Conti764 wrote:If true, I don't understand this...
Within the Atlantic ++ joint venture it doesn't really matter who does the actual flying, since revenue is split up between the participating airlines (in this case UA/SN), so why is SN going after a partnering airlines route? Couldn't they better use the equipment to other markets? Are they trying to push UA out of the BRU market or are they just flying on behalf the Americans while there are other markets to explore?
yes idd just my thoughts! and its not like UA desperatly needs it a/c for an other route so that is no excuse.
a good thing SN has A330's to spare
If SN preferes the IAD-market (no wonder, it's a high yield market and a fast increasing transfer market to/from Africa) why wouldn't they go after it? If they don't feel like it's the right time to take the BOS-risk or to increase the NYC services already, they can go after another route they want. If that happens to be a UA route, that's UA's problem.
Most US connections go through EWR and ORD anyway, so I believe the IAD-route is more O&D and AFI-transfer. That makes SN the natural operator of the route.
Besides, now it's mentioned that it will be daily. But before I heard it would be 5-6 weekly besides United (but probably with adjustments to the United capacity). Double daily is too much, but the route can use more capacity for sure. Maybe SN daily A332 and United 5 weekly 767 or something like that.
cnc wrote:it is like studying english when you have math exams, sure the english is usefull but the math is more urgent
Well, tough I would like to see SN expand to a new destination instead of taking away the market of a partner, I don't think 2013 is the year of taking the big risks (and BOS is a risk, tough I believe in the market and that SN can break into it, it stays a risk). And of course, SN isn't really known for taking risks either...
But mind, SN expanding to the US. That's not only SN's busines, not only United/SN business, not only United/SN/LH business, ... that's about SN and all the other airlines in Atlantic ++ and the best choice for the whole joint-venture group.
Maybe it's time for United to look at Houston-Brussels?
Mind you, IF indeed Brussels Airlines is going to replace United, there could be more than meets the eye: as I've have tried to explain in another topic, we need to look beyond just BRU itself and consider the bigger picture if we want to make sense of it all: Lufthansa may very well have stepped in to make such a swap work well for all involved, for instance by having United take over a route from any of their hubs (like FRA, MUC, ZRH or VIE), or they may shift some EU-US capacity differently to give United more feed as a compensation for them dropping the IAD-BRU route if indeed that is what they'll do.
There are ample pieces to make this puzzle fit well, which is one of the advantages of large multinational groups: just looking at BRU and trying to make sense of it all that way isn't likely going to give a good explanation, as one can already see from the above discussion, even before the formal confirmation of the route is out.
Let's wait for it first and then keep a good eye on any other transatlantic route changes and/or frequency or capacity changes Lufthansa/Austrian/Swiss and United may introduce to their summer time table, not just between IAD and BRU, but elsewhere in Europe and the US too to try and see the full picture.
Yes, that sure is going to be complicated and fairly untransparent to figure out if they don't tell us themselves or no insider tips us off on it, but then running a transnational JV with so many partners isn't quite as simple as the average internaut would like it to see and some claim it to be.
I think it will not a replacement of UA, rather a complementary flight, arriving in the later than the UA flight providing pax for the later AFI flights. UA planned to downgrade from an B777 to a B767 already which was in fact an indicator of what would come out, no?
I think, but I am not sure, that the current flights are often overbooked. Can anyone confirm. So the expansion is a + for all.
DannyVDB wrote:
UA planned to downgrade from an B777 to a B767 already which was in fact an indicator of what would come out, no?
Not really, UA planned to downgrade to 764ER in the early summer season, but back to daily 777 as from early June...SN will start in early June as they did with JFK. So I don't think we can already see signs of what may be comming...
Besides, from UA 777 to CO 764 is not a big downgrade when you look at total capacity (only something like 15 seats I believe?), it's rather a downgrade in premium seats.
Well, sometime ago I read that NY and Washington are the 2 biggest destinations for traffic to Africa, due to the populations there. Therefore it would make sense for SN to operate these routes.
The question is, is it better to strengthen your position in the most important markets (IAD, JFK), or better to venture into new markets like BOS? Anyway, I think SN should focus on USA-BRU-Africa traffic, O&D into BRU, and connecting traffic to Europe. But they should not go into connecting to all over the USA. Let UA and LH take care of that.
I guess SN's future transatlantic network would include IAD, JFK (hopefully double daily), BOS and YUL. Leave EWR, ORD and perhaps IAH oR SFO/LAX to UA, and YYZ to AC.
Whether double daily to IAD would work, I don't know. Depending on the schedules, it may allow for smooth connections in both directions, both for AFI flights leaving around 10am as for departures around 2pm (same for a second JFK flight). But perhaps either SN or UA should go 4-5 weekly or so, at least initially.
If UA is indeed retreating from IAD-BRU, then what is really changing for the JV? What is the advantage? Would we see UA starting flights out of IAH or elsewhere? Or a more subtle reshuffling as mentioned earlier?
By the way, what are the seat counts on Y and C in UA's 772, 764 and 763 compared to SN's A333 and A332?
If indeed IAD is the choice, Monday would be a good day for the official announcement by SN: it will be Barack Obama's second inauguration day in Washington.
