The real reason Delta cut Dubai route

BobDDuck said:
Not all of them, but many of them, yes.
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I think a proper fare/tax breakdown would be in order to say whether or not Middle Eastern carriers have an unfair advantage here. Perhaps tomorrow... I'm off to bed.

My original point still stands, however: US carriers lag heavily on their international products.
 
dasleben said:
Emirates from LAX-DXB is roughly $25,000 in first class. I hate to say, they do not undercut anyone. I know the whole argument on JC stems from the idea that these carriers are undercutting US carriers, but know that it's false. Price it out.
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I'm not trying to defend the US3 here - I think there is likely a middle ground in the arguments from each side - but we're not really comparing apples-to-apples in the LAX-DXB example. EK is the only carrier that flies it non-stop. Comparing a $10K business class seat on EK non-stop with a $9K business class seat on UA (with a connection in IAD) shows just how tight the pricing is in the back (non-first). Additionally, only looking at First Class isn't really "pricing it out" -- randomly looking at a few November/December dates for IAD-DXB, Emirates and UA are priced pretty similarly (with either carrier being cheaper on certain days) in Economy/Business. And at the end of it all, the crux of the US3 argument still holds -- if EK doesn't sell that $25K first class seat (or $10K business class seat, or $1K economy seat), or sells it an identical fare as the US3, the US3 believes the government will foot the bill to cover the losses - taking the "free market" piece out of the equation.

No idea if they are right or wrong on this one, to be honest. But the US3 are reinvesting in their product. Might not be on par with international carriers at the moment, but they are getting their, and building financial moats that will make them far more competitive down the road.
 
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saxman said:
Yeah I call shinanigans too. Everytime I look at the loads to DXB on Delta, they are always full.
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A good question during "In Command".

One person asked "Why did we stop flying to XYZ because the flights were always full!"

Full flights aren't indicative of profitable flights. He said something about the ability to fly a 747-800 and fill it with passengers and still not make a profit. If you lose pricing authority on certain routes, you might be fighting to break even on that heavily discounted route or re-deploy the asset to another market where you have better margins. So do you want full airplanes or profitable airplanes is the question you have to ask yourself as a revenue planner.

Remember, everyone wants to fly to Orlando and for a period of time, SouthernJets flew full L1011's, 777's, 767-300's and even bought a fleet of 767-400s (sans HF radios or SATCOM because they were supposed to be domestic aircraft) to fly the Florida market, always full, and barely made a dime, if at all, before they changed the strategy.
 
Whatever the reason they"re cancelling the service, I feel personally f'd, and because they have cancelled service, my only recourse is to fly one of the ME3 back to the states. Turkish to ATL in May, and Qatar in July.
 
Derg said:
A good question during "In Command".

One person asked "Why did we stop flying to XYZ because the flights were always full!"

Full flights aren't indicative of profitable flights. He said something about the ability to fly a 747-800 and fill it with passengers and still not make a profit. If you lose pricing authority on certain routes, you might be fighting to break even on that heavily discounted route or re-deploy the asset to another market where you have better margins. So do you want full airplanes or profitable airplanes is the question you have to ask yourself as a revenue planner.

Remember, everyone wants to fly to Orlando and for a period of time, SouthernJets flew full L1011's, 777's, 767-300's and even bought a fleet of 767-400s (sans HF radios or SATCOM because they were supposed to be domestic aircraft) to fly the Florida market, always full, and barely made a dime, if at all, before they changed the strategy.
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What Doug says is very true.

Another huge factor is freight. Big airplanes can make big money carrying underbelly cargo. No idea what DAL does with theirs on the DXB route. If they use the -200LR it could carry at least 17 tonnes of freight in addition to pax bags ex ATL. If it's a 200ER then it would be less.

That all said, indications are that DAL could get pretty reasonable yields on the DXB service, especially with all the contractors travelling back and forth to the Middle East.



TP
 
I heard something that may shed some light, now again this is just here say. I haven't been able to find anything yet.

Seems Eithad or Emirates denied boarding to a US passenger of Jewish faith. Complaint was filed and one of those airlines was hit with a fine, and they got back by yanking the overfly/landing permits
 
For a while, JAX-ATL was 7ER. I think the stated reason was freight, but this was pre-bankruptcy and I honestly don't remember if that was the stated reason or not.
 
Autothrust Blue said:
For a while, JAX-ATL was 7ER. I think the stated reason was freight, but this was pre-bankruptcy and I honestly don't remember if that was the stated reason or not.
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They were doing that post-BK also. I rode on it a few times when I was doing sim instruction for ATP down in JAX. That would have been around 2008 or so.
 
F9DXER said:
I heard something that may shed some light, now again this is just here say. I haven't been able to find anything yet.

Seems Eithad or Emirates denied boarding to a US passenger of Jewish faith. Complaint was filed and one of those airlines was hit with a fine, and they got back by yanking the overfly/landing permits
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People of Jewish faith ride middle eastern airlines all the time. Now a orthodox Jewish person might be a different story, but I would question why a Orthodox Jew would want to visit any of those countries.
 
typhoonpilot said:
What Doug says is very true.

Another huge factor is freight. Big airplanes can make big money carrying underbelly cargo. No idea what DAL does with theirs on the DXB route. If they use the -200LR it could carry at least 17 tonnes of freight in addition to pax bags ex ATL. If it's a 200ER then it would be less.
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Fun fact, in the late 70s or early 80s, Eastern did a lot of freight-only flights in the middle of the night where pax fares were dirt cheap with a single restriction; no checked bags.
 
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