The reason British Airways and Virgin are so profitable is they enjoy slot protection at LHR. Since these two fly largely long haul international routes I find it hard to argue how bad the thes e routes can be. Is UA just charging so much less for Club and First then BA & VS that they loose money to LHR?
please - star is not one of the "biggest" reasons for united's financial mess. Um hello - goodwin, contrat 2000, avolar, etc.
i don't know all the details regarding star - but if united turns an international route over to a star partner - they still provide service via star and get revenue. any international routes abondoned were not profitable.
1. I never said that Star membership was a factor in United's financial collapse - however, I DID state that United suffered (and continues to suffer) financially from the devolution of a significant portion of its long-haul flying to other Star Alliance carriers, especially when United continues to operate nearly 100 jumbo jets (744s/777s).
2. When a route is turned over to a codeshare partner, unless terms to the contrary are negotiated, United merely receives an administrative fee from the codeshare partner for booking the ticket. The codeshare airline keeps all of the revenue as they are providing the actual service. Therefore, airlines have an incentive to operate as much service on their own metal as possible.
I would have to think that if one region of the world were significantly more loss producing than another, you would see UAL do something about it. Case in point is South America. a MIA hub has not worked out as well for UAL as it did for AMR... Therefore you see UAL moving its South American resources to IAD and ORD, and Star partner Varig gets to worry about MIA-Brazil.
