Originally Posted by
cavokblues
Why do you assume it's the airport and not simply Ryanair trying to add a bit of extra growth from an airport they've long operated from?
There is no technical reason why Ryanair couldn't operate all but two of their Bournemouth flights out of Southampton. Maybe SOU airport should have approached Ryanair?
Originally Posted by
Skipness One Foxtrot
Can you supply some evidence of "desperate" BOH "giving big incentives" now that it's "not sustainable"? Any proper business would indeed be prepared to offer a sensible incentive if there was a chance of a good outcome. It's not enough that SOU succeed, BOH MUST ALSO FAIL.
See also GLA vs. EDI, PIK vs. GLA, INV vs. ABZ, NCL vs. MME, LPL vs. MAN vs. LBA, BRS vs. CWL and every airport with "London" in the name vs. each other...
An educated guess. Seeing as none of us are party to internal confidential business discussions and this is a rumours forum I assume that’s acceptable. Let me explain the evidence. As stated before, the timing of the spike in growth. It’s been done exactly around the time the runway was declared open. This is a common and long standing business tactic to bury the news of a competitor. Secondly, BOH wrote numerous letters to the planning department objecting to SOU extending its runway. Whilst this is not unusual the content of the letters were strangely personal and dramatic in their content, evidencing a real fear at BOH being present. The letters are still publicly available if anyone wants a read. Thirdly, FR are well known for driving a hard bargain and will move out of an airport instantly if charges are not kept at the bare minimum. Again, a simple google or basic aviation knowledge will back that up.
So, taking the above into account. BOH have evidenced in writing on their own letterhead that they were incredibly scared about SOU having a longer runway, the operator that has done the growth is notorious for driving a hard bargain and the timing of the announcements are conveniently around the same time SOU is promoting its new runway I think an educated guess can be made that BOH have offered some incentives for FR to fly some more routes. It of course also makes anyone considering SOU think a little harder if the range of routes down the road increases.
Turning to FR, as is well known on this thread and has been discussed more than enough the 737 is not a good fit for SOU. So you can forget about FR which personally and I’m sure a lot of people share this opinion is a good thing. Of course FR rather than no one is better but they are a last resort and not as good a fit as EasyJet who are a bit more premium and better to deal with both for a business and a passenger. So let’s focus on A320 operators. It’s likely to be EasyJet and maybe the odd route from Wizz. Jet2, Volotea, Vueling outside bets.
I see the latest way to derail the thread is this being up the eco concerns from a very aptly named poster (pain in the … indeed). You have to question the motives of someone that calls himself that and then proceeds to post stuff to antagonise people. I wonder if he has posted the eco concern on all airport threads? Didn’t think so. Oh and to destroy that narrative I see it’s been announced that air traffic is now back at 99% of the levels from 2019 and hundreds of new jets on order from all the big players for growth. Yeah cause for concern this eco stuff. Come on guys, don’t take the bait from these people.