Shame to see the airport loosing one of Monarch's A320's... I would suspect this aircraft and the two additional A320's being added to the fleet from next summer, will see these aircraft going to Birmingham, Manchester and Gatwick...
What's Luton's loss is their gain!
Even if the Gibraltar flights are reduced next summer, this is only a 6-7 hour blocked sector for one of the aircraft in a single day and would have been covering other routes. So I would expect we'll be seeing a number of the airlines routes frequency from Luton, being cut too...
Anyone know what charters Monarch will be operating next year?
I think this year it was only a weekly flight Zakynthos and Paphos, so there is not much in the way charter can be cut by the airline, by dropping this aircraft. At the same time as cutting aircraft, they also have to make room in the schedule for the Rome flights!
WIth the easyJet announcing they will be flying to Corfu next year, I wonder if we will see this route quietly disappear?
Over the last few years, while LTN's list of destinations has grown rapidly, it seems to have been done with very little growth... (Exception been Wizz!) It seems the new destinations have come at the expense of exisiting destinations having their frequencies cut. This is very apparent if you was to look at easyJet's timetables from the early 2000's, where there now long established routes flew maybe like 6-7 times daily (GLA, EDI, BFS, AMS and CDG) and now 3-4 times daily and destinations in Spain flown 4 times daily are now maybe 1-2 times daily.
Ryanair is the same, when they based the four aircraft at the airport about 6-7 years ago, they only flew to 11-12 destinations, but had at least daily frequencies on all routes. Now they fly to 21 destinations with the same number of aircraft! Very few of either airlines routes are flown by aircraft from other bases.
Its strange how LTN gains destinations and looses frequencies, while airports like LGW gain frequencies and destinations.