3. A perceived unsuitability of SEN for A320s and B737s.
5. Lack of awareness of the advantages of SEN.
I’m sure all European airlines are perfectly aware of SEN, it’s location, connectivity and technical characteristics. I’m really surprised that ExpressFlight said the mystery airline didn’t know until they showed up… that’s not normal.
We use software tool from Sabre, within an hour you can have a route fully modelled considering 100’of internal and external variables; demand, pricing, local connectivity, fleet, crew, slots, gates, freight, route connectivity, costs, perf etc and validate the economics of a route. You can even see how it will affect established routes to nearby airports like LCY. If I type in ZRH - LON I see a forecast for all London airports, including SEN. With our dataset the numbers don’t come close to a valid business case however, they may stack up perfectly for another operator.
One might argue the use of tools like AirVision are detrimental to SEN because it’s instantly dismissed by the software. On the other hand, these tools prove time and time again to be accurate to within a few % so airlines trust them. All ‘flag carriers’ and major LoCo’s use tools like AirVision to find new route opportunities.