CAPA Airlines in Transition. How FSCs can regain short haul share from LCCs Part 1: at the coal face

From the time when the penny finally dropped for full service airlines - that LCCs were not in fact going away - full service airlines have sought many ways, usually without great success, to counter the erosion of their short haul operations by the new entrant, lower-cost, specialist point-to-point airlines. The impact has been not only on their regional operations, but usually also on their global network, since short haul services feed into their hubs, fattening long haul loads.

This was more or less tolerable while the competition on long haul transferring over their hub was stable and their alliances, global and bilateral, were able to protect them. Then the super connectors (Gulf airlines and Turkish) came along disturbing the comfortable equilibrium, and in turn placing renewed importance on short haul.

At the CAPA Airlines in Transition conference in Dublin on 10 and 11-Mar-2016, a "Board" under the chairmanship of Professor Rigas Doganis considered how a full service airline's board should respond to the loss of short haul share. Their deliberations were then voted on by delegates. This is the first part of two reports on the issues raised.