Ryanair to move operations from BHX to EMA

[Wee Weasley Welshman]

From the Ryanair website this morning:

<snip> www.ryanair.com

RYANAIR MOVES BIRMINGHAM ROUTES TO NOTTINGHAM EAST MIDLANDS

Ryanair, Europe’s No.1 low fares airline today (16th March 2004) confirmed that it is reducing its operations at Birmingham Airport with effect from April 28th by 70%. These operations will relocate to Nottingham East Midlands International Airport, effective from April 29th.

Services to be relocated include 3 daily Dublin flights and daily flights to Barcelona Girona and Murcia. Birmingham will for the moment retain 2 daily flights to Dublin.

The Dublin route, in operation at Birmingham since 1993, has carried over 2.9 million passengers. Last year alone over 260,000 passengers availed of Ryanair’s outstanding fares to fly between Birmingham and Dublin. The 2 Spanish routes were launched last October and have been a huge success with record bookings.
Ryanair confirmed that this 70% reduction in daily flights at Birmingham was the direct response to the Airport’s decision to raise runway charges to Ryanair by 100 %.

Announcing the move at Nottingham East Midlands International Airport today, Ryanair’s Deputy Chief Executive, Michael Cawley said:

“This reduction in operations is bad news for Birmingham but great news for Nottingham East Midlands International Airport. Ryanair offers the lowest fares in the UK – considerably lower than Easyjet, My Travel, BA or any other carrier in the market.
By increasing its cost by 100% Birmingham is denying its passengers the opportunity to take advantage of Ryanair's low fares.

These flights will now operate from the lower cost airport of Nottingham East Midlands International Airport, an airport that has embraced the Ryanair model and has the vision to see the growth and development potential that Ryanair will bring to their airport.

We are celebrating our move to Nottingham East Midlands with some fantastic new fare offers starting from £17.99, One-Way inclusive of taxes and airport charges. These offers are available on Ryanair.com for immediate booking, but don’t delay as demand for these popular routes is very high.”


Cheers,

WWW

[volrider]

Thanks BHX management ! Another oportunity lost.......:*

[kestral1]

no offence to ryanair but this will do wonders for (mytravel) mytravel lite as they do alot of the routes that ryanair did from bhx and the ones they dont do i am sure they will look in to doing with tim jeenes at myt (ex employee of ryanair) looks like things could be turning around for myt with the shares moving the right way the UK charter company might be able to turn things around. might be an idea to buy the shares curently at 15p...

[Electric Sky]

I can see some toes about to be trodden on .... bmibaby, Easy and Ryanair all in the ring together ..... ouch!

ES ;)

[EMACargo]

I can see some toes about to be trodden on .... bmibaby, Easy and Ryanair all in the ring together ..... ouch!

ES


So what about Easy, Ryanair, Germanwings, Air Berlin etc at STN also competing with the other London Airports. Plus its only 3 routes. Who cares. Its great news for EMA and Its a cracking result for the region.

Regards

Stu

[bmibaby.com]

This is great news for both the financers and the general public of Nottingham East Midlands Airport, because EasyJet & bmibaby both don't seem to have a clue about what's going on at NEMA. Routes go as quickly as they've come, or if they do stay the frequencies are slashed dramatically by bmibaby, and EasyJet never wants to expand, with rumors of them pulling out.

All of the routes are against bmibaby, bad news for baby's management who are going to have to put their arse into gear!

Hopefully we'll see some routes to Germany & Scandinavia soon too.

[Electric Sky]

EMACargo

Agreed it is great for EMA and the locals looking for low cost air travel. My point is that for the first time as far as I can see, the three main low cost airlines of the UK will have a BASE at the same airport. I would love to see all three succeed but I am not sure that there is the demand to sustain them. I sincerely hope there is.

ES ;)

[bmibaby.com]

Electric Sky, Ryanair will not be basing any aircraft at NEMA as far as I'm aware, but rather all of the aircraft and crews will be Dublin based operating flights through NEMA.

