This is my first post on a PPRuNe forum although I am a regular contributor to some other website air forums.
I have been following the progress of the low cost industry in the UK for some time and watched it burgeon alarmingly to a point where I believe the market is thoroughly saturated. Almost everyone has jumped on the bandwagon and I cannot help but see an analogy with the mad, headlong rush into the stock market three years or so ago that largely ended in tears.
My particular point relates to brabazon’s question earlier in this thread about bmibaby loadings. On the 11 February this year Cardiff Airport announced the 100,000th bmibaby passenger to pass through that airport since the operation started at the end of October, 2002. I calculated the number of seats available during that period and I estimate that the average aircraft loading must have been around 46%. In fact, it may have been less because for simplicity I assumed that the 100,000th passenger passed through at the end of January and therefore I used a three-month period for the seat totals.
I have some personal anecdotal evidence as well. On a late Tuesday evening last month I was a passenger from Glasgow International to Bristol on a Go/easyJet flight (of which more in a moment). Whilst waiting at GLA I saw a bmibaby B 733 arrive from CWL and around 60 pax got off. I then saw it load for the return to CWL and about 40 pax boarded. My Go B 733 arrived from BRS with only around 60 pax as well, and returned to BRS with 27 pax, albeit there were only about 8 empty seats on my outward journey BRS/GLA that morning.
There is no doubt that the arrival of bmibaby at CWL has adversely affected GO/EZY loads at BRS. Prior to bmibaby’s arrival across the Severn it was estimated that about 15% of Go’s pax at BRS emanated from South Wales, which means that GO/EZY will have to find 15% new pax merely to maintain the status quo. Interestingly GO/EZY seem to have increased prices on many routes from BRS whilst WW is substantially lower at CWL. Local Press reports say that some people living within a few minutes of BRS are actually driving to CWL to take advantage of the considerably lower fares to Spain from there.
As an exercise I picked three routes that GO/EZY and WW compete head to head on from BRS and CWL respectively. I selected 15 random dates between March and September for five return flights of varying durations and days of the week to each of ALC, PMI and EDI, and I entered specimen bookings into these airlines’ Internet booking sites. WW was cheaper on eleven of the 15 with one fare the same – I included all taxes/charges in my comparisons. The biggest difference in monetary terms was on a return flight to ALC in March, that was £220 from/to BRS and £136 from/to CWL. In percentage terms the biggest difference was 100 % on a return flight to Edinburgh in September - £50 BRS and £25 CWL. Whilst I use the term ‘return flight’ it will of course be appreciated that it is necessary to book two singles.
I accept that my sample is non-scientific but it does bear out what many travellers in this area believe about GO/EZY fares. It may be that GO/EZY are charging economically viable fares whilst WW are desperately trying to fill their aircraft, perhaps not too successfully if my earlier figures are to be believed, by luring passengers with what might turn out to be unsustainably low fares. This may be a pointer to Liverpool and Manchester when competition starts, albeit the common catchment area there is far more populous than that for BRS/CWL.
My personal belief is that there are simply not enough pax for low cost airlines to compete on the same routes from airports of the size and proximity of BRS and CWL.
I am sorry that my first post is rather long and numerate but I hope that I have conveyed a flavour of the situation as I see it.