Kargo

Does anyone else see this as a problem for US based carriers? I know a foreign carrier can't fly to the US and start its own hub/spoke/point to point operation here, and I don't think they can contract to their own regional for feed, but what governs this. I don't know much about this subject. Anyone else care to add their two cents?

Thanks

Lufthansa, Netjets To Announce Cooperation | AVIATION WEEK
Lufthansa, Netjets To Announce Cooperation


Dec 24, 2010

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By Jens Flottau
Lufthansa and Netjets Europe are close to announcing a major cooperation agreement, industry sources tell Aviation Week.As part of the agreement, Netjets will take over corporate jet flying as part of the Lufthansa Private Jet scheme next year replacing Lufthansa’s own fleet of corporate aircraft. Neither Lufthansa nor Netjets were prepared to comment yesterday.
Lufthansa has used Netjets in the past when it originally launched its private jet offering. But the work was taken in-house in 2008 when group subsidiary Swiss International Air Lines bought Zurich-based Servair Private Charter. The unit—then called Swiss Private Aviation—operated 5 Cessna Citation CJ1s, CJ3s and XLS+ on behalf of Lufthansa.
However, Lufthansa’s clients used the service in a different way than expected. While Lufthansa saw the offering mainly as hub feeding and de-feeding into secondary airports, passengers instead booked many secondary airport to secondary airport trips that became prohibitively expensive for the operator because they mean a significant amount of positioning flights. As a Swiss company, Swiss Private Aviation also was not allowed to fly German domestic routes. The offering was also limited to Europe.
Industry sources say Lufthansa hopes the large European Netjets fleet will make empty positioning flights a much smaller problem and the scheme can be expanded at least to North America through Netjets. Officials say that the Lufthansa Private Jet offering is not in doubt. However, Swiss Private Aviation is expected to shut down with its 60 employees to be transferred to other positions in the group.

FlyingNasaForm

It's NetJets Europe doing the flying, not NetJets North America.

Columbia

Pretty standard agreement. All the major Frax have something similar in place. Flex with KAL in the US, for example.

landlover

Even if it was NJA doing the flying, it wouldn't be illegal. Pax take LH to ORD and charter a NJA airplane or take a taxi(same difference) to MSP. LH just arranged those travel details.

Kargo

Interesting, I had no idea this was the norm. Thanks for the good info

jtf560

Lots of fractional owners arrange it themselves coming off whatever airline brought them in internationally. Most often at JFK, LAX, or SFO. It is very expensive to fly on private jets domestically and astoundingly expensive for long international trips. I'd have to guess a minimum of 70K to cross the Atlantic- probably around 100K in a G-IV or V. I don't even want to think how expensive it would be to do Asia. It's nice to see NJE get the flying back after Lufthansa thought they could do it themselves cheaper and then failed miserably. Delta has Delta Air Elite to do it themselves in the US and has been doing it for quite a while. United tried and failed miserably back in 2001 after sinking in tens of millions and not getting any passenger legs flown.

Columbia

It's quite a bit about timing and marketing as well. AMR-Combs started their response to netjets in 1994 and turned it into Flexjet in '95. UAL simply started it too late (reminds me of Virgin America) as well as just prior to 9/11. Your 70K quote above is a bit light, by the way. If you bought a 25 hour G-IV card from netjets, for example, you would be looking at $16K/hour or $130K for an 8-hour trip, each way.