Quote:
Originally Posted by gunnut
I see this as another Concorde, a symbol of pride but never turning a profit.
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I think that the analysts have gone too much down the "There can only be one successful business model" route and I am not actually convinced the aeroplanes are going to be fighting over the same customers.
Air traffic is going to continue growing for some time in all directions. The big hubs (both airlines and airports themselves) will want to shift more passengers with less flights. People want to go to more local airports, so do the carriers as well, however until the actual country demographics catch up I think both markets will grow in parallel.
We already have thousands of annoyed customers every day landing at "smaller more local" airports on cut-price flights and then finding themselves in the middle of nowhere and vowing never to do this again. Until these airports have something near them that people want to actually go to the market isn't mature enough for it to be the way people fly in the future.
The challenge for Boeing is to get its planes out the door, since the parallel growing markets could see the larger carriers redeploying their smaller craft for "local airports" and getting a smaller number of A380s to replace their hub traffic.
On the other hand, it's only the flag carriers that can afford new planes, and especially the A380.
It is interesting that Ryan Air, keen to go to anything cheap patch of tarmac, ordered 70 737s and its option was for a further 70 of the same.