Airline Competition Quotes

The reality is the three gulf carriers - Emirates, Qatar and Etihad - are forces with which to be reckoned. Strategic investments by co-operative governments have given them large fleets and huge airports. They have created a flourishing environment while established carriers languish.

The fact is Qatar, Etihad, Emirates, Singapore, Garuda, all of the three Chinese airlines, Air New Zealand - the fact is that international aviation relies very much upon agreements between nation-states, and it is not an area in which you have free market operations.

Because it's cheaper and easier to fly than ever before, air travel is becoming democratized.

[Commenting on airline deregulation:] I don't think you can ask the free market to make sure that airplanes are working or that the cockpit crew is rested.

The air transportation system consists of three components: Airports, Air Traffic Control, and airlines. The three work together like a dysfunctional family.

I had opposed the Jet-Etihad FDI arrangement on the ground of the disproportionate share of airspace given to Etihad, which is against the interest of domestic passenger traffic and also against national interest.

A lot of airlines have come and gone.

In the late 1960s, Ontario Airport was a throwback to a bygone era. Located 35 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, the airport served only two carriers, Western and Bonanza. Passengers could catch regional flights to San Francisco, Sacramento, Las Vegas, Palm Springs, Phoenix and Los Angeles, and that was about it.

First, we have to lower our costs to levels that are more competitive. This will prevent the lower-cost airlines from pushing us out of the markets we want to serve. We've made great progress on this front, but we need to keep pushing.

The airline industry has been closely watching, monitoring, exactly what the rail industry has done.

Our policy is not to discourage the private sector, but to see that Air India plays the role of flagship in the industry. In the transport sector, Air India is the 'fate of India' and all efforts will be made to restore its past glory.

When a major airline goes on a route that a new entrant has gone into, reduces fares, increases capacity, and then when the new entrant goes off, they leave the route, that's not competition.

Airlines are one of the last things to be liberalized.

Historically, Heathrow has been something of a joke, outweighed by its excellent connections. We have to aspire to having an airport at Heathrow with two runways which is a world-class airport. It's a big challenge.

I decided there must be room for another airline when I spent two days trying to get through to People Express.

International carriers need to be given greater role in our skies on all routes like several other large countries to make our aviation industry more efficient and competitive and prevent arbitrary pricing by monopolies.

If it's torture flying one airline and [yours] is a pleasant experience, it certainly helps your revenue.

If we want to preserve Heathrow's hub status, we need to stop clogging it up with point-to-point flights to places such as Cyprus and Greece, which between them account for 87 weekly flights, and contribute nothing to overall connectivity.

Look, I think that when we started Virgin Atlantic 30 years ago, we had one 747 competing with the airlines that had an average of 300 planes each. Every single one of those have gone bankrupt because they didn't have customer service. They had might, but they didn't have customer service, so customer service is everything in the end.

As more airlines consolidated and grew larger and more focused on the bottom line, flying in the U.S. became an awful experience. Despite moves to block our airline from flying, Virgin America began service in August 2007 - with the goal of making flying good again.

If Congress wants to reform our nation's air traffic control system, it must do so without creating new mandatory user fees and additional layers of regulatory bureaucracy.

When I started working on Southwest Airlines, I kid you not, only people flying on business and very wealthy people ever flew.

There is a serious effort going on by private airlines such as Spicejet and Vistara to benefit from this dismemberment of Jet Airways.

I really see low-fare carriers, quality low-fare carriers anyway, continuing to become more and more popular.

In Germany air became generally accepted Berlin in this area. It operated with 45 airplanes within the Low Cost range from Germany, and is one the most successful carriers in Europe.