I was somewhat amused reading the Airliners.net thread which seems to be growing by the hour. The lack of knowledge of so many Americans about the UK is mind blowing, yet they still put in their ten pennyworth as if they are experts on all aspects of the country. Somebody even said Bristol is the oil capital of Britain (it might be in the sense of the number of cars on the streets
). In a funny sort of way perhaps this 'rumour' will bring the route to the attention of more people: one US poster, having read the thread, said he went and booked a flight on it for his sister who is visiting London.
And where does this route subsidy thing come from? The only public ‘subsidy’ of which I am aware is the sum paid to Bristol Airport by the South West Regional Development Agency (£1.5 million from memory) to help upgrade some of the airport facilities. None of the local authorities has any money to subsidise air routes. Bristol City Council hasn’t got the money to properly run those services for which it does have a responsibility. Whether the airport itself has given CO an excellent deal is another matter, but that would be commercially confidential and hardly likely to be made public.
The problem with all this negative stuff is that it can become self-fulfilling. Indeed, both the local paper and local ITV channel have carried stories recently in which both the airport and CO deny there is a problem with the route, which to some people will suggest there might be a problem.
I am surprised the route has not ‘taken off’ more than it has. Most other new routes from BRS in recent years, including some with less obvious potential than EWR, have been runaway successes as far as loads are concerned. I still think Bristol’s proximity to LHR is a difficulty, with many long-haul travellers, for various reasons, loath to break long-held habits. Any axe appearing to be hovering over BRS-EWR will not help to turn this trend around.
CO and the airport did say they were looking to carry 75,000 pax in the first year and the current loads, even with a reduction to five days a week in winter, would just accomplish this.
The only way is to keep publicising the route (I agree with one poster on Airliners that the advertising in the south west is not good) and hope that it will build up. Even Americans visiting London might be surprised how easy and hassle-free BRS is as a gateway to the capital, with trains every half hour taking around an hour and a half.
Finally, Bristol’s provisional load factor for June was 69.29% which compares to BHX’s 69.69%, assuming they have two 757 rotations per day compared to BRS’s one. Yet, some of the posters on Airline who were denigrating BRS’s figures were at the same time saying how well BHX is doing.