New York-London/Paris is the graveyard of new airlines, especially those promising better service than the legacies: L'Avion, La Compagnie, MAXjet, OpenSkies, etc. I wish him luck, but it's going to be incredibly hard to fill A380s of all things profitably without a massive feeder network and plenty of whales for the front of the plane.
L'Avion was purchased by OpenSkies and was operating alright, pre-COVID. You're kinda misattributing the failure here from a worldwide unforeseen global pandemic to "bad business decisions".
MaxJET failed because they tried to price themselves nearer to a budget airline while offering business-class seating/experience. The low margins this offered forced them to close down when they couldn't adjust for fuel price fluctuations and salary increases. A closer analogy, but still not quite there.
La Compagnie still exists and operates their premium Newark<->Paris line.
> MaxJET failed because they tried to price themselves nearer to a budget airline while offering business-class seating/experience.
Which seems to be exact playbook that Global is trying out. Quoting TFA:
Global Airlines will be better than everybody else because they won’t skimp on the things that make flying fun — their A380s will have “communal areas”, first-class passengers will be chauffeured direct to the airport from their homes, they already have a partnership with Laurent-Perrier champagne — but their tickets won’t cost much more than those of their competitors.
He’s probably convinced that because $10,000 of Instagram ads resulted in something that is maybe profitable under that tech accounting scheme where nothing negative counts, $100,000,000 of ads will work just as well.
Anyway, flying New York to London too… that’s like flying New York to Vienna.
