Originally Posted by
limited_sight
I did a quick check today on the flybe website. It seems that the majority of SEN routes is no longer available for booking after early January and under a sort of fixed high price regime until then. What is still bookable until late March are at least DUB, Antwerp, Goningen and Rennes and these routes have lower and varying prices.
Caen, Lyon and Cologne are also available at reasonable fares. Six of those destinations (DUB, ANR, GRQ, RNS, CGN, CFR) are "thin" and "short" routes that are ideally suited to the ATR72 and which should not attract LCC competition with a larger jet aircraft - Dublin being the exception as far as morning/evening flights are concerned. Lyon is an oddball as it requires a faster aircraft, but probably not the capacity the E95 has. Gone without a replacement are apparently MAN, GLA and VIE, whereas PRG and BUD will be served by easyJet and Milan by Ryanair (I would not be surprised if part of a deal regarding a new base is an agreement that the airport-owned airline must not serve routes in competition with based airlines if these do not agree to a complementary service). What I find surprising is that MAN appears to face the axe as it allowed for helpful domestic connections.
All in all, this is far from Stobart axing its SEN base. I also sense more opportunities, e.g. on the ANR route should VLM go under at LCY, or to BRN that is now unserved from London as a result of Skywork's insolvency. However, the ATR network from SEN will always be rather small as there are not a lot of destinations within the type's ideal range that have potential and are not served from STN and/or LCY (stuff like MST, FMO has already been tried unsuccessfully).