SOU Post Covid?
Not much to discuss in terms of what is happening at the moment at the airport, but I'll summarise below. Probably the quietest it has been since WW2 from a commercial perspective!
- Aurigny flying 5x weekly to Guernsey (Mon-Fri) on an ATR72.
- Blue Islands flying 3x weekly to Jersey (Mon, Weds, Fri) on an ATR72.
- Medical flights also being accommodated.
Thought it would be interesting to start to have a look into where things will be when things slowly start to improve. As it stands, Aurigny, Blue Islands, Loganair and Eastern are all expecting to be operating a fairly normal schedule from 1st June. This is of course an arbitrary date subject to change (next weeks planned announcement regarding the gradual wind back of lockdown measures will be key to this), and while full schedules are on sale I would expect a gradual ramp up of frequencies is what actually happens.
One thing that is clear is that international travel is likely to be limited for a least the next few months. For SOU, this may not be such a bad thing, as the loss of Flybe 2 months ago already gave the airport the knockout blow for that traffic 3-4 weeks before most other UK airports felt the same. Don't get me wrong it was still awful news and I have the upmost sympathy for anyone who was affected by Flybe and Covid-19. However, as it stands the only current services that will be affected by this is the weekly TUI flight to Palma, and a delay to Eastern starting Dublin (although I could see a situation where travel in the 'common travel area' (UK, ROI, IOM, CI) is opened up more eagerly than to the rest of Europe). The current SOU route selection is otherwise entirely domestic and to the channel isles.
Otherwise, I think subject to the testing situation improving in the UK (ramping up track and trace, getting a reliable antibody test) we could see a fairly quick bounce back of domestic flying in the UK. There will be some losses from individuals being wary of using any forms of public transport, and the continuation of home working in some areas, but these may be offset to an extent by leisure travellers choosing to travel within the UK rather than overseas as it will be perceived as 'safer'. The recent EZY route announcements seem to support this view (I am aware much of this will be back filling former Flybe capacity). They are increasing frequencies on EDI/GLA-BHX and most BFS-UK routes this winter, and starting a daily MAN-ABZ route at the end of August. I did see a suggestion on another thread that the increase in flights from BFS would require an extra aircraft to be based there, potentially allowing for an extra route to be added?
Pure speculation, but I wonder what the chances are of them starting BFS-SOU are, and if demand would be sufficient to sustain a ~twice daily service to appeal to business travellers? In its absence, I expect that Eastern will increase SOU-BHD once demand does increase and they have aircraft and crew available. It would be good for the area to see them expand their base a little and employ some of the former Flybe staff.
Be interesting to hear other peoples thoughts on this, but it would be good to keep it as a reasoned discussion and to refrain from too much doom mongering (though it would be naive not to properly acknowledge the current situation we are in).