Volare Luton

[eagerbeaver]

Can anyone shed any light on Volare? Their employment policy, what the company is like etc etc.

ta

[Buster the Bear]

With only 4 return flights per week from Luton for Summer 2004 against a planned 12 or more, Volare will only provide a niche route to Italy.

[iceman51]

These flts are scheduled ... but will they be ever operated?

The company is in a tremendous financial distress, and according to many posts, also on PPRuNe forums, managed on a day by day basis.

I will never advise to book a flt or to work with them (it looks like wages are always paid later ...).

From LTN or the greater London area for the conscious traveller, there are many other opportunities to choose from, both full service and low fare airlines.

[LGS6753]

Volare are currently operating 4 flights a week to CAG from Luton. The flights are not normally cancelled, are roughly on time, but at a lower frequency than originally planned.
Hopefully they will announce additional flights for summer.

[Buster the Bear]

LGS6753. The routes transfered from Gatwick were operated for a short period.

Take a mo' and look at their web site. Cagliari 4 times per week for summer 2004. No Venice, no Rimini........

Now have TBI invested in Volareweb re-locating from Gatwick to Luton? Hopefully NO!

[Powerjet1]

Are flights between LTN-CAG to finish?. An email response from Volareweb said today that flights on this route were confirmed until 7 September(although they are bookable on the web until the end of October) but beyond that, a decision still has to be taken.

Judging by the price of the seats over the last 2/3 months, it would indicate that loads are pretty high. Certainly, on some flights, in the last month, no seats have been available whatsoever.

Pity if it goes, but I wouldn't hold your breath. There had been rumours that the Venice rotation may have restarted, but now Ryanair have announced that they will start this route in January, along with all the others, I think that it is now dead in the water.

[Powerjet1]

Volareweb's 12 month association with LTN will come to an end on 29th October with the cessation of the 3 x weekly Cagliari flights.

[LTNman]

Volare promised much but delivered little for LTN. Passenger loads seemed quite good though despite their odd timetable. I think this has more to do with more general problems at Volare

[Powerjet1]

I think you are right. It seems that quite a few other routes are being 'cut' with the start of the winter timetable, although this would be partly expected, especially on leisure routes.

[FlyLowCost]

Dispite the Volare global financial situation is not the best (mainly due the the old long term debits), the cash flow is quite thanks to the good summer sales.

They haven't realased yet al the winter timetable, except for domestic flight out of LIN and BGY. I think Volare is waiting the evolution of the AZ crisis. If AZ goes under like it seems, they will try to invest more on domestic routes (short sector, high loads, good yield).

That's why I think VA will leave LTN very soon. To fly this route they need to do a W from VCE, VEC-CAG-LTN-CAG-VCE and it reduces to 6 the max number of daily rotations for that plane.

[CAP670]

Staggering, given the high indigenous Italian second, third and fourth-generation population in Bedfordshire, that routes to Italy from Luton (apart from RYR to Milan) don't seem to be viable.

Somebody (Volare/TBI??) just isn't doing the right marketing job!

So Volare will soon join Edelweiss, Hapag-Lloyd Express, Azzurra Air, BMA and FlyBe as yet another airline that failed to make it's route network viable from Luton.

Still, it'll leave more space to park the additional aircraft rumoured soon to be based at Luton by Messrs Webster & O'Leary.


:ugh:

[Powerjet1]

Cagliari is hardly the most 'high profile' destination in Italy and apart from a little local advertising, i'm surprised they got the passengers they did. Rome, in the days of Debonair, was well supported & if Volareweb had tried this route i'm sure it would have been much more fruitfull. Ryan are starting this route with a daily departure in January.

[nickmanl]

"So Volare will soon join Edelweiss, Hapag-Lloyd Express, Azzurra Air, BMA and FlyBe as yet another airline that failed to make it's route network viable from Luton."

When did Edelweiss, Azzurra Air and BMA ever really fly from LTN anyway? I know BMA might have done the odd charter and the occasional emergency landing in the mid 90's but I don't think any of these airlines have operated scheduled flights from LTN!

[Mr @ Spotty M]

Nickman.
BMA used to fly Schedule from LTN upto a few years back to the Channel Islands.
I also seem to remember a number of years back that Azzurra Air used to fly a BAE 146 on a Schedule service.
I also remember Edelweiss, but not sure if it was charter or a Schedule service.

[Powerjet1]

Edelweiss operated a scheduled service between Zurich & Luton for about a year just before easy came on the scene. BMI did serve Jersey & to a lesser extent, Guernsey, for many years, up to about 6 years ago during the summer, operated by DC9s, F100s. Flybe did short lived schedules to Belfast City & more recently, Jersey & Guernsey. HLX operated LTN-CGN for about 6 months until July last year. Azzurra Air - I forget although I remember seeing them at LTN quite often though.

[CAP670]

BMA operated schedules successfully to both Jersey and Guernsey for many many years. The Sunday schedules were double rotations at one time but for some inexplicable logic (probably the same logic that has it planning to operate 20 routes from BHX, merely 30 minutes drive from East Midlands via the M42), it walked away.

With FlyBe's withdrawal, Luton is now the only 'London' airport (and probably one of the very few UK airports) without a daily scheduled connection - even in the Summer - with the Channel Islands.

Azzura operated schedules in conjunction with Debonair (another rather higher-profile Luton failure), and FlyBe (as JEA i.e. before it promoted itself as a 'low cost') operated to BHD until easyJet decided to operate to BFS.

The Zurich operation was doomed to failure as soon as easyJet started flying the route but now that it's decided to dump Zurich and instead, operate LTN to Basle, it looks possible that Helvetic may operate a double daily rotation, at least Sundays to Fridays.

The failure of HLX and Volare to advertise adequately may be a factor, but then again, HLX is operating successfully into MAN and NCL - presumably its advertising budget remains unaltered...??

If all these airlines had been successful and were still operating through Luton, its annual passenger throughput might now be over 10M and TBI's business risk more evenly spread.

If only...

:hmm:

[Powerjet1]

Arn't Helvetic launching ops ex ZRH, into LGW in October ? Can't see them operating into LTN as well, but hey, easy did both, so you never know. Certainly the ZRH flights have done well over the last six years for easy from LTN

[LTNman]

So Volare will soon join Edelweiss, Hapag-Lloyd Express, Azzurra Air, BMA and FlyBe as yet another airline that failed to make it's route network viable from Luton.

Other airlines that have run scheduled services from LTN at one time or another include Britannia Airways(737-200), Capital (146 & Shorts 360), Virgin (Viscount & 727), Autair (Ambassador, Herald & 748) , London European (Viscount & BAC1-11), Debonair (146), Euroceltic (F27), Netherlines (Jetstream), Channel Airways (Viscount), Dan Air (HS 748), Skyways (HS 748), Suckling (Dornier), CityFlyer Express ( ATR42), Manx (146 & ATP) and Euroflite (?)

anymore????

[Buster the Bear]

Ciao-fly for now!


http://whipsnade.co.uk/picturelibrary/jpeg150/br/brown_bear_120_wide.jpg

[CAP670]

Helvetic is in discussion with TBI with a view to doing a deal over ZRH-LTN (to compliment ZRH-LGW).

Why not both?

LGW and LTN have some different catchment areas and both routes are/were well subscribed with easyJet.

You may yet be pleasantly surprised...

;)