In message , at 18:52:01 on
Wed, 18 Dec 2013, Graham Harrison
remarked:
If you look at the M4, M3 and M40 "corridors" you will find many non-UK
businesses. There are all sorts of reasons why they set up there but
the proximity of Heathrow has often been cited by such companies as one
(not the) reason for locating there.

Companies selling (mainly American) computer parts and other electronic
components set up in the 70's along Bath Rd Slough precisely because of
the proximity to Heathrow. Not only did it allow transatlantic visitors
easy access, they could pop to the airport to pick up their inbound air
freight most easily. This spread along the Thames Valley to Reading, and
eventually Newbury (and beyond).
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 18:29:52 on Wed, 18
Dec 2013, tim...... remarked:
It's about selling the highest priced fares to people who insist in
direct flights,

and the cheapest ones to people who book early

Completely orthogonal to the issues we are discussing.

No it's not

The only reason that the indirect foliage were cheaper was because I
was looking months ahead

Try a couple of days ahead and LH are no longer interesting in bribing
pax to fly via FRA (probably because the connecting flight is full)

Still digging I see
--
Roland Perry

On 17/12/2013 21:08, Recliner wrote:

"Robin" wrote:
Regardless , the whole motive behind blighting somewhere in the
southeast
with another runway seems to be so that airlines and BAA can make
more profit. It has zilch to do with the UK economy other than the
small amount of extra corporation tax it would deliver which would be
more than ofset by the billions it would cost to build the thing in
the first place even with partial private finance. Its a cynical
campaign by private corporations for the government to spend huge
amounts of public money on some infrastructure that will benefit
almost no one economically except themselves and their shareholders.

Do you think that multinationals don't take into account ease of travel
when deciding where to base overseas offices? Eg that a Chinese company
might prefer to base its European operation near an airport with direct
flights to all major Chinese cities?

Do you think that having the overseas offices of multinationals does no
good to the UK economy in terms of direct jobs, demand for support
services etc?

Do you think the French, Germans, Dutch etc are mad for building major
airports and that ur David is the only one in step?

Spud/Boltar/Neil is a contract programmer who probably doesn't care about
such things.

Neil? Not sure he's ever been a Neil, has he?

Mizter T wrote:
On 17/12/2013 21:08, Recliner wrote:

"Robin" wrote:
Regardless , the whole motive behind blighting somewhere in the
southeast
with another runway seems to be so that airlines and BAA can make
more profit. It has zilch to do with the UK economy other than the
small amount of extra corporation tax it would deliver which would be
more than ofset by the billions it would cost to build the thing in
the first place even with partial private finance. Its a cynical
campaign by private corporations for the government to spend huge
amounts of public money on some infrastructure that will benefit
almost no one economically except themselves and their shareholders.

Do you think that multinationals don't take into account ease of travel
when deciding where to base overseas offices? Eg that a Chinese company
might prefer to base its European operation near an airport with direct
flights to all major Chinese cities?

Do you think that having the overseas offices of multinationals does no
good to the UK economy in terms of direct jobs, demand for support
services etc?

Do you think the French, Germans, Dutch etc are mad for building major
airports and that ur David is the only one in step?

Spud/Boltar/Neil is a contract programmer who probably doesn't care about
such things.

Neil? Not sure he's ever been a Neil, has he?

Yup, one recent Spud post was from Neil the Shed ). I
speculated that it might be his real name, and he didn't deny it.

"Graham Harrison" wrote in message
...

"tim......" wrote in message
...

"Graham Harrison" wrote in
message news

"tim......" wrote in message
...

"Graham Harrison" wrote in
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"tim......" wrote in message
...

"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message , at 20:21:52 on Tue,
17 Dec 2013, tim...... remarked:
Intra UK transit pax are not the problem. It's the perceived need
to steal pax from other European carries at major European "hubs",
that is

I was researching flights to SA the other day and it is 20% cheaper
to fly LHR-FRA-CPT with LH than it is to fly FRA-CPT

OTOH it is 20% cheaper to fly FRA-LHR-CPT with BA than it is to fly
LHR-CPT.

So the reason that LHR needs to be a hub is because BA (apparently)
can't fill a plane from LHR to CPT without "bribing" pax from
Germany to fly via London.

