Originally Posted by
CabinCrewe
Shrewd move when they analysed the forward bookings. The demographic appears to be completely different to the EW service before it, with homespun outbound leisure rather than business or significant inbound which is perfect for this winter frequency. In the absence of code share and connections at this stage, it was never going to be a mid winter connections bonanza.
The review of the fleet ops for the winter will have impacted on this early decision also.
Will need time to grow and find its place in a particular market. They can no doubt look into codeshares etc at a later date if economically viable and in their best interest.
That's one way of looking at it..........but surely the fact of the matter is that biz travel demand GLA<>DUS hasn't suddenly vanished overnight - and neither has inbound leisure from that part of Germany -
the problem is that LM seemingly aren't able to attract those market segments and as such they're struggling.
Iirc, over the past 2 winters EW have managed to operate this route at a reasonable freq with Dash-8s or airbus and even in midwinter have seemingly carried more than enough pax to sustain an E145 operation. As such, it seems very questionable to say this is an issue of overall demand (I dont believe these pax have just disappeared). Its more an issue for LM, i.e. lack of connetions, lack of brand awareness in Germany, lack of biz traveler awareness etc.
Cutting freq may be a "shrewd move" in someways, but it's not going to help them build biz traffic or endear them to pax who have their flight cancelled.
This surely raises questions for LM and their other Euro routes and plans - If they can't take a over a proven route and sustain it by attracting/retaining the existing demand, then how can they hope to gain traffic on new routes? They've already dropped ABZ-OSL and intial numbers on NCL-BRU seem well down on bmi numbers, so it may well not be an isolated problem.