Speculation on Brussels Airlines' next TATL destination

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Malaysia
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Re: Speculation on Brussels Airlines' next TATL destination

Post by Malaysia »

Forget about an transatlantic flight in the afternoon, that would be impossible for Brussels Airlines due the high costs when flying at the westbound at the atlantic in the afternoon.

Air Key West
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Re: Speculation on Brussels Airlines' next TATL destination

Post by Air Key West »

I'm not suggesting a flight in the afternoon, but in the evening, but even so, could you explain why flying Trans-atlantic westbound in the afternoon is expensive ? I'm always eager to learn.
In favor of quality air travel.

WC_EEND
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Re: Speculation on Brussels Airlines' next TATL destination

Post by WC_EEND »

I'm quite curious about that as well actually.

OO-ITR
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Re: Speculation on Brussels Airlines' next TATL destination

Post by OO-ITR »

Air Key West wrote:I'm not convinced BOS is such a great idea, since it is not a UA hub and I doubt there would enough pax on the flight without (also) good connections from BOS onward to other US destinations.
JFK isn't a UA hub neither and SN doesn't have connections their neither...

Wasn't BOS flown by AA a couple of years ago. Anyone an idea why they stopped this route?

Flanker
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Re: Speculation on Brussels Airlines' next TATL destination

Post by Flanker »

BOS

Boston was indeed one of the better Long hauls for SN, but that was because nobody else flew to BOS, now everybody does.

SFO

SFO would be a nice connection to the West Coast, but, if your destination is LAX or SAN you have to change anyway and a change at ORD does the trick as well... so the question remains: "Is theere enough O&D traffic to open this route."

The fleet should be able to handle it without a problem...

You could "connect" it to an West-Arika flight using the 2 A332...
Inbound from AFI at 7:00 Outbound to SFO at 9:30
Inbound from SFO at 9:30 Outbound to AFI at 12:00

It has been done in SN times: A342 for NRT and JFK (evening rotation) and B7473 for JNB and ORD...

Montreal:
There's O&D traffic and isn't Toronto the real hub for AC? It could make sense for SN to open Montreal and have AC operate the Toronto route.

RSW:
Probably there's no traffic at all... except for me every once in a while

Cheers,

Stij

I welcome this fresh breeze of common sense. I've been saying it like a parrot for years but still some people seem to be hooked up on the idea of flying to BOS or SFO.
Malaysia wrote:Forget about an transatlantic flight in the afternoon, that would be impossible for Brussels Airlines due the high costs when flying at the westbound at the atlantic in the afternoon.
Air Key West wrote:I'm not suggesting a flight in the afternoon, but in the evening, but even so, could you explain why flying Trans-atlantic westbound in the afternoon is expensive ? I'm always eager to learn.
It's about the NAT OS track system. You have to either use the track system and "go with the flow" ie night eastbound, day westbound, or avoid the system and fly around it, resulting in much less direct routing and higher trip costs.

BUT:
1. this means that almost everyone uses the track system and only few offer these offset flights.
This costs a little bit more but you come into a very different revenue environment. There is quite a demand for evening flights from European businessmen who wish to leave their office in the evening and arrive at their hotel in the U.S., ready to go to bed.
2. Does it really cost that much more?
-Given you arrive in JFK quite late, you don't have to taxi too long until you get to the gate. The same for the departure. This saves a lot of engine time, crew costs and fuel.
-Given that it's the quieter moments of the day, you are likely to strike a much better deal for handling charges.
-The advantage of having more ground time at the hub airport in Europe is also a great advantage. If you go with the flow, you find yourself with 5 hours of ground time in JFK where you can't do anything to the aircraft. You will have to compensate for that somewhere else, which impacts costs indirectly, as lower utilisation efficiency.

I say that they should look at DEN or maybe LAS.

The reason is obvious: high yield, no competition, central location, UA hub, great connection opportunities to the West coast.


