Originally Posted by
owenc
Thanks.
What is the maximum potential for the Northern Ireland route? Would Dublin cut into that?
Just hope we can make this niche work and not give it over to Dublin again.
Orlando is an interesting destination. Compared with other transatlantic routes such as New York, almost all passengers are British holidaymakers, with a substantial number booking package holidays with Virgin Holidays, TUI, Thomas Cook and other companies. People are also more likely to travel from their local airport when flying to a leisure destination, and this is compounded by the fact that a large number of passengers are families with young children. Therefore, Aer Lingus would carry relatively fewer NI passengers on their DUB-MCO service than on their business-orientated transatlantic routes.
With regards to maximum potential for BFS-MCO, I believe that peak demand would be obtained if the route was served by Virgin Atlantic, TUI and Thomas Cook. During the peak summer season (June-August), I believe that there would be enough demand for daily flights - something along the lines of x3 weekly Virgin B744, x2 weekly TUI B788, x2 weekly Thomas Cook A332.Throughout the rest of the summer season, there would be demand for x4 weekly flights, and x1 weekly flight during the winter season.
This schedule is, of course, what I believe to be the absolute maximum potential for BFS-MCO, though I doubt that the airport will achieve such a schedule any time soon. This schedule would mean 148,340 seats would be offered between Belfast and Orlando, and based on average load factors, passenger numbers would be approximately 120,000 which, to compare, is slightly less than the 2017 annual passenger numbers between Glasgow and Orlando.