Centralwings post mortem
Does Centralwings have to go down as one of the worst business decisions in our industry in recent times?
When the airline was set up, we were told that they would defend LOT's market share against the LoCos. Instead, they managed to stimulate the market (whilst losing LOT a lot of money) and then hand the market share straight over to their competitors - exactly the opposite to what was intended.
In the case of the British Isles, Centralwings at various times flew to Dublin, Cork, Shannon, Edinburgh, LGW, Stansted, Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham. As a result of this escapade, LOT have now been driven out of these islands with the exception of LHR. That isn't very clever, is it?
I notice that Wizzair have been very quick to grab the Gdansk - Rome and Bologna - Warsaw & Krakow routes. They will of course be delighted.
After the recent LoCo explosion in Poland, SkyEurope closed their Krakow base last year and now Centralwings have ceased to function as a serious competitor. Wizzair and Ryanair are now dominating the Polish market, the latter without having based a single aircraft in the country (yet).
Eu01 is quite right about Krakow. SkyEurope accounted for 15% of KRK traffic last year (0% this year!), Centralwings generated 7% of KRK traffic this year. KRK is now dominated by EasyJet (23% of traffic - the only Polish airport where they have made an impact) and Ryanair (20% of traffic). It is clear that KRK will need to get their costs right if they are to attract any growth at all.