Pottwidler :not sure what you mean by trolling ? An airport which is losing money, is in debt to its parent group ( MAG) and is laying off its safety team and other staff would appear to be in a fairly poor position. Other airports have failed to recover from such a state. I use Bournemouth a lot and hate to see it strugglingso if you have more positive rumours/ news (you stated it is moving) then please let us know.
Last edited by possibleconsequences; 9th Aug 2012 at 12:29.
Possibleconsequences, pottwiddler is merely highlighting the fact that you seem to be scare mongering before knowing all the facts.
The business park delivers 3-4m in profits every year directly to MAG, check their report and accounts. Around 60% of those businesses need the airport attached to make them viable. Hence the business park and the airport need each other to survive.
The commercial aspect of the airport in terms of aviation/aeronautical income is poor because of the loss of Palmair which contributed a significant portion of the airports revenue. But this was not sustainable. The LCC model is now what the airport must serve. This means cutting costs to ensure that it can be a LCC driven airport. The 'safety' team is not really all that essential despite what the name implies. The essential 'safety' jobs can very easily be passed to airport fire service which sit idle 75% of the time. Other cost cutting measures can also be taken to ensure the airport is serving the needs of the LCC's well enough and sustainably.
The airport is performing, it will grow this year from last. It carries a significant number of leisure holiday passengers, more than Exeter, Southampton, Newquay, on par with Cardiff, Doncaster.
I stated facts in my last post - not rumours and certainly didn't intend scaremongering - however,rumours are around that there is an option to close the terminal and continue as a g/a airfield - i hope they are wrong.. The business park may deliver profits to MAG but it does not deliver profits to Bournemouth (as i understand it ). Profits from the industrial park do not go to Bournemouth's accounts, though presumably the profit from flying activities from the industrial park do.Also,Bournemouth has to pay MAG back the money it borrowed to build the terminal.
Bournemouth made a loss last year because the forecast passenger numbers that justified the terminal have not appeared due to recession so at the moment the LCC model (or any other, for that matter) isn't working as projected, it presumably is the best bet for the future though. Your point on Palmair - i'm not sure how much that changed things so i can't answer that.
I have it on good authority that the safety team will be missed and firemen do not sit round 75% of the time. Clearly, you would hope that the essential safety aspects have been maintained though.
I hope, and presume that it will survive as a viable passenger airport so if Pottwidler and yourself have rumours or facts to back up the statement that 'the airport is moving' and 'it will grow this year from last' then i'd be genuinely delighted to read them.
Possible-Glad you qualified your one liner, my reposte was a (lame) joke at the airport physically moving to a more 'suitable' area- where ever that may be!
The rumours you state about the the airport becoming G/A only are true! They ARE rumours and nothing more. If you think about it commercial operations require a large cost base, firemen, security, terminal staff etc, the same goes for any airport and it doesn't matter whether you have 5 A/C a week or 500, the costs are roughly the same. There's a lot of frustrion with Bournemouth at the moment and the staff are probably not best pleased with the situation but looking at the latest stats bandied about on here, things are on the up...
Whilst taxying out to the runway the other day, I heard a Turkmenistan callsign call up for departure clearance, was one of the Rotterdam flights going early morning. Made a change to hear something "exotic" at Bournemouth, instead of the normal Ryanair, Thomson, Blackadders and Proflights!
Can't see Malta or Wroclaw going anytime soon. However I believe as of this winter Ryanair are pulling out of Greece so Rhodes will probably be dropped after the summer (TOM still fly it though!). And we'll have to hope Carcassone picks up during July-Oct otherwise it may also be dropped next summer. How have the loads been for the rest of BOH's routes?
FR's BOH June numbers look pretty good: Palma, Malaga, Rhodes, Faro, Alicante, Ibiza, Murcia, Tenerife, Malta, Fuerteventura and Gran Canaria were all in the range 85-90% full (flown load factor), with Lanzarote, Wroclaw and Girona not far behind. Compared to last June the figures are all well up, although capacity has been reduced to Alicante (but increased to Palma and Murcia). The top two in terms of loads for the year so far are Alicante and Malaga by some distance.
The two routes that look a bit worrying are Pisa, which has been operated since 2006, but has seen loads consistently down from April to June this year, and Carcassonne which is only averaging just over half full so far this year.
Malta looks stronger than when it was first flown in 2010 and Wroclaw looks better than it did in 2008-9, when it operated 3 times a week initially (now twice a week). Carcassonne was also pretty weak when it was first flown back in 2009 although it did get to 83% in August 2009.
As usual, I have no idea about the all important yields...
Ryanair's list of dropped routes from Bournemouth is pretty impressive: Hahn, Shannon, Madrid, Nantes, Prestwick, Beauvais, Turin, Edinburgh, Marseille, Limoges, Reus, Bergamo, Valencia and Dublin. Looking back at the old statistics, very few of these routes were producing the kind of loads that we're seeing from the current batch of routes. This begs the question: If Ryanair feel like expanding the operation next summer, or replacing Carcassone, which routes might they add?
Personally, I would suggest Krakow (which was tried by Easyjet in the past, as was Katowice by Wizzair) - it could easily do as well as Wroclaw. Rome Ciampino might work, but the shortage of slots there makes it unlikely. If Greece and Ryanair remain on speaking terms next summer, I wouldn't rule out a weekly route or two to some of Ryanair's other favourite islands like Kos, Corfu or Chania.
I thought Ryanair were pulling out of Greece? I could see 2-3 per week to Warsaw-Modlin catering for the large Polish population in the area (mainly in and around Southampton though) Rome/Milan are not currently served from any of the south coast's ariports so they could be a good bet 3-4 per week and maybe Venice or even Porto a couple of times per week (Nermarket Hols and Palmair have shown theres some good demand to those destinations). The Greek routes would be worth considering is Ryanair are going to stay there too!
However its good to see almost all of their current routes doing very well especially considering the economy and an anti-aviation Government. I would imagine Thomson are doing well as they have kept all of this years routes for S13 plus re-added Tunisia but how have Aer Lingus and Blue Islands been loads wise?
BOH carried more passengers in July'12 than Southend, Exeter, Doncaster and more International passengers than Southampton.
Load factors also improved. Flights were up 17.6%, passengers up 18.1%
12 months to date 641,699 which is already higher than 2011 if it keeps up - we should see 675,000 this year (2012) a good improvement on 2011, despite no FR flying during Nov-Jan.
Palma was a stunner - 15,894 passengers in a single month, best ever for this route, and highest number the airport has seen on a single route. This route definitely needs a winter service in my opinion as there would be second home owners and VFR traffic.
Murcia also performing strongly, carrying 7,086 pax.
DUB seems strong, with a 70% load factor (assuming all flights were an ATR-72 with 68 seats, but some were ATR-42, so the load factor might be higher in actuality.
Strangely Vancouver is featured for a third month in a row with 2,621 passengers. I have a feeling this is a mistake and perhaps is actually either Carcassonne or Wroclaw, one of the new FR routes for which data is not available yet.
On the down-side, Turkey routes are lower than last year, some Greek island routes also down.
SOU: interestingly their DUB route was down 14.5%, their monthly passenger totals were down 9.5% with a worsening load factor as flights were only down 7.4%. SOU are really feeling Flybe's pain as has been reported in the press recently. They are too exposed to Flybe.
Last edited by shamrock7seal; 15th Aug 2012 at 04:11.
