Did they pick up on the fact it was also tech yesterday as well? Monarch sorted that one by combining the two Palma's on an A300, which did result in the first lot of pax suffering a seven hour delay. A bit of a surprise if you expected a 734 and an A300 turns up!
Air France
The evening CRJ1000 flight in winter is showing as an A319 Monday to Saturday and the Saturday morning AF2064/5 is also showing as an A319.
No surprise considering load factor was a staggering 87% in July - me thinks they have picked up some BMI Baby EMA-CDG pax not like EDI & GLA.
Monthly figures provided by the CAA, the average pax per a BHX blog and libhomeradar with load factors estimated based on airline configs.
In general the reduction in business route frequencies has helped with load factors such as CPH, BRU & DUS. AMS & CDG have been affected by BMI Baby route closures in the Midlands.
Berlin looks pretty good for a new route as does Rome. Milan has too much capacity but 61% is not too bad. Turkish continues its improvement with several A321's in July.
Long-haul was affected to the East by Ramadan but EK was not that bad despite the heaviest % decrease of all UK airports. PIA was very low.
Turkmen was down passenger wise but load factors held due to the 737.
Thanks,as usual, to OP. Just an aside, as FR never have a full load of PAX due to loading/balance advice from Boeing and leave the 12 seats in rows 3 & 4 empty for take off and landing a full load of PAX would show up as 94%.
You generally seem to be a man in the know, do you know how many aircraft Monarch intend to have based at Birmingham for this current winter??? November to end of March???
As TartinTon has said it now appears to be four although Thursday's show five morning departures.
The original release required six but there were several gaps which have been been filled by re-timing some flights and cutting rotations to Venice and Milan from four to three a week. The schedule will be something like this: -
Monday
1) AGP & ALC 2) MUC & LPA 3) MXP & FNC 4) TFS
Tuesday
1) VCE 2) FCO 3) TFS 4) SSH
Wednesday
1) TFS 2) LCA 3) FUE 4) MXP
Thursday
1) SSH 2) ACE 3) VCE MUC 4) FCO GNB from late Dec 5) FAO (I assume it will be FAO - ACE although not in November due BHX annual night closure)
Friday
1) TFS 2) FCO FNC 3) ALC MUC 4) AGP MXP
Saturday
1) MUC VCE 2) GNB ALC 3) AGP TFS 4) GVA IT I assume
Although Monarch filled the void in summer in respect of BMI Baby they have not in the lean period of winter. Baby operated 2 x ALC and 2 x AGP in winter and Monarch have kept the same frequencies, well actually ALC is reduced in November as it was six weekly.
They have also reduced TFS by two rotations in November, Arrecife, Las Palmas, Faro and Larnaca have also lost a frequency in November.
Whereas ryanair have been outspoken about the fee hike in the Canaries and mainland Spain, Monarch have just cut frequencies quietly.
Very disappointing that LPA is only one and ACE two a week and not even a daily Tenerife. At least there is a greater mix of destinations although it will be interesting to see how some of the routes perform.
TartinTon
Is the split 3 x 321 and 1 x 320? surely not 2 & 2 or 4 321's?
Cheers TartinTon, pretty much as expected and fingers crossed for a decent winter although I would have liked them to have picked up Malta on the A320, as Ryanair seem to be wavering.
There is a long long history for this route in one way or another and the year-round FR passengers figures suggests that there is a market. Maybe not enough ancilliary income for Ryanair's liking.
BHX based aircraft are shown below requiring three units. The Dublin in the morning is operated daily by a Dublin based aircraft. Arrecife on a Monday and Friday is operated from the Arrecife base and the weekly Las Palmas on a Sunday is operated from the LPA base.
There are gaps, some I would imagine were in case FUE/TFS/LPA/ACE were to be increased (fees dispute) and there was a rumour of Vilnius in place of Kaunas, which operated last winter. The big omission thus far is Malta although Gdansk has also operated year-round as well and is not bookable as yet.
If BHX truly has aspirations of growing and expanding their capacity, they need to have a look at how they deal with a number of flights arriving at the same time (not an uncommon occurrence I would think). Came back this lunch time to queues for immigration snaking down the corridor above arrivals, with the arrivals hall stuffed to the gills. Looked out the window to see pax off a flight queuing on the tarmac as they couldn't even get upstairs! There were half a dozen police downstairs keeping the peace which is rather telling... Got into baggage reclaim to see every belt going, full of baggage which wasn't getting picked up as everyone was trapped in immigration! On my belt there were four flights worth of bags, so many in fact that they ended up blocking the belt in a massive heap!
I also arrived back on a Sunday lunch-time at around 13.15 and we were arrival number 10 or 11 of 20 plus in just over one hour including Emirates.
It was an amazing sight to see and although far from perfect the airport on this occasion coped well.
They did block off the escalators and held pax in the pier but all immigration stations were manned and the e-gates were all operational.
I had about 10-15 minute wait in the queue (two children in tow) but on the upside despite arriving at the carosel to see it shared with three other Monarch flights the bags arrived within 5 minutes.
From touchdown (13.07 I think) to meeting our pick-up it was about 35-40 minutes, which I thought was fantastic considering.
If you look at the BHX movements over a week the Sunday lunch period is just one of those freak periods when most of the based aircraft get back (plus EK, KL, LX, AF) at around the same time.
As I walked out of arrivals having already viewed the 50 and 60 stands and now seeing the 40's and old T2 packed with aircraft, I felt amazed that my old little airport which barely had a couple flights an hour in high summer in the past had reached these levels.
There will always be a down-side and if you think arrivals are bad how will the new security area cope with any further in flux of early departures.
PK insists BHX can double capacity with what it has now and I assume that there is a plan, as I doubt the current terminal could cope with the current peaks and troughs. Evened out of 12 months then there would be little problem but that is unlikely ever to happen at BHX.
OP - you were lucky that the e-gates were working. I come back into BHX most Sundays, but usually later in the afternoon. The e-gates are only switched on about 20% of the time. In fact, they usually wait for a queue to build up in the holding area before they switch the gates on. There seems to be a willful disregard by the UKBA staff at BHX for any new technology which would help the travelling public. They seem to go out of their way not to use the e-gates and IRIS before that.
Thanks Flyboy for the techie answer.
