Originally Posted by
Albert Hall
Rivet Joint - what a load of utter nonsense.
I have to presume that my earlier comments about Port of Southampton are those you’re referring to. There are indeed lots of days, especially on summer weekends, when there are four or five vessels on turnaround and throughput of 10-20k passengers. There are lots of other days when there are no port turnarounds scheduled. It’s a very “lumpy”
demand pattern to fit air services and if you had done any research before spouting off, you’d see it for yourself.
As to Flybe and Loganair: well, Flybe went bust (twice) for a reason. Loganair is still here after however many decades it is. It was not good for Southampton to have 90% of its business with one airline and the airport is now far better placed with a mix of airlines including Aer Lingus, KLM, Loganair, Blue Islands and Aurigny. Although smaller and still needing to grow, the airport is far more robust as a result.
Loganair presumably do not want to repeat the mistakes that Flybe made and who can blame them. If you don’t like it, that’s fine but comments about slot sitting are also nonsense - how can you “slot sit” at airports which are not slot coordinated?
Research? How about opening my curtains in the morning and seeing them lined up? Don’t think it gets more conclusive than that. A simple google search suggests 500 ships a year and 2m passengers. Yeah not exactly lumpy. As I said though and others have pointed out, your average cruise ship passenger isn’t traveling light and they are not putting all that luggage in the hold of a plane. Still a market for it though and just one of the many strings to SOUs bow.
It’s very lazy to say oh BE went bankrupt because the routes they served were no good. For a start they were around for 18 years as BE which isn’t bad and the real reasons for their demise are well documented. As per usual bad management. Started with the unwise decision to get the jungle jets and move away from their usp (q400), some ridiculous bases at unfashionable airports, the skirmish into Scotland to compete on pointless island hopping flights and the cherry on top hiring one of the worse individuals in business who has gone on to ruin a number of other airlines (COW). The routes from the likes of SOU, BHX, BHD etc were just fine.
In respect of Logan yes it’s great they have been around as long as they have and I hope they keep going but how are they any different than any other airline at SOU with a monopoly? Do they have much competition on most their routes? Is there another big regional player? Yes BE having a monopoly had its downsides but that’s when SOU wasn’t an option for much else with the shorter runway. Now it is and we have people moaning about EZY picking up some routes served by existing operators. Which is it, bad that SOUs routes have no competition and creating a monopoly or bad that EZY are coming in to provide competition?
The slot sitting comment was obviously said in jest but in reality it’s essentially what they are doing. We know SOU is not sustainable with the status quo, Logan are not making any effort to change that be it with bigger aircraft etc, so yes they are effectively just serving the routes with little gamble on their part.