Originally Posted by
chaps1954
The thing is both EDI and MAN have had impressive increases in Oct and November figures compared to last year which was due to the restrictions that Saudi and UAE placed on
the airline
Ian
Not sure where you are going with this one. Manchester in November 17 carried 22281 on 136 sectors at 164 per flight at 65% load factor and it makes good business sense to end up with a brand new aircraft operating and you reduce load factor to 61%. Sure there are more business seats and you might cover your costs if these are sold at full fare but the chances are you have trashed prices to compete with the competition and made less money. EDI to be fair has increased pax per flight and load factor but only going from really bad to bad.
In my opinion the Qatar decision is based on the political situation in the ME and having to utilize shiny new planes elsewhere that might have on the DXB-DOH(10 daily) or Jeddah/Riyadh - okay a slight exaggeration as not many if any 359's would have been allocated to these routes but they did have some widedodies plying these route and it was quite possible that a couple of 359's would have been taken up on them.
None of us know the yields from any of their routes but based on industry norms, not may mid to long-haul operators increase routes based on 55-65% load factors.
Pete