LTN Charter Flights
Seeing as TUI is reducing the Luton base to two aircraft this summer from the previous three aircraft it has been for the last 10+ years, I wonder if they are now regretting this move?
If the third aircraft is already allocated to another airport for the summer, it is hard at this stage to go back on those plans. But seeing all these additional TUI "W" flights and sub-charters being added only 4-5 months before the summer schedule starts, would say to me TUI underestimated the demand from Luton, by originally cutting the base down to two.
Traditionally Thomson/TUI has always only used a very small amount of sub-charter flights, and this has usually only been from the quieter regional airports where they might only have demand for 2-3 flights a week for their whole summer programme.
On the talk of summer charters, what the heck has happened to Thomas Cook Airlines?! Last year they announced an A320 base at Luton and when you go to the Thomas Cook Airlines website, you can only book TCX flights to Antalya and Dalaman, which are to be operated weekly to both.
Last year they did something similar announcing 3-4 routes from Luton to be operated by their own metal, and the only route that took to the skies was to Corfu, and that route has even been scrapped this year!
When you look on their holiday booking website, they offer multiple destinations from the airport, but using easyJet for these routes! The tour operator seems to be all over the place with Luton and unsure what it wants to do.
I struggle to understand why Luton fares so badly on the charter flight front, when airports in the Midlands go from strength to strength and the same at Stansted too. The low cost sector has obviously had an impact, but all these other airports have large low cost airline bases too, and you would think Jet2 would especially have an knock on effect to them. But TUI and Thomas Cook continue to have larger bases at Birmingham, East Mids and Stansted to what Luton has.