Originally posted by Thrawn
Hey beet1e, BA was given a monopoly over routes by your government.
DO...YOU...UNDERSTAND...THIS?
DO...YOU...WANT...TO...ARGUE. ..THE...POINT...?
Let's go over this once more.
You seized upon the example of British Airways operating the Go airline at below cost as a means of driving away competition from easyJet as the result of a "socialist monopoly". As I have already pointed out, this is bollocks - on three counts: [list=1]
- British Airways was privatised in 1987, and had therefore been a private company for about 8 years before easyJet started up in 1995;
- The unfair practices adopted by BA were not driven by a "socialist monopoly". They started an airline in direct competition with easyJet, which they operated at below cost, and lost £22m in the first year.
- The government in power when British Airways was privatised in 1987 was the Thatcher administration, which was anything but socialist.
Now, I am saying that I don't know of any routes being denied to any other British airline. In the case of British Midland, their home base was then and is now East Midlands, and they operated flights to destinations like Jersey and the Isle of Man. These routes were probably of no interest to BA anyway. BA was formed out of BOAC and BEA in 1976. One of the most popular routes for holidaymakers heading out to the Costa Brava in Spain in those days was Gatwick-Barcelona. And I can tell you now that British Airways did not have a monopoly on this route. As a matter of fact I flew from Gatwick to Barcelona myself in 1976 on another airline called DanAir London. So my question to you is this: Given that this
key route was NOT restricted to British Airways and NOT barred to other British carriers, then please do tell me which routes were.
One thing you might want to consider is that a holiday tour company might also own the airline. For example, Thomson Holidays owns Britannia Airways, so if you see a Britannia aircraft (757/767) over the skies of Europe, its passengers are either off on a Thomson's holiday or returning home from one. No restrictions, because as far as I am aware, no British government has ever tried to get into the holiday business.
RyainAir? I'll fly RyanAir and have done to places like Genoa, Dublin and La Rochelle. But I'm not that keen on RyanAir. The only consideration for flying them is price. A lot of their aircraft look old, worn and tatty, and they try to make up mileage by charging exorbitant amounts for refreshments. I think the cost of a basic sandwich was around £4.
