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Travel Forum / Travel Types / Air Travel / May 2008Stansted transatlantic jinx strikes again
Reports suggest that American Airlines is pulling out of the Stansted-New York route after just nine months. The carrier is apparently withdrawing daily flights launched last October on July 2nd. That's a bit sudden! What happens to people with tickets booked more than a month in advance?? I think this is the third time (unlucky) that a US carrier has come unstuck operating from Stansted, and that's not including the failed "Business Class only" operations.  SignatureRoland Perry >Reports suggest that American Airlines is pulling out of the >Stansted-New York route after just nine months. The carrier is >apparently withdrawing daily flights launched last October on July 2nd. > >That's a bit sudden! What happens to people with tickets booked more >than a month in advance?? I'd imagine they will reroute them onto their services from Gatwick or LHR, or perhaps BA's as a codeshare? Neil SignatureNeil Williams Put my first name before the at to reply. >>Reports suggest that American Airlines is pulling out of the >>Stansted-New York route after just nine months. The carrier is [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] >I'd imagine they will reroute them onto their services from Gatwick or >LHR, or perhaps BA's as a codeshare? If they are giving more than two weeks notice I think they can just do a refund. Meanwhile, I had a KLM flight cancelled recently (on the day), resulting in a delay that should have triggered compensation. They finally got around to saying the flight was "cancelled as a result of a flight safety shortcoming, which was wholly unforeseeable by KLM and was unavoidable ... In line with Regulation 261/2004, and our General Conditions of Carriage, we are unable to offer you cancellation compensation on this occasion." This is the so-called "extraordinary circumstances" clause. And my observation is that if the "safety" issue was a broken plane, then it's extraordinary that they couldn't find a replacement plane at Schiphol of all places (where the cancellation of the outbound plane, which was to become my flight back to Schiphol, took place). They were able to contact me with a new itinerary both by phone and email at 3.15pm local time, which is exactly the time the flight was scheduled to leave Schiphol. Is that a co-incidence, or just the point at which they decided the plane was broken beyond repair with no replacement possible? According to flightstats.com this flight (KL1829/1830) was cancelled twice this month (one of which would have been my flight). Does that indicate an "extraordinary" degree of unreliability for the plane? SignatureRoland Perry > I think this is the third time (unlucky) that a US carrier has come > unstuck operating from Stansted, and that's not including the failed > "Business Class only" operations. And now the Luton curse has (sadly, fairly predictably) struck - Silverjet has ceased all operations. Neil In message <443c954a-a03b-4079-b988-32673d3aeabc@s50g2000hsb.googlegroups.com>, at 01:51:19 on Fri, 30 May 2008, Neil Williams <pacer142@gmail.com> remarked: >> I think this is the third time (unlucky) that a US carrier has come >> unstuck operating from Stansted, and that's not including the failed >> "Business Class only" operations. > >And now the Luton curse has (sadly, fairly predictably) struck - >Silverjet has ceased all operations. I'm not sure that Luton has been cursed with on/off [scheduled] Transatlantic flights quite as much as Stansted (for at least a decade now). You can now be forgiven for predicting that a downturn in the transatlantic market will occur about a year after any scheduled carrier starts operating from there! The Silverjet saga has been unfolding for some time now, with half a dozen "our new funding is just around the corner" stories in the past week or two. The problem is, once people think you are going to cease operations, and therefore fail to book with you, then it's a bit of a slippery slope :( SignatureRoland Perry |
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