Hi Crewmeal
CAA November stats show Doha 7957 down from 10243 which averages out at 133 pax per flight or 52% load factor.
Things improved in December as you would expect and I have certainly not heard of any cuts in frequencies.
November was a poor month for Qatar at BHX, MAN & EDI but BHX was certainly the lowest in terms of pax per flight and load factor.
Emirates was up (average 469 or 76%) but so was capacity as the third flight in November 16 did not operate all month which goes to show it is not a great month unless of course you are flying BHX - India and then it is fantastic. Although AI was actually down a few hundred but still 86% load factor and Turkmen went from 3 a week to 5 adding 2000 pax (up 78%).
Article
The only new aspect to this is lets say the number of disputable quotes or loose interpretation of some facts - as the saying goes to misplace one passenger is unfortunate, misplace 2 careless but misplace 2 million :hmm.
The article also mentions or certainly could read as double daily both Doha and Dubai which if the former was correct would make the November figures look even worse
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Nice quote about East Midlands being a busy hub for "Ryanair and others" - hub and others which I presume should read base and Jet2 and wonderful if you want to go to the Med or Poland.
Also Solihull not much more than an hour away from London. I think the speed limit is 70mph in this country and much as Chiltern trains have improved they leave you well short of Heathrow and ditto Virgin trains from Bham International.
I know I am being a bit pedantic and I realise that the 2017 passenger figures are not officially finalised but the slightest bit of research would show it is going to be around 13 million and more than comparable to EDI, LTN, STN and Manchester. Even 2016 was 11.6 million which is nowhere near 11 million but I suppose 13 million and was one of the fastest growing airports in the UK doesn't fit with the article (Okay we need to emphasise was rather than is).
It has been a difficult end to the year with Monarch, United and Icelandair but Jet2, TUI, Primera (albeit unproven) and the double daily A388 are positives. No mention in the article of BHX's main claim to fame that it is one of the few airports in the world taking two 615 seat aircraft a day - plenty taking 517/9 seat 380's but few 615 seat aircraft.
By the way year to date is 12,203,151 therefore 796849 required for 13 million and December 2016 was nearly 850K but I didn't even get the December 17 estimate to 800K but December is a very difficult month to judge and I am usually wrong by underestimating most years.
CabinCrew
I have not seen that explanation used for the BHX service but we like to think that we live in the real world here