All-business class North Atlantic airlines: Dreamjet seeks to avoid L'Avion's Paris-NYC nightmare

The North Atlantic and Europe are suffering a fall in their share of world premium traffic revenues. Moreover, the North Atlantic market has consolidated in recent years, to be dominated by the immunised joint ventures within the three global alliances (plus the new Delta-Virgin Atlantic JV).

So why are two new European all-business class transatlantic services currently planning to enter this market? It may be possible for a differentiated product, tapping into a defensible and large enough sector of this market, to succeed if its business plan is well devised and well executed. However, history is not attractive for a new entrant and previous attempts, before the global financial crisis, saw the rise and fall of Eos Airlines, MAXjet, Sliverjet and L'Avion.

In this first of two reports, we review the defunct all-business class transatlantic airlines and the all-business class services of existing network carriers. We also look at the business model proposed by Dreamjet, which plans to operate between Paris and New York this year. In part two, we will consider Odyssey Airlines, which plans to start up from London City to New York in 2016.