Found on The Times website :
RYANAIR, Europe’s biggest low-fares airline, is to add two new European hubs, boosting capacity by 16%, by the end of the year as part of its strategy to “drive out the competition”.
Ryanair is looking at six airports as part of its expansion plans. These include: Liverpool and East Midlands in Britain, both of which are used by EasyJet; Bordeaux and Carcassonne in France; Hamburg in Germany which is serviced by Hapag-Lloyd, a low-fares German competitor; Prague in the Czech Republic; and a new airport at Madrid in Spain.
Which two airports will be the next Ryanair hubs ? Liverpool, East Midlands, Hamburg, Prague, Madrid, Carcassonne or Bordeaux ?
Two new hubs for Ryanair
Moderator: Latest news team
-
website-info
- Posts: 750
- Joined: 26 Sep 2003, 00:00
) To help you to answer the question:
- Ryanair already have hubs in Ireland, Great Britain, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Italia and Spain but nothing in France.
- MOL (Ryanair boss) said a few weeks ago in Paris : Ryanair will launch new services in France this year and it will be a great surprise for Air France...
- Air France does not serve Carcassonne but have an hub in Bordeaux ("Iberic gate").
So... Maybe Bordeaux a future hub ???....
- Ryanair already have hubs in Ireland, Great Britain, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Italia and Spain but nothing in France.
- MOL (Ryanair boss) said a few weeks ago in Paris : Ryanair will launch new services in France this year and it will be a great surprise for Air France...
- Air France does not serve Carcassonne but have an hub in Bordeaux ("Iberic gate").
So... Maybe Bordeaux a future hub ???....
-
EBAW_flyer
- Posts: 557
- Joined: 29 Sep 2003, 00:00
To be honest, I thought FR had plans to expand from Oslo Torp...
Prague seems rather strange to me, as O' Leary announced a few weeks ago that he was not planning services to and from Eastern Europe for the next couple of years.
You never know with these predictions from newspapers. Michael O'Leary is a master in misleading the press. I would not be surprised if they spread some rumours about 5 or 6 airports, and then base the aircraft at totally different places.
Anyway, if Ryanair would connect the new bases with Charleroi as well, Hamburg and Bordeaux would be best opportunities.
Prague seems rather strange to me, as O' Leary announced a few weeks ago that he was not planning services to and from Eastern Europe for the next couple of years.
You never know with these predictions from newspapers. Michael O'Leary is a master in misleading the press. I would not be surprised if they spread some rumours about 5 or 6 airports, and then base the aircraft at totally different places.
Anyway, if Ryanair would connect the new bases with Charleroi as well, Hamburg and Bordeaux would be best opportunities.
-
Sabena_690
- Posts: 3378
- Joined: 20 Sep 2002, 00:00
Competition is never bad, & FR can't give AF hell, because it's a whole different airline... It could only steel some passengers, & generate a lot of new ones maybe... (secondairy airports etc... Beauvais =/= CDG !)
Maybe easyJet could give AF "hell" if you wanted to, but don't count on it for the moment since they are downsizing at the moment...
Maybe easyJet could give AF "hell" if you wanted to, but don't count on it for the moment since they are downsizing at the moment...
Now you dive too deep in it again, AF kept them out of the door by the recent court case and is the only airline that is playing the game dirty to keep a big LCC away from them. KL got competition from Virgin Express, EasyJet and Jet2. Lufthansa got Hapag Lloyd, EasyJet, Ryanair, Germanwings, Air Berlin and Germania Express on their roof and I am not even going to start about the competition that BA got in England. Time for the french to get kicked in the butt too since they are having to long already a huge monopoly in their country.Sabena_690 wrote:Erwin: AF has already a huge competitor: TGV.
Give AF the hell? Well, you will give KL the hell too in that case. And do you really want to see that more than 10000 people lose their job, just because you don't like them?
You dissapoint me Erwin...
