Merchant-Venturer Re Bristol – my observations and analysis confirm your numbers. It is a very odd route for EasyJet, as there is very little natural traffic between IOM and that part of England (I mean historical tourist links, commercial business or VFR) in either direction, and, in the past the route has attracted only penny numbers with FlyBe or Eastern. Good luck to them. One hopes that with the irregular schedule and frequency, it won’t be too damaging to the established Gloucester and BHX routes.
IOMX –welcome to the discussion. Let’s look at some other facts here, as I’m not sure that yours actually contained very many, despite your opening gambit!
Whilst no-one is disputing that BA have a very nice product, good frequency and LCY is a great airport, they have already pulled off the route once before, and only came back to it with some form of financial under-writing from an online betting organisation. So let’s not pretend that there is any form of philanthropy, or great passion to serve the IOM here, on the part of BA.
With entry level fares roughly 3 times those on LGW and STN, this is way above many passengers’ price point, and the service will only ever be accessible to a small proportion of the overall IOM-LON travelling public.
It is my understanding that the financial support has now ended, and they carried 22% fewer passengers in April 2015 than April 2014, the first full month that BE were on STN, with a similar schedule and much lower fares, so it seems likely that decision time is coming, again.
http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/80/airport_data_prov/201504/April_2015_Provisional_Domestic_Routes.pdf
BTW, it is totally untrue to say that the easyJet service is ‘invariably an hour late’. I am not a big fan of easyJet, but the morning rotation is generally very punctual; the evening much less so. Take a look here, if you don’t believe me.
http://www.flightstats.com/go/FlightRating/flightRatingByRoute.do
Re Luton – I am not sure that anyone has ever made money on IOM-LTN; it was always a bit of an off-peak filler. I agree that resurrecting it might have been a better bet than STN, but clearly FlyBe’s deal with MAG dictated their STN effort. With 1400+ seats daily in the IOM-LON market right now, it would be madness for anyone to try LTN, at this point in time.
Turning to the wider IOM-LON market debate, yes, the market is finite and nowhere near as elastic as the IOM-Northwest market, where ferry passengers are part of the target market. My personal view is that FlyBe went OTT with three daily to STN (and wrecked their own MAN schedule in the process) and that x 2 (morning and evening) would be more sensible. If their current passenger levels could be sustained over just those two rotations, it would lift the LF to c60%, and just another 10% uplift would take them close to their network average.That sounds feasible, with a little effort. There has been very little marketing and publicity on the Island and no attempt to sell the schedule which is much more balanced and attractive than easyJet’s.
I suspect that this is a very tricky market for the operators, as the reasons for travel, and the ultimate destination vary greatly, and people will change their behaviour, and routing, for numerous reasons. If I am going to London for weekend, then I will considerLGW, LCY and STN; if I am connecting abroad, then it is probably LGW (although MAN often works). I know there are lots of connections from STN with FR, but I haven’t managed to make that work, so far.
What is clear though, is that there is significant over-supply right now, and something has to give. There are approx. 36,000 seats available each month, and I think (off the top of my head) that in the halcyon days of FlyBe on LGW and LTN and BA on LCY the overall market was never greater than around 21-22,000.
Last edited by Tonyq; 1st Jun 2015 at 12:53.