On my recent trip to Europe I flew non-stop from Seattle to London. But my destination was actually Geneva, so I had to make a connection at Heathrow Airport.
Do you think that if there was a non-stop option of Seattle to Geneva I would have taken that rather than have to connect in London? Of course I would! That would have saved me 2 or 3 hours, the hassle of connecting, and a bus ride at Heathrow.
That's the point of "point to point" travel. Seattle to Geneva. Miami to Taipei. That's what people want. Not to have to schlep through huge hub airports.
If I were to ask anyone at Boeing the difference between the strategies of itself and Airbus, I'd guess they'd say that Boeing believes in point to point transport, taking people exactly where they'd like to go. Whereas Airbus believes in large transport to major hubs with smaller planes carrying passengers to less-major destinations.
This may seem like an obvious question, but it hasn't been answered on the blog yet. What stops Airbus aircraft flying point to point also? It's made to sound like Boeing's are the only aircraft capable of flying "P2P." I can't quite see how Boeing can justify this to be such a unique selling point.
Chris B.
A good comment. And the short answer is, yes, Airbus can do it too. In fact Airbus does have airplane models that airlines use to fly point to point. For instance, Singapore Airlines flies an A340-500 from SIN to LAX, an ultra long-range flight.
So, the issue is not that Boeing has the only airplanes that can fly point to point. But an important thing to remember is that while Airbus can do it, Boeing airplanes are the ones that are optimized for it. They're more efficient and more economical.
Another big difference is that Boeing sees non-stop, point to point travel growing over the next 20 years, and our product strategy has been clearly focused on helping airlines evolve and advance accordingly.
Airbus thinks the trend is going to shift to larger airplanes flying hub to hub, meaning passengers connecting one or more times to complete their journeys.
So Airbus is selling its super-big A380 and trying to convince airlines that they need these very large airplanes. But we see this as a small market. And the world has been evolving away from that outdated travel model for some time.
It's just not today's - or tomorrow's - reality.
Couldn't help noticing that the trend toward point to point travel got a lot of attention in a New York Times article on May 4: "In Airline Shift, More Nonstops Make Schedule." How significant does the Times think this trend is?
This movement could turn out to be one of the biggest shifts in the industry since it first adopted the hub-and-spoke approach after deregulation in the late 1970's. Already, major airlines have added 134 nonstop routes in the last year, and flights promise to be cheaper than they have been in the past.
In the article, Southwest Airlines' CEO Gary Kelly pretty much sums it up: "Customers want non-stop flights."
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