, as they did last night, hailing doom and gloom as if it has never happened before. If people were encouraged to carry on spending instead of cutting back, it might maybe even turn the corner. The City and the Media relish the drama too much for that, which is low.

lgw29

the aircraft have been brought along with the engines lgw crew are crewing the flight and as far as we know its full steam ahead

cstead

I believe the number of layoffs on Wall Street has already exceeded 100,000, and the estimates have it capping anwhere between 100,000-250,000. That's a lot of people no longer purchasing J and F fares

koksy

Glad i'm not the only one to notice that! All this branding it as "the downturn" with a snazzy logo is really tacky and imported from our American friends it seems. As you say it doesnt help. No disrespect to anybody who has actually lost their jobs on here, but I don't personally like being told that I don't have any money and I should be staying at home watching TV rather than flying in an empty CE cabin!

The _Banking_Scot

Hi,


Well that is good to know, I would hate to be on a plane with no engines!!

Regards

TBS

hammythehammer

very good

hammythehammer

regardless of the rhetoric from the media i do believe we've entered a totally different type of recession than that we have faced before . there's not much left of our manufacturing base left to decimate so the burden will fall on the rest of us .
if the result of the LCY service is that it's predominantly BA customers that switch from LHR/LGW to LCY with no backfill on the original services.. i would then presume that BA will pull the service .

Globaliser

In general, that must be right.

But the LCY-JFK service is (as I understand it) more-or-less aimed at a handful of big corporate clients at Canary Wharf. So the service might still be demanded or even required by the people that matter, even if as a matter of market generality there is a lot less premium travel.

It might end up being rather like the GlaxoSmithKline corporate shuttle across the Atlantic, on which Joe Public can also help out by buying the odd revenue ticket from AA.

Lucifer UK

They also bought 318s for Birmingham, which were later ditched and converted to 319 orders at Heathrow.

GVA

Actually the plan was always to have operated the 318s out of LHR. They converted the 318s for 321s and not 319s.

aristoph

Hilarious. Let's see how you feel in 12 months time when unemployment has increased by at least 1 million and house prices are down a further 20%. Spending our way out of this is not an option. The banks will not be going back to leveraging their balance sheets 30-50 times, no matter how much capital we pump into them. Consumers cannot continue to spend beyond their income indefinitely. Government cannot bail us out when it has already run up large deficits during the good times. The correction is inevitable and painful but ultimately a good thing. It cannot be avoided by not talking about it!

Lucifer UK

No GVA - you are right that they went to A321 orders. However, the A318 orders were intended to go to MAN & BHX: when the Future Size and Shape Report came out, they reassessed their needs and LGW RJ100s went to MAN & BHX, while the BHX A319s came to LHR, and the MAN 737s went to LGW.

Radioman

Hi

Well our company is as busy as ever, even more so with orders from customer in Europe, N.America and Middle East.

Yesterday I was on my way to drop my daughter off to see "High School Musical 3", was the place empty, nope its showing at two screens everyhour and near enough sell out crowds.

Was the shopping centre empty? Nope from the motorway to the actual shopping Centre (Brahead near Glasgow) the traffic was at a standstill due to the sheer amount of folk heading to the centre.

At my local centre Silverburn, the traffic was right back up onto the motorway junction and there was limited spaces left for parking (they have around 3000 spaces).

Yes there are issues but like folk have said the media seem to make it sound even worse.

Now maybe we can get our house extension to the house built at a decent price after all the builders telling me it would be a 2 year wait.

On the flights side of things, well we are still flying places and dont see any downturn in that. Its going to be interesting as long as folk dont panic and thats the problem.