I agree with alot of what you said and competing with Easyjet but I would add, Belfast is a small market, in many of the markets that Aer Lingus went onto eg Geneva, Nice, Amsterdam, Paris, London etc, there was gross over capacity, and while Aer Lingus had awful loads on some of the routes, easyjet have been suffering too.
Totally agree, Northern Ireland is a pretty small market, like I've said before on the Belfast post, although its a free market economy, really what benefit is it to the consumer of competition on these thin routes. Short term price war, but then schedules changed, flights pulled and then the whole route pulled. Not really benefitting NI passengers, with this messing about. Thats exactly the reason why I dispair to see Ryanair expand at BHD to already served European destinations, the same thing will happen.
Anyway back to EI. All this doom and gloom about BFS. Yes AMS, CDG and other did pretty rubbish, but is ACE not doing pretty damn well, and with TFS coming this winter the same could potentially happen. Malaga and Faro must be doing well for them, every time frequencies are dropped on other routes its seems these are the destinations that pick up the slack. Malaga being kept on through the winter. With LHR, while I am not privy to yeild info, are EI not carrying more per flight than bmi?? Surely not a terrible sign. BD traffic -11% from last year on BHD, Ei traffic +5% for same period. Whether its EI spin, but have recent press releases re Belfast not been pretty positive of late, booking levels the same as DUB and ORK, and the base will break even this year. Why on earth pull BFS now, when its potentially getting to the stage of making money???
BFS seems to becoming mostly bucket and spade flights, plus the LHR link. Not a good sign.
If the bucket and spade routes make a profit then so be it. My personal view of many Northern Irish travellers is they're happy with the unadventurous bucket and spade routes. 2 weeks in Bally Ponsa with Granny and the kids, or heading to the Costa's. BFS gets its first Egypt flight in commencing December when all other UK airports of similar size had them years ago. Look at the range of even charter destinations at BFS compared to other airports on the mainland. Its a sad admission and as much as I'd love to see more unusal destionation work, can't see it, Budapest, Berlin, to name but two. Think that why many people I know just accept the flights to London, to get to go somewhere you actually want to go.
To control capacity it seems like BFS is down to two based aircraft in winter 09/10. Maybe this will help matters, but until the NI travellers get a bit of imagination, EI might as well go for the bulkier routes that can sustain more than one operator and make a profit, the bucket and spade routes.
I hope they continue to improve at BFS, travelled with them many a time and service is excellent.