Originally Posted by
rog747
Holiday airlines flying to most of the more popular and lucrative sunspots like the Greek Islands, Canaries, Madeira, Turkey, Luxor, Red Sea, and Cyprus using the biggish planes like the A320N/737-800 and MAX-8 are not able to go anywhere near Southampton on those Routes for obvious reasons of the SOU Runway and operating limitations.
To say that the airlines are not playing ball, is frankly not their fault surely?
Jet2 nor TUI have A320's in their fleets to be able to even attempt to plan to operate from SOU on some of those routes.
Easyjet do, but at this time they do not seem willing to make SOU a UK base, and their package holidays brand are nowhere near upthere with Jet2 or TUI's sales reputation and organisation.
Sadly we no longer have 737-300/400 or 700 series on tap, nor the venerable 757 - all of which could usually lift off a full load from SOU for the likes of Madeira or Tenerife.
Even SEN Southend had limitations on payloads but did once offer Corfu and the Canaries.
So for SOU it is what it is...so unless they can in time, overcome the Runway and Obstacle clearance limitations I cannot foresee much changing unless Easyjet really does commit at SOU to be a viable base.
There is no one else right now.
That's it in a nutshell, not the best of situations for SOU, can the airport sustain losses year in year out?