Originally Posted by
Free Bird
There's only so many pax flying to/from and or through Haneda/Narita. It seems Delta would rather have a code share and diminish our Narita flying. Put another way, is there more $$$ to be made for Delta through a code share than by flying the pax ourselves? I'll take a guess and say the final product IF this deal goes through will be a combination of JV (Haneda) and our own flying (Narita).
Agreed.
Makes sense that we would see a mix. I would imagine that HND doesn't have enough capacity to handle all traffic, so it does indeed appear as though we'd have a little bit of both.
I think the only problem with the status-quo would be to be "Gatwicked" into flying people exclusively through the secondary (less profitable) airport. With that being said, I don't know how many HND slots we would need to make HND flying viable, but it seems like the answer would be "a lot". So maybe having solo access to HND is just as bad. After all, part of our advantage in Tokyo vs. other US airlines is that we also carry through pax. If we have a few more HND slots, we don't have enough connection opportunities to fill up airplanes.
I don't know which is worse: poor load factors to the more lucrative airport, or high load factors to the less lucrative airport. So I think the answer is a "metal-neutral" JV that does it all, with some sort of guarantee on who does what flying, and how we grow together.
There is a lot at stake for everyone here, and it's not just AMR with their operation at risk.