Originally Posted by
Just a spotter
Anyone know what the estimated catchment numbers and demographics for Southend and Cambridge look like?
JAS
Here's
some data on Cambridge (not yet updated to reflect the CityJet announcement). This is the airport's own marketing pitch.
They claim a potential of 115,000 passengers per year between Dublin and Cambridge.
In English what this is likely to mean is "we looked at a CAA survey and saw that there were 115,000 passengers going between Dublin and the postcodes in our catchment area."
It doesn't take account of the fact that virtually all of those are doing so via multiple daily Ryanair flights from Stansted just down the road. (Ryanair carried over 700,000 passengers between Stansted and Dublin in 2013.)
In addition, that 115,000 number seems to include the connecting possibilities to the US through Dublin (which by and large don't exist with the CityJet schedule) so the real point-to-point potential will be a LOT less.
CityJet is planning to fly 12 F50 round trips between Dublin and Cambridge every week, or about 62,000 seats a year.
This will be ugly.
(Note that I'm not suggesting there is no potential between Dublin and Cambridge. There is. But it really needs to be an Aer Lingus-branded flight offering transatlantic connections - THAT could work.)
Here, incidentally, is some
catchment information for Southend.