brabazon
My point is that BRS pax numbers have not declined on the routes started from EXT, in fact the reverse in most cases.
Now obviously I cannot say that individual people have not switched their travelling to EXT, I am sure some have, but overall EXT has thus far prospered as well as its neighbour.
I take your point about the habits of some pax in search of a 'bargain', and we know the LCC genre generates pax who would not have flown at all.
For example, when easyJet had two daily rotations from BRS to AMS last year in competition with KLM's four, the total monthly passenger numbers for both airlines were approaching 30,000. When easy dropped one of the rotations monthly figures reduced by around 7,000-8,000. The KLM rotations remain but the 'lost' easy passengers have not all flocked to that carrier.
Interestingly, easy hinted at the time of reducing their AMS schedules (BRS was not the only easy airport to suffer a reduction) that Schipol costs were the reason. Yet Flybe appear able to absorb them if the newspaper article quoted by Devonair is accurate.
There is an interesting article in today's Bristol evening newspaper that suggests Macquarie Airports are now firm favourites to purchase Exeter Airport.
An 'industry insider' is quoted as saying that Macquarie, who own Bristol Airport together with the Spanish Ferrovial company, are concerned that Bristol's physical limitations will not permit all of the expected massive growth there over the next decade.
They are therefore looking to use EXT as a sort of 'overspill' (my words) and one scenario sees one of the airports (presumably EXT) used primarily for charter traffic and the other for scheduled stuff, although it is not suggested the two would be mutually exclusive.
If there was a common owner for both EXT and BRS it ought to produce exciting possibilities for the entire Southwest region.
Last edited by MerchantVenturer; 6th April 2005 at 11:11.