BRISTOL - 4

[a bristolian]

Well... first very interesting visitor today .... to the home of Banksy.... big ship from the US??

[bravoromeosierra]

And what was the visitor?

[MerchantVenturer]

I believe the allusion is to a Boeing 757-200, reg N770BB, that flew into BRS from New York today. It's owned by the Yucaipa Companies, a major private equity and venture capital company.

This is being discussed on another aviation website.

[FRatSTN]

What's going on in Bristol tonight?? Looking at FR24, seen several diverts to CWL, BHX and STN. I'm assuming weather related?

[cornishsimon]

why the heck divert to STN ?


cant specifically answer about BRS but the last couple of days Devon and Cornwall has had terrible fog and today specifically within the last 6 hours really heavy rain.


my guess is fog




cs

[FRatSTN]

Just seems strange considering it was sunny all day and 30 degrees in STN and is still clear and very warm now. No idea what the weather is like in BRS and struggling to get an up to date METAR. Could it be thunderstorms perhaps?

[davebham]

Yes I've just noticed this too. Must be the Lightning storms which are isolated across western and eastern Britain tonight

[j636]

Sky News reporting the airport is closed and has been evacuated after a routine inspection of an aircraft that arrived from Allicante sparked an alert after an item was reportly discovered.

Expected to open for the 04.30 arrival.

[MerchantVenturer]

BRS temporarily closed during night

Major security alert closes Bristol Airport | Bristol Post

Addendum

BRS website showing eight easyJet flights cancelled today between 1140 and 1610, presumably a knock-on effect from the earlier security alert:

Toulouse
Rome
Inverness
Glasgow
Berlin
Copenhagen
Edinburgh
Paris

[bar none]

The security issue allegedly was a note on a Ryanair aircraft.

Airport closed, 12 diversions, approx 2000 passengers disrupted.

Perhaps Bristol Airport should write to the Guinness Book of Records claiming the most disruption for the least reason ever!

[MerchantVenturer]

So what was supposed to be done? Allow aircraft to continue to land and arriving passengers to crowd the terminal whilst the police and airport/airline authorities were endeavouring to determine whether the note was a hoax?

It's easy with hindsight to criticise but I have no doubt the criticism would have been of a far different order had the authorities not taken such action and a device and possibly secondary ones around the airport had detonated killing and maiming hundreds of people.

An airport doesn't have to be a major one to be a terrorist target.

[HeartyMeatballs]

Rest assured all of the airport and the airlines have been working extremely hard to put things back together. I've heard of one crew operating a 17 hour duty. Unfortunately when things go wrong in aviation they go very wrong. You can't just majic jets and crews out of thin air.

You should read some of the comments on BRS's FB posts. They're actually quite worrying! People are absolutely clueless.

[heading 125]

17 hour duty is that what low cost pilots fly. Umm

[HeartyMeatballs]

Umm. Nobody said flying 17 hours. By the time crew got back to base by taxi they had been on duty 17 hours following diversions.

[Severn]

Wizz Air - Potential

Earlier in the month users commented on how they had heard that Wizz Air might be looking to expand at BRS in a big way in the future.
I thought I'd have a look at where the potential destinations might be.

Katowice, Poland and Sofia, Bulgaria are served from BRS already with Košice, Slovakia starting in October. All three destinations are Wizz bases.


The following destinations are Wizz Air bases that are already served by airlines from BRS:

Budapest, Hungary - (served by Ryanair)

Gdańsk, Poland - (served by Ryanair)

Warsaw, Poland - (Warsaw-Modin served by Ryanair)

Poznań, Poland - (served by Ryanair)

Wrocław, Poland - (served by Ryanair)

Prague, Czech Republic - (served by easyJet)


The following destinations are Wizz Air bases (in order of size (ie, number of aircraft based)) that are not served by other airlines from BRS:

Bucharest, Romania - (LHR, LTN, STN, LPL & DSA already served from the UK)

Cluj-Napoca, Romania - (only LTN already served from the UK)

Vilnius, Lithuania (LTN, STN, DSA, GLA & BFS already served from the UK)

Riga, Latvia - (LTN, STN, MAN, LPL, DSA, EMA, LBA & GLA already served from the UK)

Skopje, Macedonia - (only LTN already served from the UK)

Timișoara, Romania - (only LTN already served from the UK)

Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina - (not served from the UK)

Tārgu Mureș, Romania - (only LTN already served from the UK)

Belgrade, Serbia - (LHR & LTN already served from the UK)

Kiev, Ukraine - (LHR, LGW & LTN already served from the UK (from all Kiev airports)

[mustrum_ridcully]

I'm pretty sure some of the Central/East European destinations don't actually have daily flights from BRS so Wizz Air might be in a position to capitalise on this if they can manage daily flights.

[bobsyerunlce]

If I were a betting man, I would guess at Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and/or Riga being future possibilities. I think Budapest is underserved by Ryanair at BRS and Riga was a popular route some years back. Having said that, who could have foreseen Kosice being the next name out of the hat so I'll keep my fingers crossed for Bosnian and Macedonian routes (from a purely selfish point of view!)

[MerchantVenturer]

If Kosice can work for Wizz from BRS then perhaps the airline might look at further routes.

What the reaction of Ryanair would be if Wizz competed directly with them remains to be seen. Apart from sun routes (ALC, AGP, PMI, IBZ, TFS, ACE and FAO) Ryanair and easyJet have avoided each other's routes from BRS.

easyJet tried Budapest daily in 2005 but reduced it the following year before pulling out. Ryanair took it on in 2007 initially at 4 x weekly, before reducing to 2 x weekly and then dropping it from 2010 until 2012. Ryanair restarted at 2 x weekly but it has been 3 x weekly for the past couple of years winter and summer.

All this might raise a question mark over further increases in frequency although the market seems to be there but perhaps 3 x weekly is about right. The last three months have seen monthly load factors of 97%, 98% and 98% on BRS-BUD, but so too have all the other Ryanair former Eastern Bloc routes been in similar loads territory which doesn't necessarily mean that Ryanair is content. They dropped Katowice (picked up by Wizz) despite high load factors.

Riga was operated by Ryanair from 2007 until early 2012 which seems a long time to decide it isn't working (or of course it may have been bigger fish to fry somewhere else). As with forecasting football results I'm hopeless at predicting new routes but Riga might have a chance I suppose.

BRS seems to do well with capital cities, mainly but not exclusively through easyJet and Ryanair - I've lost count how many: around 15? So perhaps Bucharest and Belgrade might be in with a shout if Wizz decides to expand further.

[superq7]

Originally Posted by bar none

The security issue allegedly was a note on a Ryanair aircraft.

Airport closed, 12 diversions, approx 2000 passengers disrupted.

Perhaps Bristol Airport should write to the Guinness Book of Records claiming the most disruption for the least reason ever!

It was a note scrawled on a sick bag found by a cleaner, talk about over reaction ! pathetic.

[crackling jet]

So then being a trained and qualified aviation risk assessor on shift, what would you have done, with a written bomb threat found onboard a recently arrived a/c from a country with not the best security at the point of departure, then say response is pathetic, especially with a/c parts spread all over the airport or some countryside somewhere.

Or you were due to fly on it and found that nothing had been done, as taking it seriously was "pathetic"