Can I step in to defend Simon Calder? Whilst I cannot comment on his grasp of economics, his knowledge of travel is second to none. I have heard him on radio phone-ins, and whatever question was asked of him anywhere in the world, he had been there and knew everyting there was to know (and more besides).
He's a very affable chap in person, and he's very media-friendly for quite a few reasons.
His angle tends to be quite mass-consumer, so he comes across well on radio and television, and the 'man who pays his own way' print media position is a successful one, too.
Indeed, his astuteness is aguably in positioning himself in a clever niche, but no-one person could possibly be an expert of every aspect of travel, and he really isn't. Indeed, in quite a few radio appearances, he can actually get things rather wrong, but usually realises that he's a bit out of his depth and drops a generic caveat in at the end of an answer as a get out of jail free card.
In the context of
@BahrainLad 's post, Mr. Calder is, I'm afraid, writing click-baity (and successfully-so) copy that is indeed nonsense, but drives traffic to The Independent and then gets picked up by other media outlets - some of whom may pay an appearance fee.
To be clear, there are possibly never any circumstances in which there are £59 easyJet flights from London to Geneva for socially-timed Saturday flights in the February half term peak peak ski season, and it's quite common in normal times to find easyJet charging £600, £700, £800 and more in for a one-way flight from London to a variety of destinations including Geneva, but also (for example) Nice when it's the Cannes Film Festival or the MIPIM property conference.
So, in the case of the article linked to by
@LNW-GW Joint , it's really not all that unusual to be able to find the fares that he was talking about, and especially not for the dates that Simon Calder was quoting.
On that basis,
@BahrainLad is quite right; airlines will pour capacity back in as soon as they can, and indeed that's one of the particular characteristics (and strengths) of shorthaul aviation over rail; that is to say that it's comparatively easy to open new routes, add frequencies, up-guage aircraft sizes etc., etc.
It's therefore really not at all relevant to the situation that Eurostar is going to find themselves in, even if they continue in their current guise. They will have to make decisions about short, medium and longer term strategies, and my feeling is that what will almost certainly happen in the short to medium term is:
1. they'll need to reintroduce fairly frequent services to tempt the flexible Business Premier fare-payers back, but
2. that will mean that overall they have far too much seating capacity initially owing to fixed-formation stock, so
3. they will then begin agressive promotional activity to get loads back up with discretionary leisure custom, and then
4. they will get a better idea of what the underlying high-yield demand looks like in the medium term, and
5. make informed decisions about routes, frequencies and service standards which might
6. result in fewer services, capacity matched more closely to demand, with higher average fares and less need for promotions
If that's correct, then as I posted upthread, there will be a sweet-spot of good deals during 'period 3'.
I also suspect that from a funder's perspective, whether that's a bank or the UK Government, it's the uncertainty about 'period 4' that makes it very difficult to decide whether there's a strategic need to support the existing operator, and whether or not further support or a 'bail out' is actually needed or desirable, or a fresh-start would have merit(s).
