Direct flights facilitate business. They facilitate business-to-business collaborations. I think anything that makes it easier to bring two areas together is a significant benefit to deepening relations and connections.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Airlines go in the long run at the competition to reason. For the passenger the competition is good, because each competitor tries to undercut the other one.
At American Airlines, we have built a business around the love of travel that has lasted three quarters of a century. And I'm pretty sure we're just getting started.
When I fly to European destinations, I always fly economy; I don't fly business class - there is no advantage apart from a few more inches of room.
Airlines are interesting. They not only favor celebrities, they court them.
When we're touring America or Europe, we use our own plane and a great advantage of that is it cuts out an awful lot of time checking in. You literally drive up to the plane, get on and then drive off at the other end.
But a lot of that kind of work is done pre-flight, coordinating efforts with the flight directors and the ground teams, and figuring out how you're going to operate together.
The alliance with air Berlin is attractive for me. I can use the whole sales network of the air Berlin and 24 percent of my own airline at air Berlin sold.
I think airlines have been very much parrots. They'll just follow what everyone else is doing. Why change a model that they're happy in? And it takes someone like myself or Richard Branson who comes from outside the industry to say, 'Hey, let's try something new.'
Aviation is for the common man. My goal is to enable everyone to fly. It shouldn't be only for the rich.
The airline business is the biggest team sport in the world. When you're all consumed with fighting among yourselves, your opponents can run over you every day.