Greetz,
Erwin
A Whole Different Animal
-
Sabena_690
- Posts: 3378
- Joined: 20 Sep 2002, 00:00
Once again Erwin: T G V. The TGV has much lower costs, so is a much bigger competitor than airline will ever be able to be.
For the rest, you will maybe find this press release by AF interesting, it contains some interesting things (this to further comment on the AF "monopoly" on the French domestic market):
Press memo: Answer to easyJet
The French Market: competition, prices, slots
1- The French domestic market is subject to strong competition
EasyJet continues to claim strenuously that Air France enjoys a monopoly on the French domestic market, while ignoring the impact of our main competitor, TGV high-speed rail travel. Such posturing is as facile as it is ridiculous.
France has opted for a highly-efficient national rail system. Whereas in 2002 the TGV carried some 75 million passengers, Air France carried no more than 17 million – almost five times fewer… In fact, domestic air travel has fallen by more than 15% over the past three years.
How is it possible to talk of monopolistic conditions when, on a route such as Paris-Bordeaux, where Air France is the only airline to operate a service (with 19 Airbus services daily), air travel accounts for only 30% of combined air and rail traffic? With respect to Marseille, now a 3-hour rail journey from Paris, we reckon that the airline share of the market has plunged to less than 35%. And then there is Lyon, where, despite our eleven flights daily to Paris, we calculate that our share of the traffic is scarcely 8%.
2- The French domestic market offers the lowest prices in Europe
Indeed, it is largely due to such competitive pressures, which are particularly fierce in France, that French airfares have long been the cheapest in Europe.
In terms of price per kilometre, the lowest Air France fares on the main domestic routes from Paris come in below 7 euro cents, at 6.1 cents for Paris-Nice, or 6.5 cents for Paris-Marseille, for example. Lufthansa charges 8.4 cents on its Munich-Hamburg route, and 17 cents for Munich-Frankfurt services. Iberia never charges less than 20 cents on its Madrid-Barcelona shuttle.
Air France seeks to offer attractive fares to its customers, regardless of the degree of competition. While we offer an Evasion fare at 43 euros excluding taxes for a Paris-Marseille round trip (3 hours by TGV), the same Evasion fare on a Paris-Pau round trip is 44 euros excluding taxes (5 hours by TGV).
Furthermore, we strive to ensure that our lowest prices are widely accessible and are not simply used as advertising come-ons. We thus sell over 10,000 seats each day at our lowest prices – the equivalent of 60 Airbus A320s, while among our low-cost competitors, fares are advertised as being no more expensive than a seat at the cinema, but such fares are virtually inaccessible (see survey in consumer magazine 60 millions de Consommateurs – n°380, February 2004).
It was this concern to continually adjust to customer expectations that prompted us to launch a new range of Semaine mid-week fares on 31 March this year. Semaine offers a very straightforward fares structure, with low prices on mid-week round-trip fares, and even intra-day round-trips, to meet strong demand, notably from middle market companies.
Examples: 127 euros round-trip including tax, on the Paris-Lyon route; 137 euros round-trip including tax, on the Paris-Nantes route.
One final point. One cannot talk of low prices without mentioning the proportion of additional taxes.
To take just one example, on an Evasion 30 Nice-Paris-Nice round-trip fare costing €84.13 including taxes:
· €32.66 are paid by the customer in Civil Aviation tax, airport tax and passenger fees;
· €16.70 of taxes and fees are paid by the airline for air traffic control, noise, landing rights, beacons, parking, and jetways.
Which leaves Air France €34.77 to pay its staff, finance its aircraft, buy fuel, and pay other fees…
3- No other European airport has redistributed so many slots in recent years as Orly.
94,500 slots have been redistributed at Orly in the last two years. This is higher than at any other major European airport.