EMACargo does have the valid point that many airports that are a similar size to NEMA have a number of low-cost operators, and the more that we have the better for the consumer and the airport authorities.

Having what is arguably the most serious of the low-cost airlines at NEMA will certainly shake things up at EZY & WW who have not been offering the continued growth and solid route structures they promised when they arrived. EZY hasn't launched a new route since 2002 and WW seem to be floundering around.

Perhaps FR launching some routes (OK they've only got 3 at present but there's a huge market for German routes from NEMA) EZY will follow by adding more routes to the continent (Paris & Amsterdam needs to have a better scheduling ex-NEMA) and WW will seriously look at their ops.

[LGS6753]

Kestrel,
I was thinking of investing 15p on a MyTravel share last week.
But then the b******s set off those bombs, the Spanish elected a loony left Government, so now I'll be keeping my 15p safe in my pocket.

[ratsarrse]

Good news for us potential customers in the area, but probably bad news for the nimbys.

Just out of interest, how did Baby end up with WW flight codes? Just the last available letters in the alphabet?

[Lite]

ratsarrse, I'm not actually too sure about how bmibaby got the WW code as our flight designator, but I do know that when the A330s arrived at bmi mainline (about a year before bmibaby was launched) rather than having "BD" or "BM" somewhere at the start of the registration the first two letters were "WW".

Maybe someone can extend on that point.

[EastMids]

When the then British Midland was going through its rebranding exercise a few years ago, one of the new names for the company that was doing the rounds before the amazingly innovativee BMI was selected was British WorldWide - now there's a name for an airline that's struggling to find an identity in Europe, let along globally! Supposedly, the then British World wasn't too happy with that idea though! Anyways, I've always assumed that the G-WWxx registrations on the A330s, and then the WW flight prefix, were taken by British Midland in anticipation of their new name possibly being British WorldWide.

To return to the Ryanair issue, firstly I presume EMA must have given them a storming deal to lure them away from BHX - they'd be hardly likely to up-sticks at BHX on cost grounds, only to allow themselves to be shafted by EMA in the same way in a year or so's time. Secondly, I hope that Ryanair injects some much-needed route development into EMA - neither of the incumbant carriers have shown any serious interest in route development and in fact Wicked Willy have actually contracted in terms of the routes they operaate and the frequency at which they operate them. My feeling is that if Ryanair do show some initiative and imagination in route development, the BMI group would be better swallowing its pride, cutting Baby off of the business routes and reintroducing jungle jets for those who want the premium service, interline connections, etc.

Andy

[737James]

I think you will find that Bmi Baby has known about Ryanair coming to Ema for a while with them announcing months ago that they werecutting down Dublin rotations and cutting out last summers daily Murcia even though loads were quite good.
I think one of the carriers needs to start some new routes for summer with the city sight seeing/backpacking lot preparing where they are off to this year rather than new routes for winter but at present cant see it happening till at least next summer 05.:hmm:

[ALTSEL]

No big deal really - just a continuation of Ryanairs policy of taking you to someplace other than advertised!

Nottingham East Midlands Airport - located in Leicestershire with a Derby post & telephone code. An airport bursting at the seams, providing an pretty awful pax experience.

Those sharp suited chaps Spooner & Keddie best not darken the bar at the Disworth Plough again!

What ever happened that nice place Castle Don?

[Lite]

NEMA has a huge potential for growth.

There are a number of destinations that Ryanair serve, that they desperately need such as flights to Germany & Scandinavia.

A number of the check in desks in the new tent extension at the airport are going unused (about 12-14) and as long as they extended the departure lounge by a small bit, could easily accommodate more flights at peak times. Between 11:00 & 17:00 the airport is dead, and if aircraft are coming from STN/DUB on a W pattern its a great time to operate some leisure flights to destinations in Italy or Spain.

Good luck to Ryanair. Might get Easy & baby to get their arses into gear.