Sunday, September 9, 2007

Flight of Fancy

According to the Daily Telegraph, Silverjet, the business-only airline, wants to break into the Heathrow to New York market through a link with a major European carrier. Currently they operate two aircraft from Luton airport, but are understood to have consulted advisers about selling itself to either Air France or Lufthansa in order to facilitate a move to Heathrow to grab a share of Britain's most profitable aviation route.

According to a source "Their plan seems to be to enter into some kind of agreement, either sale or joint venture, with an airline that has landing slots at Heathrow in order to operate business class only flights from the airport." This will allow them to compete with both BA and Virgin but you have to ask why would a European airline want to take connecting passengers from their home market via London. As a first rule of business travel or any travel for that matter, always try and avoid connecting flights. The premise of the Silverjet product is all about direct flights.

It’s a flight of fancy for Silverjet and one that shows how tough it is for these single class carriers to make it work. Prediction, one of them will go to the wall within a year.

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