PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - BOURNEMOUTH - 3
Thread: BOURNEMOUTH - 3
View Single Post
Old 12th Jan 2012, 14:55
  #26 (permalink)  
Aero Mad
 
Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: Regrettably far from 50°N
Posts: 917
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Firstly, the only thing I have to do with Southampton is the fact that I am a passenger there. I have used Bournemouth as well.

But what keeps irritating me slightly is Bournemouth Air's constant anti-SOU rhetoric. Why is it a shame that Vueling is now online at Southampton? Would you rather that both airports had no business? From your posts, this certainly seems to be the case. I won't go into all the SOU vs. BOH rubbish but what I will say is that if you don't have a train line, people are charged to be dropped off and the only airline that has a comprehensive route network from the place is Ryanair, perhaps you shouldn't be complaining.

If you want passengers, you can have them! Bournemouth's problem is the lack of decent connections. Take Southend, an airport which until recently suffered from similar issues until Stobart took the bull by the horns and paid for a railway station. With a Bournemouth Airport Parkway station, you could have decent passenger numbers without even having to compete with Southampton, except on key routes - Bournemouth's runway length gives it a massive advantage and you'd probably get airlines like Vueling transferring operations to Bournemouth, as well as a host of new airlines and routes thanks to the nearest airport with decent connections being Bristol or Gatwick, which is some distance away... the demand's there.

Rant over. All I'm saying is don't complain about Southampton's success when Bournemouth just aren't putting the effort in - a spanking new terminal is all very well but not if people can't get to it. If they invested in a nice rail extention then perhaps they'd do rather better.
Aero Mad is offline