I understand that the A319 is coming to Leeds at the end of May and that there will be at least three Fokker 100 + 2 ERJ145/135 AFTER the A319 turns up.
Well, if LBA is be home to the F100s as they get released from LHR duties, then it does seem eminently sensible that as and when LBA-LHR is switched to the 319, the released F100 should remain at LBA. This gives them the option of getting rid of the remaining ERJ sectors from GLA and CDG and launching something new with the -145.
In the long term the people at Channex are money men and if it is down to a choice of selling it on for £££££££££££££ or pouring millions in to grow it and watch the yield fall, well time will tell
I’m not so sure. The Dart Group have positioned Jet2 to their investors as a strategy for delivering sustainable earnings growth in comparison to their other more mature businesses (road distribution and air cargo / mail business). Yes they might get a nice cash lump sum (although what they would tangibly sell I’ve no idea – Jet2 is just a branded element of Channel Express) but how then would investors view the long term attractiveness of the Dart Group?
Also I disagree that they have to pour millions in to grow Jet2. The aircraft to allow expansion have already been purchased and are currently sat at BOH. The up-front costs of building brand awareness and getting the infrastructure in place are already sunk and the crewing and utilisation is at present relatively inefficient. They therefore have got a very scalable operation e.g. new routes can be added without incuring much in the way of additional advertising, aircraft of crewing cost. No reason why yield should be driven down unless they decide to flood their existing routes with the additional capacity - unlikely. More likely they'll hope for some CDG slots, maybe LGW and at the same time let Easy develop the regional market to places like SFX and CPH before kicking something off from LBA (that probably gives bmi another stab at launching CPH and then canning it a few weeks before launch).
682