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Old 17th May 2006, 16:02
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Mooncrest
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: LEEDS
Posts: 1,257
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Think I'll give the new thread a bit of a kickstart and talk about an old hobby horse, i.e summer holiday charter flights.

I'll nail my colours firmly to the mast and state my opinion that that a third based charter machine for LBA is justified. It's been said on these forums over the last couple of years that the IT market is gradually on the decline as the low cost business gathers pace. However, I still believe there's a healthy charter market out there, not necessarily to Spain but certainly to Greece (e.g. Kos, Kefalonia, Thessalonika, Skiathos), Italy (Naples, Pisa, Sardinia), Slovenia and Croatia.

Airtours and Thomson have reasonable programmes at the moment, Thomas Cook is improving and First Choice is somewhat lacking. I definitely feel there is scope for the latter two companies to get together at LBA and base a TCX or FCA aircraft for the summer. They could comfortably cover their existing commitments and move into the unserved/underserved destinations mentioned above. Thomson may wish to have a wider crack at Greece; I don't know what happened to their Zakynthos route but there must be enough business out there to justify a few other islands or maybe the mainland. And with the exception of Verona, nobody is doing Italy (Jet2 notwithstanding. I ain't counting them coz this is charter business).

BTW, my inspiration for writing this piece was a certain travel agent in Yeadon. I looked in the window last week and saw advertised fourteen Greek holidays. THIRTEEN were Manchester departures, the fourteenth was from... wait for it...East Midlands. Absolutely not b****y good enough, I fumed. Where the hell are the LBA flights I wondered. The airport less than two miles away and all the travel agent can offer in the window is flights from somewhere else. Hopeless !! If you want Spain, terrific. If you want Greece (or anywhere even considered slightly exotic by LBA standards), forget it.

There, I feel better for that. My point is, we're doing all right (more pax than Cardiff) but we're not doing nearly as well as we could. Securing Jet2 was a major achievement for the airport but that was over three years ago. The airport cannot afford to rest on its laurels, it needs to get some serious choice in it's holiday charter programme. And whilst it chews that over, it can wonder why Centralwings decided to clear off so quickly.
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