easyJet BRS-CDG
At the end of March at #2396 I drew attention to the fact that easyJet is now the only carrier between Bristol and Paris with a single daily rotation to CDG and that by the weekend several days in the week ahead had already sold out on either the inbound or outbound sectors, sometimes both.
This trend has continued ever since with next week the most extreme yet. CDG-BRS is sold out for the next seven days from today through to next Saturday, and BRS-CDG sold out today and next Friday.
Effectively this means that there is no Bristol-Paris service next week for most people now looking to book, because the majority would want to travel there and back from whichever end they began. This is undoubtedly excellent business for easyJet because the fares on the five days where there is availability on BRS-CDG are not cheap with the highest shown as £238.74 next Saturday.
I wonder how many people who have had to look elsewhere in recent weeks may be lost to the route in the future and whether someone like bmi regional might be looking at a possible opportunity. Their fares would normally be higher than easyJet's but with the current monopoly on the route it can be seen that some passengers have to pay a large premium to travel with easyJet. I know that costs/availability of slots at CDG or even Orly come into it but Flybe quickly stepped in to increase its daily Exeter-CDG to double daily when it became apparent that Air France was leaving BRS.
Ryanair
The news this week discussed in the CWL thread regarding Ryanair commencing a weekly Thursday TFS-CWL this winter might or might not have an effect on BRS in the future.
FR has presumably calculated that its won't seriously dilute its BRS-TFS which will operate on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays this winter with easyJet operating the route on Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. I wonder why FR didn't opt for a day when it had no BRS service. The timings of the BRS and CWL routes are both morning services, albeit CWL begins at the TFS end, so there is not even the possibility of adding an extra half day's holiday by flying from one airport and returning to the other.
On a more general note, it will be interesting to see if this is the beginning of a change of Ryanair policy for Severnside. It hasn't really kicked on at BRS in recent years. Some routes come and go and last summer the base was reduced from five to two aircraft, apparently because of a failure to agree peak hour and overnight parking charges with the airport, although rotations and routes were not reduced in number through the use of non-based aircraft for the majority of flights.
This summer the base seems to be three aircraft with the other rotations again operated by non-based aircraft.
It may be then that CWL will see an increase of FR routes in the future. If it does it remains to be seen how this will affect its BRS network. Ryanair might be using the CWL initiative as a shot across the BRS bows to persuade them that it (Ryanair) calls the tune and to remember that, or it might be a move to spread the Severnside load ............on Ryanair's terms.