CzeSEN

Actually, Q400 to DXB would be spectacular

FD1971

I fear LOT will end up with an old problem, once again being sandwiched by both Germany and Russia. What or who is the lesser evil?

So far, they relied heavily on Lufthansa. In the future, they might end up with Russia. This could mean being taken over by Aeroflot, but also getting traffic rights to Russia in a co-op., which would help in terms of connecting pax.

I do not really see a market for connecting pax in other directions, it is after all a small hub and a relatively limited domestic market.

Under the bottom line, all former East Block carriers failed in keeping their airlines lean and honest after their home markets were deregulated, so it was not surprising that they could not really get it going after the EU wide deregulation took place in Europe a few years later. And then they fell for those sneaky offers, in the case of LOT by Lufthansa.

And on the other hand, the threshold for running an airline in Europe as a hub and spoke carrier is still around 250 planes (incl. 60 long haul aircraft) and even that was too small for KLM and even they felt that they could not do it on their own.

Hence, I would not put too much money on LOT and a co-op. with Lufthansa, even as a feeder, might not look that bad after all.

8420PR

I guess that fundamentally the decision to close these routes is due to the fact they are not profitable, and LO has determined they can make more profit flying the aircraft elsewhere. Hence avoiding another bailout.

To make money, LO wants to fly passengers on non-stop flights to destinations with little competition, where they can secure a captive market and high margin fares. Flying connecting passengers to a hub, or competing on price with Low cost carriers for leisure passengers may fill the seats, but prices are so low it doesn't generate the profits.

I can't see how LH is to blamed, apart from by those that would blame LH for everything. As far as I know there isn't an antitrust joint venture, just code-sharing.

oliver2002

If you look at where they are flying with the equipement I'm certain they put some brain into it:

LO & SK are a few fuel price hikes away from BK, they certainly need to plan carefully.

Bernie2012

Last days was announced that LO's subsidies are being investigated by the EC, LO did receive initially the EC's ok for a temporary bailout condition precedent to either paying it back in July or to present a plan of how to restructure and to reduce eventual competition distorting effects of the bailout, meaning to shrink the route network. LH and LO have cooperated very well in the past and these sandwich remarks made by some here are just ridiculous fact free statements. LO had a heritage of high costs and they managed to reduce those, but they are having still a relatively small domestic market for their product (compared to LH Group).

Lets see how the EC case goes, I hope it is not going to cause problems to LO, which is a fine carrier.

ulus

That is the correct answer. And they also can't open new routes ( tyo, pvg,hkg)

That is why they put one of 787 for charters and second one goes to Finnair (wet Lease) - now just for few days in jan14

Lack

This is a long overdue move. LO's regional airport service is a joke.
LH's steady growth didn't make it easy for them, but the amount of bad decisions and mismenagement on LO part is just ridiculus.

Anyway, the current LO CEO wrote in his book an anecdote of the state of affairs in the company when he took office - if a competitor entered on one of their routes, they scales down the service and raised the prices. Looks like under his command they took it up a notch.

FD1971

That is a primer.

In my book, a co-operation that went very well will not result in a Government bailout.

A co-operation that is loop-sided however, could result in financial trouble requiring financial support. If the private sector is not willing to help (I assume they did their home work), the Government is your only solution.

Bernie2012

Well, LH and LO are both there and neither your comments nor anything else lead to the extortion of either, but I am pretty sure that LO would be considerably worse off if LH & LO would have really competed.

Well, air travel is for me public transport anyway, so I don't find anything bad if a government supports his assets and public transport companies.

Cello

Although I'm inclined to agree with the first part (LO possibly never took seriously expanding the network from regional airports), the latter statement seems to be a stretch, and a pretty unfair one.

First of all, as you probably know, they just can't expand their network now, because of the bailout. The routes they've slashed are just feeder flights to other hubs, and the business case of those has been questionable for a while + the connections haven't been dropped completely, you still can fly direct LH to get there.