4- The redistribution was carried out by COHOR in full compliance with EU rules…
COHOR is a State-designated non-profit body set up in accordance with EU rules (Regulation 95/93) with a specification setting out its obligations. The coordinator acts in an unbiased, non-discriminatory and transparent manner. The French coordination operates in much the same way as similar bodies in other countries and its decisions have never been challenged, until recently, when easyJet contested a decision concerning a single pair of slots. It seems quite abnormal to us to seek to cast doubt on an organization that no-one else has contested. How could one, in fact, given that Swissair, before it filed for bankruptcy, had managed to build up a portfolio of around 30% of the available slots at Orly through its subsidiaries – a percentage out of all proportion with what one may observe for a non-national group at any other European airport (see Point 6)?
5- … and did not strengthen Air France's position…
Contrary to easyJet's assertions, the redistribution of slots following airline bankruptcies did not result in a strengthening of Air France and its subsidiaries. Out of the 94,500 slots reallocated in the last three redistributions, 4,900 went to Air France and its subsidiaries, compared with 27,140 to low-cost airlines, including 13,880 to easyJet alone. With 35 daily slots obtained in two years at Orly and Paris CDG, one cannot say that easyJet has not been given the wherewithal to expand. In fact, it is because easyJet has now exceeded the 3% threshold (ie, 7,500 slots) at Orly that it may no longer be qualified as a new entrant. During the same period, Air France has not been granted a single additional slot at Heathrow.
In passing, it is worth noting that the number of slots allocated to the Air France Group is significantly less than that needed to cover all the demand to take over the routes abandoned by our competitors, serving Perpignan, Toulon, Lourdes-Tarbes, Lannion, or Annecy for example.
6- … which is no more powerful than that of other big European airlines at their home bases – quite the contrary, in fact
Whereas the Air France Group's portfolio totalled 48.2% of available slots at Orly and 52.8% of those at Paris-Charles de Gaulle in the last full season (ie, Winter 2003), the share of Lufthansa, Lufthansa Cityline and Air Dolomiti at Frankfurt and Munich is over 57%. KLM and its subsidiaries (Transavia, KLM CityHopper, KLM UK) enjoy a similar percentage at Amsterdam. Only British Airways's share at Heathrow is lower (40%), although it has been steadily increasing from one season to the next.
Furthermore, whereas the second-biggest player at Frankfurt, British Airways, only has 3.5% of slots, and the leading non-British airline at Heathrow, Lufthansa, only has 4.4% of slots, Iberia (including Air Nostrum) and easyJet respectively own 6.3% and 5.5% of slots at Orly. It is interesting to note that at the saturated airport of Orly, easyJet's 5.5% share of slots is higher than the 4% it owns at Amsterdam, despite the fact that the latter is reputed to be less congested.
7- But does easyJet really want to expand on the French domestic market, or is this a "gimmick" to accompany the launch of its new European routes (Dortmund and Belfast in June 2004)?
While it is true that only three of the routes served by Air France from Paris have any direct competition from other airlines, one must not forget the genuinely fierce competition from other transport modes, notably that of the TGV. EasyJet understands this uniquely French situation perfectly and has not the slightest intention of moving into this area.[/b
The disappearance of Air Lib, followed by that of Aéris, could have been seen as takeover opportunities that easyJet did not wish to seize (easyJet would have been able to take over all the slots concerned, in that case). Similarly, easyJet has concentrated its Paris expansion on Intra-European flights rather than domestic French routes. Of its 35 daily round-trip flights, only 14 serve French regional airports. One may also note that easyJet has no strategy of domestic market expansion in other European countries such as Germany, Spain or Italy. Why would it be any the readier to do so in France?
The complaint that Air France has a virtual monopoly on domestic services is therefore only a ploy. EasyJet is seeking to apply pressure to obtain new allocations that it can re-deploy elsewhere. This is how it operated recently, when it applied for and obtained slots to step up competition on the Nice and Toulouse routes, but then allocated them to services to Naples and Berlin.
One is forced to observe that in the space of two years, this airline has been able, thanks to its 35 daily departures from Paris, to set up an extensive network at one of the leading European airport systems. The same does not hold true with respect to departures from other leading cities where it is either virtually absent, as at Frankfurt, or forced to operate from more distant airports such as Stansted and Luton serving London. In addition, with the future increases in capacity at Paris-Charles de Gaulle, it has real prospects for expansion.
