Logged the EK and UA data in my little black book of aviation Statistics for NCL, felt very good putting my first United data in with what is, essentially a very good load factor for only 7 flights and considering the prices they charge on some of them, most likely very healthy. Emirates minimum load factor was 52.05% (assumes 2 class operation all month... Seldom, if ever true)
If I'm correct in assuming that Flybe serves stansted x2 daily weekdays and x1 weekly on weekends, that's 52 flights, 104 movements. 4454/104 = 42.83 = 42 passengers per flight = 53.85% load factor. Perfectly adequate and with British Airways 13% increase this leaves less than a 2,000 passenger defecit on lost Gatwick pasengers, not too shabby after only 2 months. I still think a business friendly timed LCY route would be better suited to NCL's needs and would complement the STN service which I very much doubt caters for many London bound passengers.
Glad to see Cancun doing well... How did they get so much growth when the flights had high 90's load factors? Longer season, more flights this May? Good to see all our long haul routes doing well, may it continue and hopefully peak the interest of some other carriers. I'd like to see Cuba complement our current selection. Also some of the first increases in a long while on Belfast City, Cork and Birmingham. Brussels had some nice growth, CPH looking healthy, DUB still on the up, pleased to see DUS on it's way back up as well, will they re-time the flights and reinstate the second rotation? I remember pax numbers halved when they cancelled it. Amsterdam growing nicely although I expect there to be a downward trend for the next 12 months with the loss of Easyjet contributing a couple of thousand passengers each month.
The usuals, Bristol decrease (when are EZY going to get their act together with those God awful timings) Aberdeen and Stavanger decrease (oil, shame) and decreases across the board on the vast majority of leisure destinations... Why?!?! Was there a particularly good May last year? I did notice a lot of Jet2's routes didn't start until the last portion of may after 20th, is this later than usual have they had a later start this year? What did surprise me was the Paris decrease, hopefully a one off.
Even the extremely popular Greek islands declined! IIRC Kos was down 30% any growth was slow. Dubrovnik had large increase (170%) due to Thomson, Malta, Antalya, Larnaca, Enfidha and Zante were up a bit, thank you Jet2!
0.2% decrease on May 2014 which was a 6% increase on May 2013... Maybe we did have a good May, the persistent decreases on leisure confuse me greatly but at least the standalone routes like Jet2's and Thomson's city routes appear to be doing well, only routes with competition that aren't doing so well.