Originally Posted by
davidjohnson6
If the cruise market is the main rationale for a SOU-MAN route... then would it be better served with specific charter flights instead of a 2x daily scheduled route ? Or maybe something like what TUI are doing between Gatwick/Manchester and Frankfurt - namely scheduled flights at high fares on a small number of dates which coincide with river cruise start/end dates and which are offered at discount prices to cruise customers ?
I have seen various cruise charters at Southampton over the years, including KLM EMB190s, TUI and Jet2 Boeing 757s, Martinair Boeing 737s amongst others, so special flights for cruise passengers have been used in the past. At the height of the summer on some Fridays or Saturdays, the number of people transferring to and from ships when five or six are in Southampton at the same time is enormous, with around 15,000 embarking and another 15,000 disembarking and many of the domestic flights to and from Southampton on those occasions are sold-out and potentially could be several times over.