View Single Post
  #4  
Old 1st June 2008, 12:20 PM
Will T Will T is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Sydney, Australia
Posts: 175
Default

I agree with Chris. The market for stand-alone differentiated, low cost, all premium long-haul travel is limited (imho), and airlines trading away network features and feed for price are unlikely to get anything like the corporate yield or revenue quality that the big network carriers can (and do) get.

A lot of these 'product-specialist/low fare' trans-Atlantic carriers targeted the SME market ('the independent business traveller') - as indeed Virgin Blue have been of late - but little is known about this segment, and I'm not so sure that they're always a better customer than the typical full service leisure traveller. They're price-sensitive, and seem to expect all the accoutrements of premium cabins, without paying for them. Oasis targeted a similar segment, and was also unsuccessful. Obviously the fuel price has compounded the woes of any airline yet to reach 'critical mass', too.

As I see it, the scope for long-haul, dedicated premium services is - under the present circumstances - confined to selected spokes of existing full service networks, having the required yield and margin quality (eg. Privatair in Europe, SQ all-business to New York, a potential QF SYD/LON vv. non-stop, etc). Time will tell!
Reply With Quote