Originally Posted by
shamrock7seal
How likely is BOH to survive this ‘review’ then of single aircraft bases?
Long story short, it's a mixed picture.
Ryanair's decision to close Glasgow and move the aircraft to Edinburgh was influenced by the fact that Ryanair's fares (and thus yield) were much lower on their routes from Glasgow than from Edinburgh.
When comparing the fares on Ryanair's 10 routes from Bournemouth with the corresponding routes from other UK airports, the picture is rather bleak.
The most important point to note is that it is considerably cheaper to fly Ryanair from Bournemouth than from one of Ryanair's other South West airports (BRS and NQY). From NQY, Ryanair fly to only two destinations that are also served from BOH (ALC and FAO), but fares are on average 39% higher from NQY than from BOH. Ryanair serves 9 of the 10 BOH routes from BRS, and fares are 18% more higher from BRS than from BOH. This shows that Ryanair are being forced to keep their BOH fares low in order to create demand, thus putting the airport in the exact same position as GLA. What is more worrying is that Ryanair face a lot less competition on their BOH routes than from BRS, meaning there doesn't seem to be enough high yield demand from BOH.
However, there are some positives from the figures. 6 of the 10 destinations are operated using the single BOH based aircraft. Assuming an average load factor, the four routes with the highest yield are operated by the BOH aircraft, and the worst performers are operated by away-based aircraft. This suggests that while some routes (namely ALC, KRK and AGP) could be axed, it doesn't necessarily mean that the base will close completely. It all depends on whether Ryanair find it more beneficial to operate a small network of 5-6 routes from BOH, or to close the base and move all operations to BRS.