The big question is - are the regional ports mature enough to fill the seats (and bring profit) on any direct (non-LCC) flights apart from the ones to major hubs? I honestly don't know, but when I'm looking at the GDN departures (non-LCC, non-domestic departures -> AMS, MUC, FRA, OSL, so only 1 non-hub destination) it kinda makes you wonder - why hasn't any other airline picked up the opportunity? Let's face the facts, the numbers may show GDN is 1/3 of WAW traffic, but the LCC crowd is a completely different type of animal.

Keeping in mind that all domestic airports are less then 1hr flight away from WAW it makes you wonder is it really in LO interest to focus on anything else then feeding people to WAW. Just my thoughts.

TPJ

Nicely said...

Will Fly Småland

There's SK to CPH (hub). I would guess that OSL is mostly O/D or possibly connections with domestic flights. Lots of Poles working in Norway. Long-haul with SK is only EWR and BKK and it's kind of out of the way to connect back to the continent.

And I would add AB to TXL (hub). Questionable to classify it as an LCC, especially in comparison with FR and W6.

Still not much, though.

Lack

Lufthansa (and SK) have been building up their regional presnece for well over 10 years. Ban on expansion is a recent event, not justifying the years of retraction.

I'd be more then happy to connect at WAW for my onward flights. I don't expect to fly directly from GDN to even most major cities via regular carrier, be it LOT, LH, AF/KLM or LHR (although I'd love to see some SkyTeam presence putting pressure on LH here, even more so with BA, but I know LHR flights are not going to happen). I do expect a decent product when connecting. LH is able to provide it (albeit at ever incresing price). LO is not, due to their policy of milking domestic routes for O&D traffic rather (mixed in with sudden rushes to boost load factor by offering sub-cost domestic fares, but no international ones) then connections, overall sub-par network and customer service.

Cello

And how is GDN-FRA/MUC on LH so much better then GDN-WAW on LO? My observations:
- Airport? FRA is nightmare, WAW is much nicer to connect, MUC is clear winner (the only question is how well you can actually connect on the last one with the flights you have from GDN).
- Aircraft? LO's E170/175/190 and it's seat is waaay better than any of LH's Y "chairs". Eurolot's turboprop Q400? Matter of preference, I don't mind them, especially that it's just 45mins.
- Service on-board? Comparable I'd say. LH has better consistency in being 'OK'. Some of LO crews should switch jobs, but others are great.
- Food? Since you have to pay for it on LO in Y, LH is obvious winner. But then again - Kartoffelnsalad with pretzel doesn't get me excited either.
- Ground service? Never had issues with any of them. And had IRROPS on both.

'Milking' the domestic routes is a fact, but what does it have to do with the level of service? The truth is that you can't beat the domestic service on some routes where the rail (GDN, WRO) fails and they would be plain stupid if they didn't take advantage of that. Sure, their network is tiny compared to LH, but then again any CEE carrier's network is tiny compared to LH. Give them some time to catch a breath after the bailout restrictions and I'm sure they're gonna come up with routes to start with 8 b787's ready. I'm far from advocating for many setbacks they had in the past. I am/was also unlucky to fly (too) many times with their far-too-aged, piece-of-cr*p b737's with interior that would be a disgrace to any airline (still, I know it's just 3 planes out of nearly 40). But not seeing how hard they try to get back in the business is just unfair.

Lack

MUC has the best schedule for connection and the best service, I'm sticking with it whenever I can. We'll see if LH adds a sleepover FRA-GDN-FRA to make up for the cx'd LOT.

I'll take 14A on E195 with LH any day of the week, no fuzz. LO doesn't allow exit-row seating and on the other plane a bit more padding doesn't make up for the legroom.

On GDN-MUC they've been serving decent triangle shaped sandwiches now. Pretty decent. And I can get a cup of tea (that doesn't cost more then a beer idiotism as well).

Really the only issues I had with LO were with ground service. IRROPS is a joke, with one transfer desk stand at WAW, no agent in "their" lounge and lousy phone service, that can't do a thing (I had to call LH to help fix an LO ticket when LPC took a slide).

They are late to the party. I don't have to travel to WAW other then connecting to DL or BA for better pricing, but I'll be able to do it on the train for an extra +1h and w/o silly restriction. For long haul, they will never be competetive against the vast A+ syndicate powers with an afterthough of a B6 interline agreement.