March Pax/FR
NorthernCounties
The Saturday afternoon has been filled by a third Dublin but I had forgotten that there is also a Saturday evening available from 19.15.
Tuesday & Thursday early afternoon are still available as far as I am aware.
I am sure Jamie2K9 would have reported any change.
I think I said before I expected the aircraft to go to Dublin thus releasing a Dublin based aircraft for another destination. However this hasn't happened and I thought with the gap tight on two of the three days that LDY was a good bet and with March pax up I am still wondering if there is a chance.
GayFriendly
No doubt the excuse that the school holidays started earlier last year (about three days of March) will be the spin re the indifferent figures.
I have copied the individual route figures down and as usual a mixed bag. There are some legitimate reasons for the decline, such as IT's down due to the problems in Egypt and Tunisia. Also Baby stopping EDI & GLA did not help the 2011 figures.
A couple of surprises, the bad one was the extremely poor Istanbul figure, down 20% at 2694 and Dubai at 46537 (up less than 1%), which beat Gatwick's three daily service leaving BHX third behind Manchester (down 1% in March) and Heathrow (up) in terms of pax from the UK to DXB. LGW of course have low density three-class aircraft compared to BHX's two class high-density aircraft although Gatwick was down 18%.
BHX -DXB averaged 375 pax at around 86% load factor just about 1% less than Manchester.
Pete