Originally Posted by
Cyrano
Bear in mind that a substantial chunk of the traffic (especially of the higher-yielding traffic) originates in Antwerp and therefore expects a morning departure. The core of the VLM schedule is a morning and evening rotation facilitating day trips. This requires an ANR-based aircraft to work - if the first departure from ANR is only (for example) at 0930, it will be too late for a good chunk of the prospective passengers. Similarly, for an LCY-based aircraft, a departure from LCY at say 1700 would mean a departure from ANR at about 1930, so again you'd have lost a fair share of the UK business day-trippers to BRU or the Eurostar.
Absolutely, an early morning flight ANR to LCY is quite essential to make this work. I was surprised to read that flyBEis doing well with their flights to SEN that only leave Antwerp at 2 pm, but it's pretty clear they don't (need to) carry many business passengers. Which means the company best suited to pick up this route is locally based. Not VLM or any of its new incarnations, but someone really new. But then you won't run an entire airline on one route and in all of 25 years we have just about established trough lots and lots of trial and error that you can only count on LCY and ZRH to work when it comes to high yielding destinations.
Originally Posted by
Cyrano
Someone like flyBE could always operate the route with an LCY-based aircraft, but it'll be on a compromised schedule and is unlikely to be sustainable.
While I don't think it's going to happen, flyBE (or actually Stobart) does overnight a plane at GRQ (Groningen) and offers quite an attractive 'business' schedule for there with early morning and late evening rotations.