BRISTOL - 4

[MerchantVenturer]

Ryanair

Is the increase in base size confirmed? That said, this year's reduction was never publicly announced by either airport or airline so far as I can determine.

Summer 2013 saw more FR flights overall each week when there were two based aircraft than summer 2012 did with five.

The fact that so many flights were operated by non-based aircraft also spread out the traffic flow a bit more - on Saturdays for example there were seven FR arrivals between 1940 and 2040 all of which then turned around and took passengers to the aircraft home bases at a time when little traffic from other carriers was in evidence.

At times last summer there were nearly 30 departures (all airlines that is) before 0900. I can't see this reducing next summer so the extra FR departures in the morning rush will add to the often congested departure areas. The central pier currently under construction with its new pre-boarding zones and new gates will certainly be needed.

With more based aircraft back at BRS there will be less need (in theory anyway) to restrict a lot of the route network to operations between other FR bases and BRS.

Thomson summer 2014

Not too much of a surprise if Marrakech has been dropped. Since TOM's original announcement easyJet decided to operate to RAK 2 x weekly.

Kavala, and the likes of Santorini and Volos, seem to feature occasionally with charter operators at the airport but have never really stuck at BRS. I don't know what size of aircraft TOM had in mind for the flight (it was 'to be announced' for a long while if my memory is to be relied on) but whatever it was presumably did not stack up with projected bookings.