DURHAM TEES VALLEY AIRPORT - 5

[davidjohnson6]

June 2013 CAA stats

Overall message - small pockets of good news, but also seeing a fair bit of pain as a byproduct of Easyjet launching new routes at Newcastle
Aberdeen - DTV had a small improvement but Newcastle had a big improvement
Amsterdam - very pronounced shift by KLM customers away from DTV in favour of Newcastle, even after making allowances for Easyjet
Jersey - significant decline against strong growth at Newcastle
Palma - pax number slightly increase despite being moved to a less-than-ideal day of the week - surprisingly resilient

DTV had 13,771 pax in June, down 7.3 % on June 2012 - loss equates to 1,084 pax
DTV rolling year has 162,727 pax

NCL had 488,442 pax in June, up 1.2 % on June 2012 - gain equates to 5,668 pax
NCL rolling year has 4,387,443 pax

In June 2012, for every 1 passenger at DTV, there were 32.5 passengers at NCL
In June 2013, for every 1 passenger at DTV, there were 35.5 passengers at NCL
As an additional reference, in June 2009 (i.e. post credit crunch), for every 1 passenger at DTV, there were 16.2 passengers at NCL

Aberdeen route for June
DTV - 2,795 pax, up 11% from 2,519 pax, meaning a gain of 276 passengers
NCL - 2,552 pax, up 44% from 1,777 pax, meaning a gain of 775 passengers

Jersey route for June
DTV - 503 pax, down 17% from 604 pax, meaning a loss of 101 passengers
NCL - 2,680 pax, up 42% from 1,886 pax, meaning a gain of 794 passengers
There were 5 Saturdays in both June 2012 and June 2013. Easyjet begain flying NCL-JER in March 2013 and there now appears to be a significant oversupply of seats (and perhaps some aspect of price war ?) between Jersey and NE England - at least one of Flybe or Easyjet will be feeling pain. NCL-JER load factor in June 2013 was 75% while DTV-JER load factor has fallen from 77% to 64%

Palma route for June
DTV - 1,495 pax, down 19% from 1,843 pax meaning a loss of 348 passengers
DTV (allowing for days in month) - up 1%
NCL - 40,944 pax, up 5% from 39,175 pax meaning a gain of 1,769 passengers

Palma analysis:
Palma was on Saturdays in 2012 (5x in June 2012), but now Tuesdays (4x in June 2013). Going from 184 pax in June 2012 to 187 pax per flight in June 2013 *and* going from a leisure-friendly Saturday to a leisure-challenging Tuesday with seat occupancy now at 99%, suggests there's demand for more flights to Spanish beaches - these are encouraging signs for the Alicante route in summer 2014

Amsterdam route for June
DTV - 8,433 pax, down 4% from 8,819 pax meaning a loss of 386 passengers
NCL - 31,709 pax, up 32% from 24,016 pax meaning a gain of 7,693 passengers
NCL KLM-only (my estimate) - 26,941 pax, up 12% from 24,016 pax meaning a gain of 2,925 passengers
Note - Easyjet began NCL-AMS in Dec 2012, flying 4x weekly in June 2013

Amsterdam analysis:
DTV-AMS load factor has fallen from 65% to 62%
On a Europe-wide basis, Easyjet saw a load factor in June of 89.9%
Easyjet flew NCL-AMS on 17 days in June. Using, a 156-seat A319 with 89.9% load factor (ie average of 140 pax turn up for a flight), we get 4,768 passengers, which falls far short of the NCL-AMS route being up by 7,693 passengers - this tells us KLM are seeing passenger numbers up by 12% on the NCL-AMS route, in contrast to DTV-AMS being down 4%
Even if we assume Easyjet had a 100% load factor, KLM are still seeing NCL doing 10% better year-on-year compared to 4% worse at DTV

While Easyjet and KLM have very different products, there is overlap for customers travelling point-to-point between NE England and the Netherlands - this may have led KLM on the NCL route (but probably less so on the DTV route) to lower prices slightly or perhaps improve their product offering to defend market share - thus stimulating growth on NCL-AMS and also sucking some passengers from DTV towards NCL

KLM is seeing a very clear shift in emphasis by the overall passenger base away from MME to NCL, even if Easyjet are seeing 100% load factors on their NCL-AMS route.