Hello Trumpet_trousers:
As a person living in Seville and working with English people, I can tell you some facts about the airport and its connections.
Seville Airport situated in the capital of Andalusia (South of Spain) serves a population of 2,2 million inhabitants within 60 min by car. Its pax record was in 2011 carrying about 4,9 million passengers while in 2012 it descent to 4,2.
Nowadays, 10 airlines operates in SVQ with an average of 90-100 flights/day. Although 60% of the traffic is domestic, there are also more than 25 destinations within Europe. France followed by Italy leads the capacity offered (7 destinations in France, 6 in Italy). In addition there is also a very strong demand to BENELUX (Belgium, Netherlands and Luxemburg) with 21 weekly departures to this region.
I give you the reason about the lack of activity during evening (13-15 hrs) but flights concentrate at first hour in the morning (6-8 am), 11 am, and night time (7-10 pm). Aiport authorities are working to cover this period with more flights and new routes in 2013 to Lyon (Transavia) and Geneve (easyJet) have been scheduled to arrive at this time.
About the suspension of UK direct links:
In the past (until 2011), there were flights with Ryanair to Liverpool (4x>2x), Bristol (2x) and East Midlands (3x). LPL worked perfectly in LFs and surely on yields. Mainly used by Nothern-English and with very good schedule in the afternoon. Lots of friends took this route which has been availible from Feb. 2006 until Oct. 2011. Then RYR cut some routes in its LPL base and Seville was one of them. There had been some rumours about RYR trying to put an SVQ-MAN but no further information was known
BRS (from Jul. 2009 until 2011) was very mediocre in LFs. All around 70-75% with some peaks of 80-83% in Summer. Many students used this route for exchanges and campaments and also English coming to the South of Spain.
Finally EMA (2011) reached poor LFs and I believe only some peak months reached around 75%. Fares were so low, sometimes you could find tickets for €12. Lots of Spanish people using this route for their holidays in UK.
However, in 2012-13 Ryanair decided to cut lots of direct connections between Seville and Europe suspending EMA, LPL, BRS, AOI, NYO, PSA, TFS, ZAZ, BIO, IBZ, FEZ...
Currently Seville-UK market is really unserved with only flights to London. There is a demand for routes to Northern England and Scotland. As SS13, you have these options:
easyJet LGW-SVQ 4x (increased to 5x in WS13-14)
Ryanair LGW-SVQ 3x
Ryanair STN-SVQ 5x
--> 12 weekly departures between Seville and London but not to other cities in UK
The information I have is that airport direction is looking for IAG (Vueling/BA) to re-establish flights to LHR but according to LHR slots capacity and operational costs I see it is stupid instead of working with easyJet to increase LGW to daily. Also there is some talks with airlines to open Seville-Birmingham because airport marketing department has seen optiond to this route, but I think there is not any airline based in one of the two airports interested in flying this link. In my opinion, MAN/LPL and EDI/GLA must be priority.
Airbus Military has created a demand on flights between Seville and Toulouse which is operated by Air France (A319) and Iberia-Air Nostrum (CRJ200) with 9 flights per week.
I hope my information has been useful. You can follow my webpage about the airport in svqairport blog
Please, write to me in case of any suggestion to airport direction or any other comment to
[email protected]
Kind regards
