Iberia to Drop MIA as Hub
 

July 2, 2004
Spain's dominant airline Iberia will stop channelling its Central American flights through Miami and will instead fly direct to a limited number of destinations, the company said on Friday.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=5578311

Bad news. I was considering the flight MAD-(MIA)-SJO (one segment, good miles) for a 2005 rtw. :(

But, on researching the above I just found some unrelated good news: IB has signed a new codeshare agreement with CX, starting jul 02, for the route MAD-AMS-HKG. Not a major thing for those used to LHR, but a nice alternative for me from MAD (hate LHR). :)

This is probably bad news for AA since I'm sure that AA got some connecting traffic from IB to Central American cities. As a direct flight, some IB flights from C.Am. to Europe has potential for some long flights on RTW's. I hope AA informs the US gov't that their obtrusive procedures for int'l transit passengers are driving revenue away from US companies to foreign companies. Even an ally like Spain.

Not to suggest that this will lead to direct OW flights between HKG and MAD? That could offer a way to or from CAI that would use up neither one of the limited "long-haul intra-Europe" nor a European stopover. The last CX timetable I have doesn't offer such a thing, but it would be nice if it did.

It sure would be nice. I haven't seen anything like that published, yet, but I'll be keeping a close watch and report here any findings.

Iberia is not pulling out Miami. They will still fly Miami-Madrid. It is actually good news for AA. For AA:

1) No compietition to Central American on Iberia, who usually offered lower fares to the local traffic.
2) More Iberia passengers from Madrid connecting onto AA.

The real losers in this situation, though, are not Iberia or MIA. They are the five cities in Central America and Mexico that will no longer be served by Iberia: Cancun, Managua, San Savlador, San Pedro Sula, and San Jose.

Agree. I would like to speculate that this might even create the possibility of AA increasing MIA-MAD-MIA to 2x daily, especially given the very high pax loads that seem to be prevalent on this route almost year-round.