Madrid appears to be on its way out.
I don't know what you know about airlines, but an 85 percent load factor would be very good; higher than the industry average for North America or Europe, and higher than Iberia's system-wide load fractorFirst off, 85% isn't that good, every time I flew British Airways, Lufthansa and even Swiss into and out of Boston in 2007 they were consistently full in all classes. Besides, if you look at the schedule, they are only flying 4 weekly flights for summer 2008 whereas summer 2007 was 5 weekly and that was obviously their first summer. Clearly the route has not matured as it should as the goal by then would naturally to be on a daily schedule. I also am seeing a triangular schedule for the month of February with them running the flights Madrid-Boston-Dulles-Madrid. This is of course the slow season, but every other major carrier in Boston maintains a daily direct schedule. I would like to see it stick around and I think five years ago, it would have been given the appropriate time to mature, but with costs as they are, there is no reason to run in the red for any extended period of time. With the size of the Boston-Europe market(4th largest in the US behind NY, LA and Chicago) it should be able to work better than it is on the connections to Spain, Portugal and southern France alone.
I can't readily pull up O&D statistics from several databases that I tried, but Dulles has about 20 percent more international passengers than does Logan. But if Dulles has that low a market share for across the pond, the load factors to/from Europe must be abysmal.I should have followed that 85% remark up with saying that going on load alone is a poor means of comparison as it does not tell us what the fares are and what the load factor is per class and more over, what percentage of the forward cabin is upgrades. Dulles isn't even close to Boston in terms of Europe-bound passengers, see below.
Top U.S.-Europe O & D markets per Airliners.net, by market share
1. New York-JFK 17.9%
2. Newark 8.3%
3. Los Angeles 6.9%
4. Chicago 5.7%
5. Boston 5.5%
6. San Francisco 5.4%
7. Miami 4.4%
8. Washington-Dulles 3.8%
9. Orlando 3.8%
10. Las Vegas 2.4%
Technically Logan is #5, but let's face it, 90% of Newark's passengers come from metro NY so for my comparison, I counted them as one.
Today, departing non-stop from Dulles, there are:
6 flights to Heathrow
4 flights to Frankfurt
3 flights to Paris
2 flights to Amsterdam
2 flights to Munich
1 flight to Brussels
1 flight to Copenhagen
1 flight to Rome
1 flight to Dublin
1 flight to Zurich
I'm not an airline buff, so I'm not quesitoning the number of flights, but I love parsing statistics, so...
Something the number of flights does not show is how many of them are at full capacity. For all the numbers show, the three flights to Paris could be Luthansa, 75% full, Delta, 85% full, Air France, 95% full. Could the number of flights reflect, to a degree, an airline's desire to maintain a toe-hold in a particular market or to keep a particular route even if it's not the most profitable or highest in demand?
There's a pretty good chance that either Lufthansa, BA, or AF/KLM will acquire Iberia this year.As far as the Iberia comments. I have to say, I made the mistake of flying Iberia to Madrid once (From Logan)and it was horrible. Uncomfortable, Unfriendly and it certainly wasn't 100% full. A fluke, right? no... my return trip was equally as bad. When my sister's friend from Madrid came out to spend some time with her, she flew Iberia and complained about the poor service and lack of comfort as well (and she is all of 4 foot 9) and commented on the lack of passengers.
I would say that it's perfectly reasonable to think that that Airline may leave the city. My last two trips out to Madrid I booked on Lufthansa via Frankfurt and even that was much better. In my brief international travel experiences (Madras, India 2 times on British Airways via Heathrow, Amsterdam once, on Singapore Airlines out of Newark, Germany once, Frankfurt with Lufthansa and Madrid three times once on Iberia and twice with Lufthansa via Frankfurt) Nothing has been comparably as bad as Iberia, and from what i hear, I'm not alone.
I bet those people are choosing different routes (Hell, my mother goes down to JFK to take Delta to Madrid instead of Iberia), because any other European trip to/from Logan has been full in my experience.
A better gauge is what type of planes are being flown: the larger the plane the more passengers likely being flown over a particular segment on any day.
For today's flights from Dulles to Heathrow, the planes are: one 767, 4 777s, one 747-400, and one 340-600. The four flights to Frankfurt consist of one 747-400, 2 777s, and one 767. To Paris, all three flights are 777s. All the planes, except for the 767s, will seat 300+ passengers.
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If the O&D numbers do not include passengers connecting, or passengers flying through to a further destination on the same flight number, e.g., CDG>IAD>SFO on UA 123, then Boston would have more O&D than Dulles because it is less of a hub.
I understand what you are trying to say, but I am skeptical that there are so many people flying between Boston and Europe in business class and first class that you could even quarter fill the front end of multiple flights flying the same route with full-fare passengers. (I just priced a RT first class ticket LHR-BOS-LHR (Jan 18/Jan22) and the cost was about $16,000.)Another way to gauge is the layout of the plane. For example BA sends 3 x daily flights LHR-BOS-LHR in their premium 4 class layout. On the other hand a city like MCO gets daily BA service in a 2 class layout. MCO is a high tourist, lower yielding market while BOS is a more business higher yield market.
So in essence, an airline say Lufthansa can do 4 x daily FRA-BOS flights with a premium 3 class 346 and at the same time do 6 x daily FRA-MCO in a high density 744 layout in 2 classes and BOS would be the better yielding station.
For those of us who have not made the memorization of air traffic control codes our favorite hobby, MCO is Orlando. And by the way, the planes Orlando gets are 3 class, Biz, Econ+ and Econ.
I understand what you are trying to say, but I am skeptical that there are so many people flying between Boston and Europe in business class and first class that you could even quarter fill the front end of multiple flights flying the same route with full-fare passengers. (I just priced a RT first class ticket LHR-BOS-LHR (Jan 18/Jan22) and the cost was about $16,000.)
As for Orlando (McCoy), Virgin runs two 747s and BA runs a single 777 from Gatwick, and Lufthansa runs a single A-330 from Frankfurt.
European airlines and American Airlines has no problem filling up front (first and business classes) on flights out of Boston as evident by the premium configurations Boston sees. Remember, the flights offered by British Airways or Alitalia cater not just to Boston-Europe, but also Boston-Africa and Boston- Middle East. That is a lot of traffic, over 4 million people a year.
Boston is a large business market and business travelers pay more than the Johnson family vacationing in Rome for a week. Boston also is the premier international gateway for New England, look at it as a smaller version of Atlanta. But in Atlanta's case the nearest airport that offers Trans Atlantic ops in a 4 plus hour ride to Charlotte and even then, a few daily flights is not worth while where is New England in most cases JFK or Newark is within a 3.5 hour ride.