PavlovsDog wrote:LAX772LR wrote:I believe LON is the largest European destination for Portlanders. I feel like the PDX - Europe market is large enough for two full service, network carries. The business market from Portland to Europe is probably the primary opportunity for BA. Sure DL to LHR is a full-service carrier but they don't fly daily and have limited connections at either end. BA can offer so many destinations from LHR that would be very appealing to a lot of travelers. The other two competitors to Europe are Icelandair and Condor. I would classify both as economy focussed airlines. Neither have a good business class nor premium economy.BoeingGuy wrote:I'm surprised at no BA PDX-LHR.
Why?
(1) PDX-LHR is in no way a particularly large LON market, (2) it already has a full-service airline offering the LHR route nonstop, and (3) Portland also has multiple other European nonstops which would compete against it for connections.
It's not to say that BA would never consider the route, but being the 4th-wheel to a secondary market that already has both strong connection and nonstop competition--- likely isn't high on BA's priority list.
One of the problems with long-haul PDX service is that SEA is just a 2.5 to 3 hour drive away. And even at that, AS/QX has hopper flights from PDX to SEA making for a very easy one-stop connection opportunity. If BA started PDX-LHR, one of their two SEA-LHR flights would probably have to get axed in order for it to work, which isn't likely to happen because SEA is a larger market anyway...
I also heard that BA's new LHR-PIT flight was started due to financial incentives from the airport authorities, so I bet that PDX would have to put up a lot of money on the table in order to recruit them.