You really don't understand yield management, do you?

Yes I do

It's about selling the highest priced fares to people who insist in
direct flights,

and the cheapest ones to people who book early

then filling the remaining seats with people on feeders from nearby.
The result maximises revenue, even if some people get cheaper
flights as a result of agreeing to be those indirect passengers.

That's fine, but it's no reason to insist you need a hub so that you
can fill a plane that you have artificially made less full than it
might have been




You're both wrong.

as I already pointed out

the author of the report agrees with me so he must be wrong as well

tim




I haven't found that yet in the report or the appendicies. Can you
please point me to it?

It was repored in the newspaper, must have been the Telegraph as that's
the only one that I read at work

here it is

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/n...hort-list.html

"Although two options have been short-listed for a possible third runway
at Heathrow, Sir Howard said the commission is not convinced that London
would be best served by one big hub airport"

tim


Firstly my "you're both wrong" comment applied to yield management.

Oh, it was far from clear

"tim......" wrote in message
...

"Graham Harrison" wrote in
message news

"tim......" wrote in message
...

"Graham Harrison" wrote in
message ...

"tim......" wrote in message
...

"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message , at 20:21:52 on Tue, 17
Dec 2013, tim...... remarked:
Intra UK transit pax are not the problem. It's the perceived need to
steal pax from other European carries at major European "hubs", that
is

I was researching flights to SA the other day and it is 20% cheaper
to fly LHR-FRA-CPT with LH than it is to fly FRA-CPT

OTOH it is 20% cheaper to fly FRA-LHR-CPT with BA than it is to fly
LHR-CPT.

So the reason that LHR needs to be a hub is because BA (apparently)
can't fill a plane from LHR to CPT without "bribing" pax from Germany
to fly via London.

You really don't understand yield management, do you?

Yes I do

It's about selling the highest priced fares to people who insist in
direct flights,

and the cheapest ones to people who book early

then filling the remaining seats with people on feeders from nearby.
The result maximises revenue, even if some people get cheaper flights
as a result of agreeing to be those indirect passengers.

That's fine, but it's no reason to insist you need a hub so that you
can fill a plane that you have artificially made less full than it
might have been




You're both wrong.

as I already pointed out

the author of the report agrees with me so he must be wrong as well

tim




I haven't found that yet in the report or the appendicies. Can you
please point me to it?

It was repored in the newspaper, must have been the Telegraph as that's
the only one that I read at work

here it is

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/n...hort-list.html

"Although two options have been short-listed for a possible third runway
at Heathrow, Sir Howard said the commission is not convinced that London
would be best served by one big hub airport"

tim


Firstly my "you're both wrong" comment applied to yield management.

Thank you for the Telegraph link. In many places around the world hubs are
defined by the fact that one (occasionally two e.g. Chicago O'Hare) airline
has a dominant position *and* schedules flights in such a way that
connections across the hub can be seen as a series of "waves" with flights
coming in from one direction and a little later a wave going on to other
destinations. It's not the only definition but it's the most prevalent, in
my view.

Heathrow is a hub but perhaps not in quite the same way. Yes, BA bring in
people from all sorts of places and carry them on to further destinations
(so Heathrow is their hub) but they also bring a lot of people to London as
a destination. In the case of BA it's also the case that their hub isn't
simply long to short haul (or vv). Flights from Africa and the Gulf feed
transatlantic services and Africa also feeds the far east . But BA isn't
the only airline hubbing at Heathrow. Star Alliance also have a hub and,
for example, South African feed into United. Part of the reason BA bought
British Midland was to disrupt the feed BD provided to other Star carriers.
There is also an interline hub at Heathrow with some of the smaller short
haul airlines feeding into the long haul services of all the major airlines
without needing to be members of an alliance. BA may be the dominant
airline and have the biggest hub at Heathrow but when you compare it to the
position of (say) Lufthansa at Frankfurt or Munich it's a different traffic
mix and when you consider something like the United hub in Denver you're in
a completely different world.

