HAM question
 

I am sitting in the RCC lounge at SFO and found an Open Skies magazine. Looked at the routes page and can't find a JFK-HAM flight anymore. What happened to this flight? Searched forum but could not find anything.

Hello there,

I believe Emirates canceled the Hamburg JFK flight. They currently only serve HAM from Dubai.

CO goes direct from EWR in a 757 200

Cheers

Thanks for the confirmation. I was surprised since they started this service with such fanfare, and now it seems it disappeared. Looked on the Emirates website and they wanted $ 15,000 in coach for JFK-HAM via Dubai. No wonder.

I think the fanfare was about starting JFK - at the time they couldn't fly direct perhaps? Now they have double daily direct flights so where's the logic behind a flight from HAM to JFK?

IIRC EK stopped the JFK from HAM from the summer timetable 2008.

CO started flights HAM-JFK and underbid EK on prices makin the extention non profitable. That was what I was to by EK HAM staff.

Lufthansa tried the same in the 90s - and cancelled later
 

I think the route HAM-JFK doesn´t have enough traffic expecially to fill
a widebody aircraft.

Remember Lufthansa commencing a JFK service with the routing TXL-HAM-JFK with a twin-jet aircraft A310-300-ER in the 90s. Lasted one or two years and was subsequently cancelled.

Argument that there was although the economy class has been booked very good there was not enough premium fare traffic (Business/First) and so they decided not to offer it anymore.

Remember it very good because that was my first domestic flight with an intercontinental aircraft which was much more spacier than the B737/B727 which was used at that time between German airports. :D

So I think the argument may be the same in nowadays environment due to the fact that there is only a small number of companies in Hamburg with much intercontinental air traffic.

Yes, these are the famous "moon" prices that EK states for weird routing such as JFK-DXB-HAM....

What does "moon" mean? Is it referring to the phrase "shoot the moon"?

Kind of ... :)

Well these are prices that the booking engine throws out - they don't make any sense and not priced for competitiveness.