I hope direct competitors don't need to wait for others to tell them what revenues are on routes they fly on as well: otherwise I'd strongly urge them to hire some business performance analysts ASAP.sean1982 wrote: I'm sure the competitors will be happy to hear that.
Of course, competitors have those business performance analysts in house since long and they quickly must have noticed BRU is not exactly doing as planned revenue-wise for them, hence them quickly ringing the alarm bell and having their airlines putting a halt to all further expansion, not just over winter, but also next summer even! That really gives it away, doesn't it:
ryanair as good as freezing first winter and them summer expansion
vueling trying to redirect their summer capacity elsewhere to avoid too much head on competition
easyjet pulling out of some year round markets even
...
If I could see the writing on the wall as soon as June last year already from simply reading between the lines and looking at the few numbers available, I am sure the business analysts at the competitors HQs saw the full picture much sooner even, regardless what those may have been telling the press and their staff.
Facts have meanwhile largely confirmed my reading for the time being.
As others have mentioned meanwhile too: regardless the drop in yields, they seem to be on track to improve their year's end results, meaning they have seriously slashed their costs too while most probably keeping revenues stable (due to the growth in passenger numbers, which is thus not as financially pointless as you think it is
), a logical conclusion I already drew last summer, yet of which I was told by flanker2 it simply wasnt possible to lower costs by that much for a traditional airline. Seems they did just that.The question is: are they still a truely traditional airline, or have they meanwhile turned themselves into an Aer Lingus clone and are thus something hybrid in between say a traditional low cost and a traditional network airline? I'd say they are, and so trying to read them from the 'old logic' may not be the best basis.
I agree with flanker2 that this year, in the face of competitors backing off somewhat and probably also an even lower cost environment thanks to significantly lower oil prices (at least over the first period of the year), they should find it relatively easy to become operationally profitable again, provided no unknowns happen of course.
Ah well, will make it all the easier for them to grow further: they seem to have a relatively ambitious fleet in mind in just a couple of years. Will look good when all those planes are parked at the A Terminal in BRU in the morning, for sure!