Image

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RoMax
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Re: Speculation on Brussels Airlines' next TATL destination

Post by RoMax »

OO-ITR wrote:
Wasn't BOS flown by AA a couple of years ago. Anyone an idea why they stopped this route?
That was just a 'slot-keeper' for LHR. The route was BOS-LHR-BRU-LHR-BOS and that was only the case during 1 winter season. That winter also United operated a flight trough LHR to keep their slots overthere until the economy started to recover and extra terminator flights to LHR were justified again.

chrisflyer
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Re: Speculation on Brussels Airlines' next TATL destination

Post by chrisflyer »

Air Key West wrote:Personally, I think b.air's next TATL flight should be an evening flight to NYC because business travelers would like to have a second flight to NYC, but in the evening, and the return flight should be able to offer better (shorter) connections with the Africa flights leaving BRU after 1400 hours.
Slots permitting, I would say the ideal flight times would be
BRU NYC 1930 - 2145
NYC BRU 2330 - 1245
Other destinations in North America, imo, could wait since ORD, IAD and YUL are already operated by partner airlines and I'm not convinced BOS is such a great idea, since it is not a UA hub and I doubt there would enough pax on the flight without (also) good connections from BOS onward to other US destinations.
In short, the next two A330s b.air would get should be used for an evening flight to NYC and to reinforce the African network. That's for the (hopefully) short term.
Would be brilliant, even if it isn't daily (Mon, Thu, Fri, Sun for example). Question is whether there is enough demand, and if European connecting traffic can be attracted. I should think a lot of markets would appreciate an option which gets them out between 4 and 5pm, and into NYC by 10pm, via BRU.

OO-ITR
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Re: Speculation on Brussels Airlines' next TATL destination

Post by OO-ITR »

MR_Boeing wrote:
OO-ITR wrote:
Wasn't BOS flown by AA a couple of years ago. Anyone an idea why they stopped this route?
That was just a 'slot-keeper' for LHR. The route was BOS-LHR-BRU-LHR-BOS and that was only the case during 1 winter season. That winter also United operated a flight trough LHR to keep their slots overthere until the economy started to recover and extra terminator flights to LHR were justified again.
thanks for the info MR_Boeing, I appreciate it

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Conti764
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Re: Speculation on Brussels Airlines' next TATL destination

Post by Conti764 »

Flanker wrote: I say that they should look at DEN or maybe LAS.

The reason is obvious: high yield, no competition, central location, UA hub, great connection opportunities to the West coast.


Image
Never thought I would say this, but I actually agree with you. By having a daily flight to and from DEN, they'd have the markets you display, but also IAH in the South. But then again, why wouldn't UA have considered this route already?

Stij
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Re: Speculation on Brussels Airlines' next TATL destination

Post by Stij »

Conti764 wrote:Never thought I would say this, but I actually agree with you. By having a daily flight to and from DEN, they'd have the markets you display, but also IAH in the South. But then again, why wouldn't UA have considered this route already?
And a skiing trip to Vail could be getting closer! ;-)
Cheers,
Stij

cnc
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Re: Speculation on Brussels Airlines' next TATL destination

Post by cnc »

if the goal is to get new pax for africa it doesn't make as much sense to fly to a partner hub as it is to fly to a competitor hub.
i still think DTW should be considered.

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BrightCedars
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Re: Speculation on Brussels Airlines' next TATL destination

Post by BrightCedars »

I think SN had mentioned SFO early on and I think it's still on the table. No alliance partner, in this case UA, is going to start a West Coast-Brussels route on their own metal if it isn't daily from day one. SN can however open up the route with 3-4 flights a week and make it grow. The A332 will be ideal, and it can be combined with a shorter African rotation to level it all out on a 48h basis. With two A332's they can operate the route daily when it matures, with JFK going A333.

BOS is certainly a good idea but an A333 might be too much, a smaller A332 would be misuse of the range potential, I'm sure if they see it profitable they could convince UA to put a 757 on that route to test it.

