Originally Posted by
Aero Mad
Cyrano, I think that Barling Magna is in fact pointing out that it would be a shame for a UK airline not to exploit the opportunity presented.
Sorry, perhaps I turned the subtlety setting of my last post up too high. I was merely seeking to question BM's implication that neither the UK nor Ireland were part of Europe.
But back to our regularly scheduled programming: note that the main market for most ATR-type routes to SEN is going to be people coming TO London (whether for business or leisure) more so than London residents going to these secondary destinations. This implies that a carrier seeking to deploy a number of ATR aircraft on a network from SEN would likely end up having most of those aircraft (and crews) overnighting away from base, so that they can pick up the peak morning demand for travellers to London (plus, in the case of continental Europe, benefit from the timezone difference).
Also, since the predominant market is outside London, it's arguably a harder marketing task for a UK (or Irish) airline to get themselves known in e.g. the Netherlands than a local carrier. (The idea behind JOIN Regional Airlines, as I understand it, is to ease the marketing challenge by having a number of small/start-up carriers band together under a common brand.)
Those are two reasons why a given SEN-XXX route might more easily be served by a startup XXX-based carrier rather than a startup SEN-based carrier.
Maybe this discussion belongs more in the Southend thread than the Aer Arann one anyway...