Jmoney
Well-known member
- Joined
- May 20, 2007
- Posts
- 851
Nice......
You came up with this garbage at 2 AM? WOW! You are one hell of a freakshow-General...... And I don't mean that in a "good way."
First off Heathrow. Do you really think only American Airlines like Delta, Continental, and USAir will get all of the gates at T-1 and T-4? We were all given 3-4 slots, period. Delta got 3, CAL bought 4, USAir got 1, and NWA got 3. Don't you think AA and UAL would try to get more at those terminals too? How about every other country in the World? Emirates would love to have a few more gates and slots, and they can easily afford them.
BMI/UAL. The difference between BMI/UAL and B6/LH is that BMI already has widebodies. They fly A330s from MAN to LAS, ORD, and the Carribbean, along with A330s from Heathrow to Saudi Arabia. They easily have the ability to move those A330s from MAN to Heathrow, since they are the number 2 airline at Heathrow in terms of slots. Jetblue doesn't have any widebodies, and Lufthansa will make sure they offer to always fly anything large across the Atlantic. What is United gaining from a BMI codeshare at LHR, anyway? They already fly from IAD to every large city in Europe, and same with ORD. What they gain is some small feed to Scottland and Northern Ireland. (Edinburough, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Durham Tees, and Belfast) Every other city BMI flies to from LHR United does too.
Why did Delta hire advisors for possible mergers? They were forced to when Pardus Capital brought it up. Also, in the BK proceedings, the board thought it would be a good idea to look at every angle on how to maximize our worth. A merger might help, or it might hurt. I am sure they hired a few people to look at it. Gordon Bethune looked at the USAir merger for our board, and didn't like it at the time. (political pressure didn't help him). Now he "likes" a United and Delta merger, thanks to Pardus Capital paying him.
What do you mean by BMI maintaining domestic capacity? BMI cannot fly intra United States. Nope. They also aren't a very big airline. How many planes do you think they have? BMI stands for British Midlands---the Midlands of England are around Manchester. They are not a very big player in Europe, but they do have a lot of LHR slots.
Why is 50% of our domestic capacity with the regionals? Good question. Ever think that could be why we went into BK? Did you know that we are parking 35 RJs, and actually adding mainline capacity back this next year. We are getting 9 MD90s from Japan (from JAS airlines, based at Tokyo Haneada airport), and 7 737-700s for the domestic arena, and 4 777LRs for the INTL (along with the rest of the 15 total 757ERs from AA/TWA). Those MD90s will be doing all domestic flights, and taking back some of the RJ routes. The 737-700s (there will eventually be 20--25 of them) will do high airports (like Vail, CO) and some INTL stuff in Central America. Anderson knows that too many RJs can hurt us, especially uneconomical 50 and 37 seaters. Also, a CR9 or E170 takes up a valuable gate, one that could have an MD90 instead bringing in more revenue, and that MD90 costs less than a CR9 too. ($9 million total cost with engines)
Actually, 2008 may not be a downer in terms of mergers. A story popped up earlier that stated airlines might want to think about merging NOW instead of 08 because a new Justice department may come along if a Democrat is elected in late 08, and this one may NOT rule on anything until they think there might be another Republican in office. Also, I think one big merger could cause a lot of other ones, and the Government may not want everyone merging. Could there be mergers in 08? Maybe. Will there have to be mergers? I don't think so. Maybe some LCCs will merge thanks to the flat domestic market.
Bye Bye--General Lee
You came up with this garbage at 2 AM? WOW! You are one hell of a freakshow-General...... And I don't mean that in a "good way."