As for Canada, AC operating YYZ and SN operating YUL would be ideal, we'll see how that turns out in the future.

One more thing, SN needs to increased its dots and frequencies in Africa.

Also, some (more) dots in North Africa and the Near East could help fill those new Transatlantic flights e.g. AMM (RJ is leaving), BEY (ME is getting richer every flight), CAI (MS won't route its pax via BRU). Revisiting the TLV schedule to enable a short connection to JFK would also be a smart move, maybe they should go double daily on the route.


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sn26567
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Re: Speculation on Brussels Airlines' next TATL destination

Post by sn26567 »

crlhub wrote:Summer 2012 Transatlantic Offer Analysis.

http://www.msmaviation.com/publicdocs/T ... r_2012.pdf
Funny to read (page 13) that 20 weekly TATL flights are operated by a F50 and 14 by a DH8 !!!

The explanation comes later (p. 15): the operators are Air Greenland and Air Iceland. But are these genuine TATL flights?
André
ex Sabena #26567

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BrightCedars
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Re: Speculation on Brussels Airlines' next TATL destination

Post by BrightCedars »

crlhub wrote:Summer 2012 Transatlantic Offer Analysis.
Very nice work!

Would you have any way of extracting BEY O&D TATL traffic knowing that there currently isn't a single non-stop transatlantic route in or out of BEY but that there are 1,000's of people flying TATL from BEY using many of the TATL services you covered.

Bralo20
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Re: Speculation on Brussels Airlines' next TATL destination

Post by Bralo20 »

sn26567 wrote:But are these genuine TATL flights?
They do fly over the Atlantic ocean... So yes, they are...

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sn26567
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Re: Speculation on Brussels Airlines' next TATL destination

Post by sn26567 »

Bralo20 wrote:
sn26567 wrote:But are these genuine TATL flights?
They do fly over the Atlantic ocean... So yes, they are...
So does a flight from Porto to Dublin e.g. :?
André
ex Sabena #26567

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RoMax
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Re: Speculation on Brussels Airlines' next TATL destination

Post by RoMax »

sn26567 wrote: So does a flight from Porto to Dublin e.g. :?
These routes over the Atlantic are quite different than these of Air Greenland or Air Iceland. There could be discussion about it, but I don't think that's essential in the report. If he wants to include these flights, fine to me (it's not that it's going to have an enormous effect on the results), if he didn't, fine to me as well.

Also note: SN is the number 27 TATL carrier at JFK (1.988 weekly seats one-way). They beat Austrian with only 7 weekly seats one-way (OS has combination of 777 and 767 or a mix of different configurations it seems because the numbers do not fit one certain configuration of their long haul fleet). But OS is a bit more premium. The ratio premium vs non-premium seats at SN is 10.6%, OS has a ratio of 11%.

SN is behind Finnair which also operates a daily A333 into JFK. But the difference: SN has a A333 configuration of 284 seats (30/254), Finnair has a configuration with 297 seats (32/265) (they also have more premium A333's that have 42 or 45 business class seats, but this configuration fits the numbers shown in the rapport, so the more premium ones are probably used for Asia).

Jet Airways is number 34 in JFK, with 1.582 weekly seats one-way. In EWR they are number 10 with the same amount of seats as in JFK, but of course there are less carriers operating into EWR resulting in a higher ranking in EWR than in JFK. And in Toronto they are number 12 also with 1.582 weekly seats.
But what I wonder...didn't 9W have two different configurations on their A332's? A configuration with more seats in it that operates on EWR and/or YYZ?

crlhub

Re: Speculation on Brussels Airlines' next TATL destination

Post by crlhub »

@brightcedar:about BEY,what I can say is that a lot of pax going from bey to yul are flying via gva(me+ac).Probably a lot are also flying AF to yul.I do not have informations for other north atl
gateways.The Lebanese community is almost 100.000 persons strong in Montréal as you certainly know.

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