Originally Posted by
BtoA
No. it's not a rant. We did exactly that. It is a violation of our contract. If the JV partners can fly those routes, then so can we. Otherwise, other airlines are flying our pax. Agreeing to a JV with 50% then allowing them to drop almost 5% while just promising to keep global numbers the same is not a win.
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You are as uninformed as you are consistent.
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The primary driver of us being contractually non-compliant over the Atlantic was Air France's decision, several years ago, to add multiple A-380s to the trans-atlantic mix. Our network dept., faced with declining Atlantic traffic, wisely held our Atlantic fleet status quo. The result was that our
share of EASKs went down.
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We have no "control" over AF's fleet decisions but the Company decided it would cost more to add unneeded capacity in the face of declining loads than to litigate the contractual under-performance later. (and BTW, Air France has continued to struggle to fill their A-380s and recently declined to accept the last tranche of firm order A-380s they were slated to receive)
So, although our EASK production ratio was sub-contractual several years ago, the main reason was that our "partner" over-produced their share of EASKs. We did not reduce our flying in that theater 5%.
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Talk to Network if you want corroboration or confirmation of the above. They will actually take the time to explain it to you.
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