LCY traffic

[no, no, no]

I'm just curious now and wondered if anyone out there can answer this.

BA obvioulsy do Heathrow to Edinburgh and Paris, but now double up by offering London City (ignoring Gatwick for a mo).

I'm just wondering if most of their traffic somes from the trains/existing services, or whether they actually steal pax from their own flights to Heathrow? I know a lot of passengers will be connecting, but I'm just thinking of the local traffic now.


Likewise, when VLM started LCYMAN did they take their traffic from the trains, or did they manage to steal a large proportion of the local stuff from BA and bmi?

Just curious really if London is one market, or whether each airport really does have its own catchment, and LHR doesn't penetrate the LCY catchment for exampl (like City of London or City of Westminster...)

[WHBM]

I'm a regular LCY user (I would be, it's a mile from my house !).

It always surprises me how far away people have come from to use the service. Out in Hertfordshire, plenty from Kent, etc. Strangely the No 1 competitor seems to be Stansted. I know the style of service is different but if Mr MD in Cambridge wants to go to Edinburgh he will use Easy at Stansted rather than the further away premium services. I use Cambridge as an example because one of our employees lives there and needs to go sometimes to Jersey or Isle of Man, for which he happily comes to City rather than Gatwick.

I am sure some cannibalisation of Heathrow passengers takes place. Business travel by train to Edinburgh is effectively dead, but it still is considerable to Manchester. The great thing about the train is that you can catch whichever service is convenient in either direction (the railway are throwing this away in standard class with restrictive ticketing, which can only drive passengers to the budget airlines). This is where VLM (Manchester) and Scot (Edinburgh) can score. In order to offer such flexibility you need not only high frequency, but also to have some spare seats on almost all flights. On these two routes I end up changing my return reservation about 50% of the time. I certainly never drive early morning across London for Heathrow flights any more if there is an LCY one.

The BA service from LCY to Paris was, very quietly, withdrawn. Word was it just cannibalised the Heathrow passengers too much, but I think the Air France service from more business-oriented Orly to LCY squeezed them as well.

There is one aspect of a "one airport market" for London that surprises me. I am always amazed at the numbers of passengers, invariably foreign, who are on itineraries that involve transfers between Heathrow and London City. They always have an air of disbelief as the route is explained.

[Flightmapping]

Don't forget niche users like yours truly who will use LCY because of the amazing views! Admittedly on both times I have done so, I have tied it in with events in London, but would certainly consider using it again, especially if travelling with someone from the London area.

My only problem with Scot Airways is that their one-way fares were about 3x those of Easy, but I'm sure they know their market.

It will be interesting to see how the LON to MAN market in general changes in September when the new Virgin timetable is introduced. I would expect the train to pick up some of these pax, and maybe for VLM to look at routes such as LPL to EDI or GLA, where the train is not so good. Also, discussing with someone from Sheffield earlier today - if LPL and MAN can support LCY services, why not SZE? Midland Mainline is lousy, with no line or rolling stock upgrades on the cards.

Sorry, should have added that I am based in Coventry, but journey in question was Coventry - London (event) - Glasgow & back. I would usually take the train from Coventry or fly from BHX to reach Scotland (once had to suffer diversion to EMA - hopefully never again).