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Old 27th Mar 2024, 23:14
  #3044 (permalink)  
SO24
 
Join Date: Mar 2024
Location: Hampshire
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Agree with stewyb and the latest threads - let Bournemouth have their ‘day in the sun’ (pun intended!) but it’s not all about the sun routes. Per my last note EZY’s key USP is that it’s the only LCC in SOU, and the generally favored one at that. Their announcement last Spring to fly domestically from SOU would seem to show they see potential from here away from the sun routes as well - so, within their other network commitments there’s no reason they couldn’t look at shorter hops to eg PAR, AMS, NCE or central/Eastern Europe as well as a few more Med schedules in the future. They wouldn’t need to move to BOH to do that & could operate such a network more easily avoiding the night curfew at SOU. Most people I speak to still prefer SOU over BOH due to the far easier accessibility, and BOH will have to have some pretty radical ideas to avoid gridlock around the airport at certain times in S25 with a local council that’s broke alongside. And that means zero prospect of anything other than courtesy buses down winding country lanes. There’s plenty of demand for regional routes from SOU if they’re competitively priced - KLM are shortly going to 3 a day & could easily take say a 3 x weekly additional service from EZY as many KLM pax are transfer. The PAR service desperately needs a decent reliable carrier & SOU will always sit at the centre of a bigger catchment area for this traffic. If AGS run out of ideas then a sale to a more creative owner wouldn’t be the worst scenario, and there’s still the Solent Freeport element for the longer term which will add to the inward investment opportunities the airport brings.
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