8- At the same time, Air France is playing a leading economic role …
While it is absurd to accuse Air France of taking advantage of a monopoly situation to charge high prices, the fact remains that it is most certainly the size of Air France and the organization of its network, which is on an entirely different scale from that of its main low-cost competitors, that make it an airline that contributes substantially to the country's economic activity.
First, coverage.
Air France operates at over 40 aerodromes outside Paris, whereas low-cost airlines use no more than twenty or so regional airports in France. And there is no lack of room, contrary to what some of them claim. Although airport capacity is regulated in Paris, there is no lack of it everywhere else in France, the country with the densest airport system in Europe, boasting over 100 commercial aviation airports, compared with only around sixty in Germany, for example.
Second, the organization of our network.
The Air France network is structured around Europe's most powerful hub at Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport. This outstanding airport means we can optimize the complementary nature of "point-to-point" traffic and connecting flights.
One example should suffice for a better understanding of how this works. Each day, in the catchment area of the very extensive Greater Paris area, only 150 people want to travel to Hong Kong, which is not enough to fill the 250 seats available daily towards this destination from Paris. Which is all the more reason for saying that we will never see the day when we operate point-to-point flights from our regional capitals to Hong Kong, so long as we total a daily average on our Paris/Hong Kong flight of 0.2 passengers from Pau, 0.3 from Brest and a scant 5 from Toulouse! It is therefore by combining all these traffic flows, by coordinating arrivals and departures at Paris-Charles de Gaulle, that we can generate a kind of "virtuous" complementary momentum that enables us, while developing our long-haul services from Paris, to offer the French regions easy access to the rest of the world, and with that, the opportunity for local businesses to grow and trade freely in international markets.
9- … and a major social role
Clearly, this business model has a considerable impact on employment.
The Air France Group currently employs a workforce of over 70,000, after almost 12,000 net job creations since 1999. At Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Orly alone, not only are 40,000 people directly employed by Air France, but another 150,000 jobs at least depend indirectly on our business activities! Not to mention our numerous bases in the French provinces…
We are therefore a long way from the demands of the low-cost airlines, which, according to the claims of some, are a miracle cure for regional economic growth but which, in actual fact, employ virtually no-one at local level, and (despite seeming to deplore the recent spate of airline bankruptcies) have never tried to buy up any of those airlines. It should also be remembered that Air France, although it does not systematically publicize the fact in the media, recently stepped up services to Toulon and re-launched flights to Lourdes following the shut-down of Aéris, and has taken over services to Annecy, Lannion and Perpignan following the Air Lib bankruptcy, and taken on a substantial proportion of that airline's staff (1,378 as at 29 March 2004).
For the rest, you will maybe find this press release by AF interesting, it contains some interesting things (this to further comment on the AF "monopoly" on the French domestic market):
Press memo: Answer to easyJet
The French Market: competition, prices, slots
1- The French domestic market is subject to strong competition
EasyJet continues to claim strenuously that Air France enjoys a monopoly on the French domestic market, while ignoring the impact of our main competitor, TGV high-speed rail travel. Such posturing is as facile as it is ridiculous.
France has opted for a highly-efficient national rail system. Whereas in 2002 the TGV carried some 75 million passengers, Air France carried no more than 17 million – almost five times fewer… In fact, domestic air travel has fallen by more than 15% over the past three years.
How is it possible to talk of monopolistic conditions when, on a route such as Paris-Bordeaux, where Air France is the only airline to operate a service (with 19 Airbus services daily), air travel accounts for only 30% of combined air and rail traffic? With respect to Marseille, now a 3-hour rail journey from Paris, we reckon that the airline share of the market has plunged to less than 35%. And then there is Lyon, where, despite our eleven flights daily to Paris, we calculate that our share of the traffic is scarcely 8%.
