Originally Posted by
mmeman
could you let us know how you know this?
Looking at fares on flights this week - Aberdeen's cheapest fare one way is £208, Alicante's chepaest one way fare this week is £163.39, and KLM's cheapest is £165 one way next Saturday - not sure even this tells us much, but clearly not bargain basement fares neither.
Just look at the way the airlines are behaving, and you can see where Teesside sits in their pecking order - which is directly influenced by how much money they are making. For example:
Could be due to delays to aircraft deliveries, as it is still causing timetable headaches not knowing exactly how many aircraft they will have delivered and commissioned in time for the summer season.
Similar comments are made repeatedly on this (and similar) threads, but Ryanair's route planning and aircraft allocation hasn't come to a standstill because of delivery uncertainty - if they thought there was good money to be made they would find the aircraft. Ryanair are acting like they have a contract to provide a minimum of X number of flights, and are showing no signs of increasing that number which such suggests the existing flights aren't big earners.
Similarly, how often do you hear flight cancellations from KLM due to staff/aircraft shortages? To me the fact that they feel that they can hand over the whole operation to Eastern speaks volumes - I believe that KLM know they have a hard core of committed customers that they can rely on to keep the route viable, but don't see it as a growth opportunity.