Europe's interesting North-South divide in terms of its airlines

**Tooting Carmen** · 07-06-2019, 05:24 PM

What is very intriguing and noticeable is how (unless you count Turkish Airlines as European, which I do not) the European airlines with by far the biggest range of international/intercontinental destinations are British Airways, Air France, KLM and Lufthansa. By contrast, despite their strategic locations in Europe, the major airlines of Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece are much more limited in their scope. TAP Portugal, Iberia and Air Europa only really focus on Portuguese and Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America and Africa, while ignoring most of the rest of the world. What's more, Alitalia's range of destinations is very spotty and haphazard, while since the collapse and restructuring a decade ago of Olympic Airways, no Greek airline even offers flights outside Europe and the Middle East anymore. What explains this disparity?

**The Lawspeaker** · 07-11-2019, 09:43 PM

Laziness. The unwillingness to reach for the stars and a lack of an entrepreneurial spirit. Even Air France now just tries to squeeze and milk KLM by letting them do all the hard work for them.

**Tooting Carmen** · 07-11-2019, 09:46 PM

Originally Posted by The Lawspeaker

Even Air France now just tries to squeeze and milk KLM by letting them do all the hard work for them.

What do you mean?

**alnortedelsur** · 07-11-2019, 09:52 PM

Originally Posted by Tooting Carmen

What is very intriguing and noticeable is how (unless you count Turkish Airlines as European, which I do not) the European airlines with by far the biggest range of international/intercontinental destinations are British Airways, Air France, KLM and Lufthansa. By contrast, despite their strategic locations in Europe, the major airlines of Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece are much more limited in their scope. TAP Portugal, Iberia and Air Europa only really focus on Portuguese and Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America and Africa, while ignoring most of the rest of the world. What's more, Alitalia's range of destinations is very spotty and haphazard, while since the collapse and restructuring a decade ago of Olympic Airways, no Greek airline even offers flights outside Europe and the Middle East anymore. What explains this disparity?

Iberia covers US too. I have flown between Spain and US in Iberia.

**Tooting Carmen** · 07-11-2019, 09:54 PM

Originally Posted by alnortedelsur

Iberia covers US too. I have flown between Spain and US in Iberia.

Yes, but only a handful of cities. Nothing like the number of US cities that the aforementioned Northern Euro airlines cover. Nor does it fly to Canada. More generally, Iberia doesn't even fly to India, and only fairly recently introduced flights to China and Japan due to campaigning from Spanish businesspeople.

**The Lawspeaker** · 07-11-2019, 09:56 PM

Originally Posted by Tooting Carmen

What do you mean?

Enjoy the saga:
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2019/03/01...greep-a3869717
https://www.rtlz.nl/beurs/artikel/41...air-france-klm

And more of such going back at least 10 years.

**Tooting Carmen** · 07-11-2019, 09:57 PM

Originally Posted by The Lawspeaker

Enjoy the saga:
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2019/03/01...greep-a3869717
https://www.rtlz.nl/beurs/artikel/41...air-france-klm

And more of such going back at least 10 years.

Air France covers more places in the Americas and Africa, while KLM covers more places in the Middle East and Asia. Surely they balance each other out?

**The Lawspeaker** · 07-11-2019, 10:00 PM

Originally Posted by Tooting Carmen

Air France covers more places in the Americas and Africa, while KLM covers more places in the Middle East and Asia. Surely they balance each other out?

That's what they thought when they teamed up. In reality, Air France has been trying to take connections away from KLM and bring them to Paris. At the end of the day, the Dutch government was forced to intervene and the Dutch public opinion against Air France is currently very sour. Most people on the street would actually prefer nationalisation over a even one more day of Air France.

**Westbrook** · 07-11-2019, 10:03 PM

Airline Nordicism. Now we have officially seen it all.

**♥ Lily ♥** · 07-11-2019, 10:12 PM

Pity that British Airways won't sell their supersonic Concorde planes to their rival Virgin to run them.

The planes are being left to gather dust in an aviation museum.

Mind you, the flights were expensive and some people took their life savings to be able to fly on British Airways Concorde. The rich and famous liked travelling on Concorde.

These beautiful planes travelled faster than the speed of sound with her spectacular and luxurious British Rolls Royce engines, (which are also used in luxurious Aston Martin James Bond cars (Prince Charles also owns an Aston Martin) and the Queen's Rolls Royce cars. The presigious engines are still handmade in Derby - they're very proud in Derby of their association with the elite Rolls Royce engines.)

0:57

When I was a child, I remember people used to get so excited whenever British Airways Concorde was due to fly overhead, and we'd stand outside in our gardens and wait to see her fly over.

We used to see her fly overhead like a large elegant swan... and then after she'd gone - a thunderous sonic 'boom' sound would suddenly be heard (like thunder hitting the ground) as she was faster than the speed of sound.

Concorde provided superfast flights between Heathrow and JFK.

Anyway, back on-topic - Heathrow has the world's busiest airspace and it's amazing how they manage to neatly choreograph all the planes constantly flying overhead in the skies here as they're flying into Heathrow in spiral and circular routes.

London is served by six international airports and several smaller airports. Together, they make the busiest airport system in the world by passenger numbers and the second-busiest by aircraft movements. In 2016, the six airports handled a total of 163,231,321 passengers.

I watched an interesting documentary several years ago about the unique choreography which is used by the Air Traffic Control staff at Heathrow, but I can't find the video.

Also there's a monorail system at Gatwick... and we have personal driverless pods to transport passengers at Heathrow. These driverless pods are being tested in Milton Keynes as the govenment has plans to expand them to cities across the U.K.

The British Skylon is planned to be twice the speed of sound, faster than Concorde, will provide superfast flights to Australia, etc, and will also be environmentally-friendly too.