2- The French domestic market offers the lowest prices in Europe
Indeed, it is largely due to such competitive pressures, which are particularly fierce in France, that French airfares have long been the cheapest in Europe.
In terms of price per kilometre, the lowest Air France fares on the main domestic routes from Paris come in below 7 euro cents, at 6.1 cents for Paris-Nice, or 6.5 cents for Paris-Marseille, for example. Lufthansa charges 8.4 cents on its Munich-Hamburg route, and 17 cents for Munich-Frankfurt services. Iberia never charges less than 20 cents on its Madrid-Barcelona shuttle.
Air France seeks to offer attractive fares to its customers, regardless of the degree of competition. While we offer an Evasion fare at 43 euros excluding taxes for a Paris-Marseille round trip (3 hours by TGV), the same Evasion fare on a Paris-Pau round trip is 44 euros excluding taxes (5 hours by TGV).
Furthermore, we strive to ensure that our lowest prices are widely accessible and are not simply used as advertising come-ons. We thus sell over 10,000 seats each day at our lowest prices – the equivalent of 60 Airbus A320s, while among our low-cost competitors, fares are advertised as being no more expensive than a seat at the cinema, but such fares are virtually inaccessible (see survey in consumer magazine 60 millions de Consommateurs – n°380, February 2004).
It was this concern to continually adjust to customer expectations that prompted us to launch a new range of Semaine mid-week fares on 31 March this year. Semaine offers a very straightforward fares structure, with low prices on mid-week round-trip fares, and even intra-day round-trips, to meet strong demand, notably from middle market companies.
Examples: 127 euros round-trip including tax, on the Paris-Lyon route; 137 euros round-trip including tax, on the Paris-Nantes route.
One final point. One cannot talk of low prices without mentioning the proportion of additional taxes.
To take just one example, on an Evasion 30 Nice-Paris-Nice round-trip fare costing €84.13 including taxes:
· €32.66 are paid by the customer in Civil Aviation tax, airport tax and passenger fees;
· €16.70 of taxes and fees are paid by the airline for air traffic control, noise, landing rights, beacons, parking, and jetways.
Which leaves Air France €34.77 to pay its staff, finance its aircraft, buy fuel, and pay other fees…
3- No other European airport has redistributed so many slots in recent years as Orly.
94,500 slots have been redistributed at Orly in the last two years. This is higher than at any other major European airport.
4- The redistribution was carried out by COHOR in full compliance with EU rules…
COHOR is a State-designated non-profit body set up in accordance with EU rules (Regulation 95/93) with a specification setting out its obligations. The coordinator acts in an unbiased, non-discriminatory and transparent manner. The French coordination operates in much the same way as similar bodies in other countries and its decisions have never been challenged, until recently, when easyJet contested a decision concerning a single pair of slots. It seems quite abnormal to us to seek to cast doubt on an organization that no-one else has contested. How could one, in fact, given that Swissair, before it filed for bankruptcy, had managed to build up a portfolio of around 30% of the available slots at Orly through its subsidiaries – a percentage out of all proportion with what one may observe for a non-national group at any other European airport (see Point 6)?
5- … and did not strengthen Air France's position…
Contrary to easyJet's assertions, the redistribution of slots following airline bankruptcies did not result in a strengthening of Air France and its subsidiaries. Out of the 94,500 slots reallocated in the last three redistributions, 4,900 went to Air France and its subsidiaries, compared with 27,140 to low-cost airlines, including 13,880 to easyJet alone. With 35 daily slots obtained in two years at Orly and Paris CDG, one cannot say that easyJet has not been given the wherewithal to expand. In fact, it is because easyJet has now exceeded the 3% threshold (ie, 7,500 slots) at Orly that it may no longer be qualified as a new entrant. During the same period, Air France has not been granted a single additional slot at Heathrow.
In passing, it is worth noting that the number of slots allocated to the Air France Group is significantly less than that needed to cover all the demand to take over the routes abandoned by our competitors, serving Perpignan, Toulon, Lourdes-Tarbes, Lannion, or Annecy for example.
