Yet you can Shirley see the advantage a 321XLR(etc) has over a 757 in costs right?

One flight a day with 24 lay flats is 8760 seats a year. Then its 2, 3, 4, 5 flights a day out of NYC and BOS. Then its a similar amount to DUB, CDG and maybe a few others and soon you have 50-100K lay flats a year flooding the TA market, plus over 4 times that many in economy. And that's even assuming they are the only ones that try it. And we can add some cargo onto that as well, times the number of flights. All of that (lay flat, economy and even limited cargo) will come straight off the bottom lines of existing legacy yields.

Its not that the plane used is a "widebody killer" but the model itself is a yield killer. Traditionally legacy marketing loves to surrender some capacity to that kind of pressure to preserve on paper per flight near term profits even though its a guaranteed loss in the long run.

We don't know for sure how legacy marketing will respond to this particular threat this time. Failing to brief the threat and come up with a plan to mitigate it only amplifies the danger.

 

Who was meeting? DL or JB?

 

I agree a widebody does it better. JB is going to war with the army they have though, and the new 321 is better than any previous NB at least. They don't have to "win" to win. They only have to wage a war of yield reducing/capacity dumping attrition to cause legacies to reduce their footprint to accomidate them. Unlike other attempts, they have a massive domestic feed network already established. They will take significant amounts of lay flat, economy and even some cargo, straight off the top of existing legacy revenue, while reducing revenue on what's left. Legacies will soon have to choose between losing some money near term to fight it off or lose far more over the long term to accomidate it.

 

Maybe, maybe not. There are lots of markets to Europe that have plenty of O&D from BOS; its hardly a secondary city just because its not NYC. We already fly 330's to Europe from BOS. Their 321 product is great...for a 321 but its certainly not better than our suites on our 339's. Plus its not just us; they wont be giving BA and VS a run for their money to LHR with a 321. They also dont have slots for LHR indefinitely. I dont see them as a huge threat.

 

I believe he was referring to DL and opening of the BOS 320 base.

 

Never spoken to him but I get that impression too.

 

Don't call me Shirley

 

dude, you can’t be serious

 

check mov ref det ON

 

I agree that widebodies are better all things equal. Maybe this is cherry picking, but I checked a couple random dates for DL-One vs Mint for trips on the same days and JB was well under half the cost. They don't have to strike revenue gold and out generate existing revenue; all they have to do is reduce yields and dump capacity enough to survive and they win simply by taking existing marketshare. Ignoring them out of an overconfidence about widebodies is a mistake. If they are poaching any premium pax whatsoever (and they clearly are) they are draining legacy airline's most valueable source of revenue and profits. Soon it will be tens of thousands of lay flat seats a year and growing. These aren't $49 cruise ship connection super savers; this is a direct attack on the crown jewels of revenue generation and ignoring it because its "just one flight" or "just two flights" etc will prove to be a complete blunder. This is a serious challenge that will grow significantly going forward. Airlines will either spend the money to deal with it now or they will inherit a far more costly battle long term.