Originally Posted by
Rivet Joint
Exactly the point I was originally making and which had been misconstrued as usual.
On one hand we have the usual suspects saying simply the curfew in isolation will prevent a low cost operator ever moving in and now the same people are saying such operators aren’t really fussy and are happy with just a runway and a shed. Contradiction much?
To make money at their margins everything has to be run like a well oiled machine with assets making money as much as possible. I seem to be one of the few supporters of SOU on here but I have the sense to appreciate that it currently struggles to serve 2 a320s at the same time. Many improvements are still no doubt needed be it larger security areas, terminal space for many hundreds more people to sit somewhere, more airside equipment like tugs, even the taxiway to reduce the time backtracking etc etc.
Regardless of the level of frequency if you told me last year SOU would now have EZY serving 6 routes I’d say that’s a great start. I’ve heard the domestic routes are nearly full which speaks volumes about the untapped market locally for cheap flights. A lot of these are people who are unlikely to ever pay LMs prices and frequency clearly isn’t an issue either. Exciting times but yes let’s moan moan moan.
I’ve never regarded the curfew as being something that automatically rules SOU out as an LCC base. That said, I don’t see SOU being an easyJet base, at least anytime soon, but remember that much of the EJU base network have to adhere to strict curfews.