6- … which is no more powerful than that of other big European airlines at their home bases – quite the contrary, in fact
Whereas the Air France Group's portfolio totalled 48.2% of available slots at Orly and 52.8% of those at Paris-Charles de Gaulle in the last full season (ie, Winter 2003), the share of Lufthansa, Lufthansa Cityline and Air Dolomiti at Frankfurt and Munich is over 57%. KLM and its subsidiaries (Transavia, KLM CityHopper, KLM UK) enjoy a similar percentage at Amsterdam. Only British Airways's share at Heathrow is lower (40%), although it has been steadily increasing from one season to the next.
Furthermore, whereas the second-biggest player at Frankfurt, British Airways, only has 3.5% of slots, and the leading non-British airline at Heathrow, Lufthansa, only has 4.4% of slots, Iberia (including Air Nostrum) and easyJet respectively own 6.3% and 5.5% of slots at Orly. It is interesting to note that at the saturated airport of Orly, easyJet's 5.5% share of slots is higher than the 4% it owns at Amsterdam, despite the fact that the latter is reputed to be less congested.
7- But does easyJet really want to expand on the French domestic market, or is this a "gimmick" to accompany the launch of its new European routes (Dortmund and Belfast in June 2004)?
While it is true that only three of the routes served by Air France from Paris have any direct competition from other airlines, one must not forget the genuinely fierce competition from other transport modes, notably that of the TGV. EasyJet understands this uniquely French situation perfectly and has not the slightest intention of moving into this area.[/b
The disappearance of Air Lib, followed by that of Aéris, could have been seen as takeover opportunities that easyJet did not wish to seize (easyJet would have been able to take over all the slots concerned, in that case). Similarly, easyJet has concentrated its Paris expansion on Intra-European flights rather than domestic French routes. Of its 35 daily round-trip flights, only 14 serve French regional airports. One may also note that easyJet has no strategy of domestic market expansion in other European countries such as Germany, Spain or Italy. Why would it be any the readier to do so in France?
The complaint that Air France has a virtual monopoly on domestic services is therefore only a ploy. EasyJet is seeking to apply pressure to obtain new allocations that it can re-deploy elsewhere. This is how it operated recently, when it applied for and obtained slots to step up competition on the Nice and Toulouse routes, but then allocated them to services to Naples and Berlin.
One is forced to observe that in the space of two years, this airline has been able, thanks to its 35 daily departures from Paris, to set up an extensive network at one of the leading European airport systems. The same does not hold true with respect to departures from other leading cities where it is either virtually absent, as at Frankfurt, or forced to operate from more distant airports such as Stansted and Luton serving London. In addition, with the future increases in capacity at Paris-Charles de Gaulle, it has real prospects for expansion.
8- At the same time, Air France is playing a leading economic role …
While it is absurd to accuse Air France of taking advantage of a monopoly situation to charge high prices, the fact remains that it is most certainly the size of Air France and the organization of its network, which is on an entirely different scale from that of its main low-cost competitors, that make it an airline that contributes substantially to the country's economic activity.
First, coverage.
Air France operates at over 40 aerodromes outside Paris, whereas low-cost airlines use no more than twenty or so regional airports in France. And there is no lack of room, contrary to what some of them claim. Although airport capacity is regulated in Paris, there is no lack of it everywhere else in France, the country with the densest airport system in Europe, boasting over 100 commercial aviation airports, compared with only around sixty in Germany, for example.
Second, the organization of our network.
The Air France network is structured around Europe's most powerful hub at Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport. This outstanding airport means we can optimize the complementary nature of "point-to-point" traffic and connecting flights.
