Originally Posted by
Rivet Joint
What do you have to say faced with the indisputable facts above?
Several things to say. The first is that I had not clocked your earlier post, so can truthfully say the answer to your indignant “did you not see this” post is that I indeed had not. These things do happen.
The second point is that after seeing your post, I went back to the CAA statistics to make sure I wasn’t missing anything more. We now have six data points (three months Nov/Dec/Jan for two routes, GLA & BFS) to take a view on how this is going.
The one data point of the six you’ve called out is the only one which supports your view. The other five all support mine. So whilst you are correct in saying easyJet doesn’t always eat into traffic of other airlines, the weight of evidence is that for most of the time, it does.
Thirdly, have a look at the stats. easyJet’s January pax per flight on BFS (using the CAA OTP stats for the number of sectors flown) is 89. Even if all are its smallest aircraft then that’s a 57% load factor which is 25 points below its network average for the time of year. That’s an awful performance.
It’s harder to tell on Glasgow exactly what the situation between the two carriers is, but the January figures show Loganair operating 143 sectors versus last year’s 144 (so to all intents and purposes, the same). When you tot this up, seat capacity on GLA-SOU has increased by 40% in January but pax numbers have increased by only 15%. Nearly 3,000 more seats have gone into the market for a net growth of 700 more passengers carried.
If easyJet is carrying the same number of pax per flight on GLA as BFS (an assumption in the absence of any other data) then its load factor is similarly awful at about 57% and Loganair’s has dropped from 74% to 60%.
Fourthly, if you look at revenues, average selling fares have dropped certainly on the days when easyJet is flying (and those days are about to increase as we go into the summer schedule). If the average fare has dropped by 15% and volume goes up by 15%, total income from the route has stood still. But there are more aircraft flying with more direct operating costs to be covered than before.
To use an American phrase beloved of a different commentary site, this is a total dumpster fire. The economics of this for both the existing airlines and easyJet look awful, and for the airport, it has certainly singed if not burned bridges on all sides.
So accepting that there is one piece of data out of six which says things might be OK, the other five bits of data all paint a picture of a market in total turmoil and airline economics on all sides under serious stress. I stick by my views.
The vehemence of your reply does make me wonder if you work for AGS though!