...well, fairly lamented. I had a sorta-kinda good experience with Zoom and I knew deep down the whole thing was too good to be true. Anyway, the show's over. Zoom are blaming fuel costs and the US economy - but I'm sceptical as to whether they'd have made it long-term anyway.
A couple of thoughts. Zoom, which was as low-cost as it gets for a long-haul operation, was obviously highly unlike Silverjet, EOS and Maxjet - also no longer with us. They had one thing in common though: the North Atlantic.
It always looks so inviting. Insatiable demand, juicy premium-class profits, practically endless coach-class revenues - it must be possible to get a bit of it. But experience suggests otherwise.
If you want to know why, just look at who you're up against. BA, LH, AF, AA, UA etc, etc - you get the idea. They know every trick and have every advantage you can think of. Frankly it's terrifying.
In fact I think Zoom eventually came to the same conclusion. One of the last things it did in its dying days was to announce that it was getting out of London-New York next year to concentrate on other city pairs. Too little, too late.
Here's a prediction - bit of a soggy one - but for what it's worth: the first successful all-premium or long-haul loco (that's not an offshoot of one of the legacy carriers) will be somewhere other than on the North Atlantic.
It always looks so inviting. Insatiable demand, juicy premium-class profits, practically endless coach-class revenues - it must be possible to get a bit of it. But experience suggests otherwise.
If you want to know why, just look at who you're up against. BA, LH, AF, AA, UA etc, etc - you get the idea. They know every trick and have every advantage you can think of. Frankly it's terrifying.
In fact I think Zoom eventually came to the same conclusion. One of the last things it did in its dying days was to announce that it was getting out of London-New York next year to concentrate on other city pairs. Too little, too late.
Here's a prediction - bit of a soggy one - but for what it's worth: the first successful all-premium or long-haul loco (that's not an offshoot of one of the legacy carriers) will be somewhere other than on the North Atlantic.
Well - Oasis was an independent start up, low cost with both economy and a good business class product, flying Hong Kong to Europe and North America - and they failed too. And there was low cost Air Madrid, plying the South Atlantic, which failed rather spectacularly just before Christmas 2006. Maybe there is something between the all-service carriers and the charters to have sown up the long haul markets between them, and it is simply almost impossible to transport the pure short haul low cost model to long haul.