News and notes from around the interweb:
- Turkish strongman Recep Erdoğan is banning Uber in Turkey.
“This thing called Uber emerged. That business is finished. That does not exist anymore,” he said in a speech in Istanbul late on Friday.
“We have our taxi system. Where does this (Uber) come from? It is used in Europe, I do not care about that. We will decide by ourselves,”
- American CEO Doug Parker’s disinterest in flying his own new standard domestic product has been picked up by the Financial Times: Wise business leaders test their own products I think the message though from American is that the product itself isn’t viewed as super important to the business.
- American is starting Dallas Fort Worth – Buffalo service in December which is only notable because American explained to employees in February why they wouldn’t fly Dallas – Buffalo.
The next question was “why not fly to more northeast markets from DFW” like Buffalo? And the answer is that longer flights take more aircraft time, so trade off with multiple frequencies to closer destinations. You need to be able to earn more revenue off of a longer distance flight to not only cover its higher cost, but to cover the opportunity cost of what else you could do with that aircraft.
Taken together with American not yet scheduling lie flat 757s on transcons it seems that anything Vasu Raja says is going to happen in scheduling, believe the opposite.
- American’s Zurich – Philadelphia flight will arrive at a remote stand going forward and this may be extended to other international arrivals in the future. Miserable.
Dulles-style mobile lounges will take arriving Zurich passengers to passport control - Italy is investigating Alitalia and Etihad executives over the airline’s bankruptcy as opposed to the most likely scenario that of course it’s bankrupt, again, because it’s Alitalia.
- 50 Ways to Avoid the Chaos That Crippled Kennedy Airport
now THAT’S called completely surrendering the ZRH premium market for anyone not actually bound for PHL. they can claim it’s a congestion issue but it’s also their concscious decision to sacrifice the ZRH jetbridge out of all the candidates.
So Turkey is not part of Europe? Well, that permanently solves the question of EU membership.
Yep, agree 100% with @henry LAX on that – especially when considering how AA admitted earlier this year that it puts its least desirable aircraft on low priority routes (e.g., dilapidated 767s in Latin America).
Of course, it doesn’t hurt that ZRH is a monopolized nonstop international route for AA at PHL, whereas its other international routes have, or could face competition that ZRH likely will never have…
As always, competition, or the threat thereof, makes a difference in determining the quality – or the lack thereof – of any products being sold…
For were Swiss to suddenly announce nonstop service to/from PHL with flights that docked at the gate using jetways, I bet we’d see a press release from AA within hours announcing a change of plan to ditch the mobile lounges (aka buses) real fast… 😉
Separately, FYI:
The FT article in the link provided is behind a paywall…
Turkey has bigger problems than Erdogan banning Uber–namely Erdogan himself.
Parker ain’t no Herb Kelleher…
So is AA too cheap to pay for improvements at PHL?
Turkey is partly in Europe and partly in Asia.
I’m sure a lot of the banking trade that shuttles between New York and Zurich will be perfectly willing to fly through Filthadelphia and put up with that crap. Sometimes (oftentimes!) you have to wonder what AA management is smoking.
Give it rest already on my flying habits. My job is to sit on my A$$ and think about ways to degrade the product and raise revenue