One example should suffice for a better understanding of how this works. Each day, in the catchment area of the very extensive Greater Paris area, only 150 people want to travel to Hong Kong, which is not enough to fill the 250 seats available daily towards this destination from Paris. Which is all the more reason for saying that we will never see the day when we operate point-to-point flights from our regional capitals to Hong Kong, so long as we total a daily average on our Paris/Hong Kong flight of 0.2 passengers from Pau, 0.3 from Brest and a scant 5 from Toulouse! It is therefore by combining all these traffic flows, by coordinating arrivals and departures at Paris-Charles de Gaulle, that we can generate a kind of "virtuous" complementary momentum that enables us, while developing our long-haul services from Paris, to offer the French regions easy access to the rest of the world, and with that, the opportunity for local businesses to grow and trade freely in international markets.
9- … and a major social role
Clearly, this business model has a considerable impact on employment.
The Air France Group currently employs a workforce of over 70,000, after almost 12,000 net job creations since 1999. At Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Orly alone, not only are 40,000 people directly employed by Air France, but another 150,000 jobs at least depend indirectly on our business activities! Not to mention our numerous bases in the French provinces…
We are therefore a long way from the demands of the low-cost airlines, which, according to the claims of some, are a miracle cure for regional economic growth but which, in actual fact, employ virtually no-one at local level, and (despite seeming to deplore the recent spate of airline bankruptcies) have never tried to buy up any of those airlines. It should also be remembered that Air France, although it does not systematically publicize the fact in the media, recently stepped up services to Toulon and re-launched flights to Lourdes following the shut-down of Aéris, and has taken over services to Annecy, Lannion and Perpignan following the Air Lib bankruptcy, and taken on a substantial proportion of that airline's staff (1,378 as at 29 March 2004).
Thanks for this well-documented reply, Frederic. It shows clearly that Air France is not the only player in the French market.
However, I have to agree with some of Erwin's points as well. Let mme add some of my own:
Air France has been outrageously assisted by the French governemnt, when it was saved from bankruptcy by a massive injection of 3 billion euro! Sabena never got such an opportunity.
The Orly slots distributed by COHOR were split among several competing small airlines. Virgin Express sais thay could never start a profitable hub at Orly with the few slots they got. As a result, Air France remained by far the dominant carrier at Orly, where they got even more slots than they did!
The French government will never allow the dominance of a foreign carrier at any French airport, nor will it allow a major French company to be taken over byo foreign company (see Alstom, the builder of the TGV, now: they are in virtual bankruptcy, but Siemens will not be allowed to take them over).
However, I have to agree with some of Erwin's points as well. Let mme add some of my own:
Air France has been outrageously assisted by the French governemnt, when it was saved from bankruptcy by a massive injection of 3 billion euro! Sabena never got such an opportunity.
The Orly slots distributed by COHOR were split among several competing small airlines. Virgin Express sais thay could never start a profitable hub at Orly with the few slots they got. As a result, Air France remained by far the dominant carrier at Orly, where they got even more slots than they did!
The French government will never allow the dominance of a foreign carrier at any French airport, nor will it allow a major French company to be taken over byo foreign company (see Alstom, the builder of the TGV, now: they are in virtual bankruptcy, but Siemens will not be allowed to take them over).
André
ex Sabena #26567
ex Sabena #26567
-
Sabena_690
- Posts: 3378
- Joined: 20 Sep 2002, 00:00
I agree on that, but this is several years ago. Besides that, the take over of KLM will result in the privatisation of AF itself. And government interference into any airline (so including AF) is something of the past these days.Air France has been outrageously assisted by the French governemnt, when it was saved from bankruptcy by a massive injection of 3 billion euro!
Actually, VEX says a lot. After failures at CGN/SXF/SNN/LGW/..., can we just add ORY to that list?Virgin Express sais thay could never start a profitable hub at Orly with the few slots they got.
With AF being a huge carrier, it isn't possible too to match their size at any airport I think...The French government will never allow the dominance of a foreign carrier at any French airport
Actually, the situation in the UK is the same. If I may believe some of the rumours I hear (don't know whether they are true or not), BA still get's slot advantages these days (they make the life of carriers who want to compete difficult).
Frederic
Brussels Airlines - Flying Your Way