tim... wrote:

"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message , at 18:10:24 on Sun, 19 Jun 2016,
tim... remarked:
You can still get a stalemate where the USA says "only two of your
airlines allowed", and the worst we can reply is "and only two of
yours",

I don't see what's wrong with that

it's what we had before

Less competition,

I still believe that 4 airlines on the direct rout plus a myriad of less
direct options is enough

higher fares.

and reallocate the slots to flights to other places.

You really think the American airlines are going to say "please give us
less slots"?

"Fewer slots" perhaps, but their main imperative will be anything which
gives their airlines a bigger slice of the pie.

Unless you are trying to claim that our negotiators are so bad they will
give the American's more slots than the Brits ISTM that the best way to get
a bigger slice of the pie is for there to be lots of slots.

It has to be easier for an American airline with multiple US hubs and an
interconnecting network to fill up planes from/to many US destinations than
the Brits can simply with point to point customers.

The Brits are not just offering point to point connections.

BA is in alliance with AA, so it benefits from connecting flights at AA
hubs, while VS is in alliance with (and 49% owned by) Delta, and closely
coordinates schedules. Indeed, they pass routes to each other, so Virgin
now flies to Atlanta. Virgin has dropped several of its less profitable
Asian and African routes in favour of more US routes that link with Delta's
SkyTeam hubs.

Travel on either of these airlines and see just how many code shares there
are on each flight. So an American can book an AA flight from some
midwestern US city via, say, Chicago to LHR and on to a secondary European
city, with the metal in both the second and third flights being BA, but all
three flights having AA flight numbers and earning AA miles.