YVR Cockroach

It's well know by now that AF and KL are reducing service from CDG and AMS to LHR and lending the slots to DL and NW so there 2 airlines can launch service to LHR once U.S.-E.U. open skies takes place.

The other news (that I had forgotten) is that AF-KL is ramping up service to LCY by buying VLM of Belgium which now results in AF-Kl owning more than half of the LCY slots - a small airport close to the workplace/destination for many of the most commercially-important and valuable travellers in the U.K. So while AF-KL may be decreasing traffic to LHR, it may just be diverting all the important front cabin pax to LCY instead.

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles...h-vlm-buy.html

sbm12

This has to be an incredibly profitable move for AF/KL to make. Getting the premium traffic to/from the continent via the slots at LCY is immensely valuable. And rumor on the street is that the LHR slots were assigned with a profit-sharing arrangement, so they can profit from the ops of DL/NW as well. Plus they don't have to inconvenience their corporate customers with LHR when LCY is so much easier and closer to where the pax want to be anyways.

Everyone comes out a winner.

nomad1974

Very shrewd move indeed. For as long as BA doesn't target the premium traffic at LCY, AFKL would be happy to do it themselves. BTW, AF (well, CityJet for AF) now also flies a host of domestic UK routes out of LCY. Plus, with the nonstop AF 777-operated LHR-LAX starting in April, I think AF is cautiously but seriously positioning itself as a major player in the UK market.

NickB

AF/KL and BA are in a different situation at LCY: for BA, it will necessarily be almost exclusively point-to-point traffic, whereas AF/KL can get LON-originating connecting traffic.
That said, BA announced last December that it will start a four-daily rotation LCY-AMS from May and a daily rotation LCY-NCE from April (all op. CJ), competing head to head with KL and AF (op WX) on these routes. As to convenience of LCY for premium traffic, it depends. A lot of business traffic is headed towards West London, for whom LHR is more convenient. LCY is unbeatable for the City and Central London, though.

graraps

Plus there's the VLM service to MAN. If only they could also add a couple of LBA flights...

graraps

That's BA's choice. If you go to the BA website and say you want to fly LCY-CCS, for example, it will come back to you saying that BA don't fly to CCS. Fine, let's try Sevilla...No dice, either. They have a joint venture with IB on LHR-Spain flights; what's stopping them adding the LCY ones and/or slapping their code on some key Iberia services?

Let's keep it simple; we just want to go to BUD, oneworld's only convenient hub for intra-Europe connections, and virtually the only place with direct flights to underserved places such as most secondary cities of Romania and KIV. No flights. Nada.


BA have chosen to use LCY only for p2p flights and exclude partner connections. Sure, you'd never have them flying LCY-Japan, but they could easily join these flights up with their European alliance partners and they haven't gone for that...

nomad1974

Well I'm not so sure about that. Out of the 10 non-stop destinations AF (CityJet) currently flies out of LCY, only one could be said to have any real connecting potential (CDG) and I'd say that even then, AF would have a lot of point-to-point traffic. As for AMS, it is not even served by CityJet currently, though it would be added to the mix with VLM. Still, CityJet and VLM combined would offer 17 non-stop destinations out of LCY, OTHER than CDG and AMS.

BTW, I also just noticed that CityJet and VLM are "perfect" merger partners, since they do not compete on a single route!

graraps

It's not too long ago that the WX expansion took place at LCY, so AF might have had some "insider information" that helped with the route planning

nomad1974

You just might be right

Braniff

And wait til the Airbus 318 is certified for LCY.

NickB

Well, you know AF/KL is not just WX and does include KL , and I suspect that quite a bit of KL's LCY traffic connects to other destinations. LCY-ORY is also very convenient for connection to the French provinces, of which only the major conurbations are CDG-connected (and ORY offers more frequencies to all intra-France destinations than CDG). But, you are right: a lot of traffic with be point-to-point, even to PAR. What I was saying, however, was that AFKL DO have an advantage over BA in ALSO having connecting traffic at LCY which BA cannot have. Convenient though LCY might be, we should not over-exagerate its significance either. On LON-DUB, I am pretty sure that AF/WX traffic figures are dwarfed by EI's LHR-DUB.
The puzzling one is LCY-ZRH. With three airlines serving the route, I would have thought that something would have to give at some point.

WBurcham

Then again the number of BANKERS etc... (city/canary wharf dwellers) doing that route daily is probably large enough for not only the current flights but for additional.

LCY is the epitome of a M-F airport... having been there on Sat it's dead!

Roger

Indeed, it's closed from 13:00 on Saturday to 11:00 on Sunday.

NOLAnwGOLD

So NW and KLM have now had a 10 year joint venture agreement that includes all transatlantic flights regardless of who operates the flight. All costs and revenues are shared between the two airlines. AF & Delta announced a similar arrangement last year. So effectively, they are just reallocating the slots from AMS/CDG-LHR to LHR-US flights and even though they might be operated by NW and DL, both KL/AF are still getting revunue from this.

Of course as DL & NW come closer to a merger and AF/KL & Alitalia, suddenly the 4 airlines will be in control of lots of the TA market.....

YVR Cockroach

Seems BA is ordering 2 A318s to start LCY-NYC service (with a stop westbound). I wonder if AF-KL will respond.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=785714