It's almost possible to define Heathrow as schizophrenic and I'm not clear
whether we're reading the comments from the report correctly or not. I'm
still reading the report and that may clarify things for me. One thing I
am fairly clear on is that BA needs the connecting traffic that it hubs over
Heathrow. It's partly about being able to pull in a mix of currencies from
sales in different countries (their Treasury is quite sophisticated at
managing currencies), partly about being able to pull in higher fares by
connecting one flight (be it short or long) to a long haul and partly about
being able to serve cities that would otherwise not generate sufficient
traffic to warrant a flight to/from Heathrow. It's also about being able
to meet the needs of corporate customers who will have deals with BA on the
basis of providing traffic not just between a city and Heathrow but between
several city pairs which may be Heathrow or connecting over Heathrow.

"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message , at 18:29:52 on Wed, 18 Dec
2013, tim...... remarked:
It's about selling the highest priced fares to people who insist in
direct flights,

and the cheapest ones to people who book early

Completely orthogonal to the issues we are discussing.

No it's not

The only reason that the indirect foliage were cheaper was because I was
looking months ahead

Try a couple of days ahead and LH are no longer interesting in bribing pax
to fly via FRA (probably because the connecting flight is full)

Still digging I see

Sorry Roland

you cannot possibly infer that just because I disagree with you about the
success that a particular pricing policy has, that I do not understand the
principle involved

it is an utterly ludicrous conclusion to come to

tim


--
Roland Perry

In message , at 19:33:34 on Thu, 19
Dec 2013, tim...... remarked:
you cannot possibly infer that just because I disagree with you about
the success that a particular pricing policy has, that I do not
understand the principle involved

Everything you post suggests it. For example that latest comment that
"booking early to get a cheap fare" and "booking indirect routes to get
a cheap fare" are somehow the same thing. Both exist, and are largely
independent of each other. You can't argue against that proposition by
quoting an indirect booking made very late in the day, because it's the
lateness which sets the fare in that case.
--
Roland Perry

"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message , at 19:33:34 on Thu, 19 Dec
2013, tim...... remarked:
you cannot possibly infer that just because I disagree with you about the
success that a particular pricing policy has, that I do not understand the
principle involved

Everything you post suggests it. For example that latest comment that
"booking early to get a cheap fare" and "booking indirect routes to get a
cheap fare" are somehow the same thing.

No I didn't say they were the same thing

I said (OK I implied) that they were filling the same seats

Both exist, and are largely independent of each other.

Except that they ARE filling the same seats, so they can't be independent of
each other. As soon as all of the "cheap" early booked seat have gone I
wager you that the "cheap "indirect" seats will be full too (or vise versa)!


tim

"tim......" wrote in message
...

"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message , at 19:33:34 on Thu, 19 Dec
2013, tim...... remarked:
you cannot possibly infer that just because I disagree with you about the
success that a particular pricing policy has, that I do not understand
the principle involved

Everything you post suggests it. For example that latest comment that
"booking early to get a cheap fare" and "booking indirect routes to get a
cheap fare" are somehow the same thing.

No I didn't say they were the same thing

I said (OK I implied) that they were filling the same seats

Both exist, and are largely independent of each other.

Except that they ARE filling the same seats, so they can't be independent
of each other. As soon as all of the "cheap" early booked seat have gone
I wager you that the "cheap "indirect" seats will be full too (or vise
versa)!


tim


Sorry, no.

Not sure how true this story is but here we go....

A good few years ago an agency in Austin Texas regularly found he couldn't
book passengers on a specific AA flight to Dallas. Then, immediately after
failing to make a booking on that flight someone asked for a trip to New
York which happened to use the "full" flight as far as Dallas. With a
little experimentation the agent found he could book Austin/Dallas/New York
and then cancel the Dallas/New York ending up with what he actually wanted -
Austin/Dallas. It took AA a while to find out what was going on and a row
developed; I can't remember the outcome in terms of AA vs. Agency.

However, the technical result was what is now called "married flights". In
other words the Austin/Dallas and Dallas/New York flights are now stuck
together in such a way that if you book the connection you have to cancel
the whole connection, not just one of the two flights (either of them, you
can't cancel Austin/Dallas either).

It is therefore quite possible for the Austin/Dallas flight to show only
"expensive" seats while the Austin/Dallas/New York shows "cheap" seats.
What AA started is now an industry standard used by many airlines