I was always asking myself why Brussels Airlines is not considering MIA as a potential new destination for its US network.
Here are the reasons why i think that MIA could be a good option:
- high population of Afro-American (even if the latin population is much higher!) for the AFI market.
- existence of a Jewish community as in New York and Antwerp (MIA-BRU? MIA-BRU-TLV?).
- Florida is a huge touristic spot (Miami, Orlando, Key west...)
- from MIA, direct access to the Caribbean (in case of BruAir would like to bit JAF indirectly on certain routes)
- all Caribbean cruises are departing from MIA
- no direct concurrences from BRU
- and Brussels Airport is a huge plus for American pax from Florida who want to discover Europe...small, simple, smooth connections...no complicated routes as CDG or AMS airports or why flying to FRA or MUC, if u wanna discover France, Belgium and the Netherlands?
Maybe it's just a crazy suggestion that i have...but would love to know why MIA never appeared in this topic!
Is this route (BRU-MIA-BRU) has already been studying inside BruAir maybe? And appeared as a not profitable one?
All comments are welcome (commercial, technical, etc....)
If indeed IAD is a route that can support only a single daily flight, although it did support competing flights by both UA and SN in the late 90's, then this could be a sign that UA would shift it's flight to another point that has interest in Africa connections and is an oil hub: IAH.
Brussels Airlines: zes keer per week naar Washington
Vandaag buigt de Raad van bestuur van Brussels Airlines zich over de tweede trans-Atlantische bestemming. Vorig jaar juni ging de Belgische maatschappij van start met een dagelijkse lijndienst naar New York JFK. Vorige week kon u in de TM-newsletter 756 van vrijdag 18 januari al lezen dat de keuze gevallen op Washington DC. De Amerikaanse hoofdstad zal vanaf juni zes keer per week aangevlogen met een Airbus A330-200. Op dit ogenblik vliegt enkel United dagelijks tussen de Europese en de Amerikaanse hoofdstad. Naar verluidt is er voldoende potentieel voor een tweede verbinding, vooral met het oog op de goede connecties vanuit Washington via Brussel naar Afrika. Een officiële mededeling wordt in de loop van de namiddag verwacht. (25/01/2013)
If these will indeed be the flight times of SN to/from IAD, this means an additional flight, next to UA. This sounds a lot to me, but after all, they are in it together. So they should know the market and know what they are doing. Connections in both directions should improve a lot with this schedule.
That departure time in BRU also seems to open the door for an evening JFK flight in the future, no?
Let's wait for the official announcement to see if all this is confirmed. Hope it doesn't turn out completely different. Exciting!
So they are offering an evening flight to Washington?
On the other hand, there aren't a ton of night flights to Washington.
I'm relieved for my colleagues at SN that they didn't go out on a suicide mission to BOS.
I don't know much about the Washington market, an evening connection could be convenient for NATO, but again NATO and diplomatic personnel won't fill an A332 by themselves on top of a UA B764ER, so SN will have to rely heavily on feeding to/from the other European cities.
Perhaps the fact that it's an evening flight would be more interesting for UA as they will be able to fill some of their last feeding flights of the day with traffic connecting on to SN. So it's obvious that a major codeshare cooperation is the framework of this route.
I assume UA will not continue daily 772ER (or the 764ER they use until June, but that's hardly a downgrade, only on the amount of premium seats). A daily or 6 weekly 763ER seems to be the maximum to me?! (at least at this moment, I can see quite some growth in this route tough, it has grown quite significantly over the last years when you look at pax numbers)
But overall, you have to look at this as up to double daily BRU-IAD by Atlantic++/UA&SN, not as 6/week by SN during the evening. Let's start with the current UA flight. The UA-flight offers connections in IAD of course (both US-bound and BRU-bound), in BRU it offers connections to the morning wave to Europe and the AFI flights until about 12:30, when it returns to IAD it can als take pax from both AFI and Europe. And of course it serves O&D market, which is big and high yield for this route.
SN's flight departs in the late afternoon/early evening, that flight can take some O&D of course (especially business traffic is asking for a US-bound evening flight out of BRU for quite long time, IAD is one of these wanted destinations for such flights) but this flight can also take EU transfers (that can help filling SN's relative empty afternoon flights around Europe). Arriving in IAD it can offer connections on UA's evening flights to other US destinations. Than in the other direction, it arrives at 11:50 in BRU, offering much better connections for the early afternoon AFI-flights and again it can take some EU-transfer pax that could help to fill SN's empty European network at noon and early afternoon.
I believe, next to EWR, this is one of the destinations where a double daily (or up to double daily) with an evening flight can work very well IF they make sure the transfer possibilities at BRU are good (and than the reduced EU frequencies come to mind, the important destinations still have 3 daily or more, but I believe 4 daily for destinations like BMA would be better, that offers more flexibility and after all, that's where it's all about in such an operation).
But I still believe BOS would be a good 3rd or 4th option. Mainly for the pharmaceutical business (both pax and cargo, btw talking about cargo, BRU will be the IATA Training Centre for pharmaceutical logistics as from this year).
