Originally Posted by
gilesdavies
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.
In my opinion going back to the 80s/90s and maybe earlier LTN overachieved on the charter front which could be by virtue of having Britannia and Monarch's headquarters there. What you're seeing now is a correction, exacerbated by the arrival and massive growth of Jet2 at the three airports you mention which can only draw potential LTN passengers away. There are only so many people to go around.
LTN's strength is also a weakness, in that it's well located for a huge catchment. But that catchment overlaps with STN/BHX/EMA and other London airports. A selling point of package holidays is convenience. We saw that with the massive supplements slapped on regional departures and daytime flights. So for better spread, STN and BHX/EMA would have to be the favoured airports for East Anglia and the Midlands respectively. LTN just gets caught in the middle, but the flipside is that it's very attractive for 'scheduled' routes and that's a much bigger market now.