'Fly First' from the UK

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20 years 5 months

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[source-AW]

An experienced UK transport executive is behind a project to bring the first all-Business Class scheduled airline to the UK. Hamish Taylor, the former Eurostar and British Airways executive, has established a strong management team for the project, which he hopes can raise the necessary funds to launch services before the end of the year.
Fly first Airlines plans to operate 48-seat aircraft, such as the long-range variants of the Airbus A319 or Boeing 737, on Transatlantic services to New York. The management team has approached a number of equity firms and is confident that financial backing for the project will be secured by the end of the second quater, enabling services to commence at the end of 2005.

:( :( personally I can't see this being a success as VS and BA aswell as the American airlines such as AA, CO, DL, NW, UAL, US all operate First class...........comments.?

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Good luck to them, but I'm not optimistic.

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20 years 9 months

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I think for this sort of thing to be a sucess you need to have the convinenance of a bizjet. I.e. no turn up 2 hours before for checkin, perhaps operate from somewhere like Northolt or Farnborough with good business terminals. Lets face it if you are going to pay several thousand for a business only flight you don't want to have to fight Joe public at the airport.
Lufthansa allready operate A319BJ's across the pond from hamburg I think.

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24 years 2 months

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Lufthansa have been doing this a for a few years now, all flights operated by PrivatAir and I understand its been a great success from the smaller airports. The LH business only flights operate from DUS, MUC & HAM I believe and operate into EWR, ORD & JFK. They have used a mixture of 737BBJ and A319CJ's on the routes.

The latest sign up to this scheme (before they were bought out) was Swiss who have just signed a deal with PrivatAir to operate a similar route, can't remember which Swiss base its departing from though.

Really not sure how it will go down in the UK, but I would have thought there would be more opportunity and less competition from a regional airport rather than a London Airport with the big carriers and their trimmings (frequent flyer clubs, alliances etc).

Best of luck to them anyway.

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24 years 2 months

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I think for this sort of thing to be a sucess you need to have the convinenance of a bizjet. I.e. no turn up 2 hours before for checkin, perhaps operate from somewhere like Northolt or Farnborough with good business terminals. Lets face it if you are going to pay several thousand for a business only flight you don't want to have to fight Joe public at the airport.
Lufthansa allready operate A319BJ's across the pond from hamburg I think.
AF has a similar service. ( I'm not sure it's already in service)

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24 years 2 months

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Hasn't this sort of thing been proposed a couple of times already in the UK?

What happened to Norman Tebbit and his Blue Fox airlines, using exec configured 757's ?

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AF has a similar service. ( I'm not sure it's already in service)

I think there is a single A319CJ on route to Riyadh...can't clarify this though.

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19 years 8 months

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AF has a similar service. ( I'm not sure it's already in service)

Yes it is... Sort of! Four low density A319s operating to the Gulf and some selected African destinations, pretty much all of them in oil-related markets.

Andy

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19 years 8 months

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personally I can't see this being a success as VS and BA aswell as the American airlines such as AA, CO, DL, NW, UAL, US all operate First class...........comments.?

It isn't a first class solution, even though the name suggests that. If you read what you've quoted from AW, its a business class product.

It will work from MAN, BHX, perhaps NCL and maybe even from Scotland to destinations not served by the full-sized airlines. LH do DUS-EWR, MUC-EWR and DUS-ORD, whilst Swiss are going for ZRH-EWR and Air France do the oil-sector services - all routes where they could have operated bigger airplanes but chose to focus on just the premium J-class traffic. If they decide to go head-to-head on routes like LHR-JFK it won't work as there's already too much capacity and more importantly frequency in such markets.

Andy

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Jockland.... how dare you.. you sassenach ;)

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:confused: Jockland :confused:

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:confused: Jockland :confused:

It's a town in the USA populated by high school sports wannabees. :D :D :D

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Dunno what you're talking about ;)

A

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It's a town in the USA populated by high school sports wannabees. :D :D :D

ah.

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AO, do you honestly think thats what Jockland is?

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AO, do you honestly think thats what Jockland is?

But he'd be right, wouldn't he? :diablo:

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Errrrr...... Yes..... Of course ;)

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ok...I'm leaving this thread alone as I am very confused...