Shock and awe, Ryanair style
Seems to me a fairly clear message from FR : "compete with us head-to-head anywhere and we'll kill you."
No evidence on the FR booking engine as yet of the promised 5x Dublin flights in November, only a particularly bad 3x daily schedule (last departure from Dublin 1430, first departure from BHX 1340!).
A couple of possibilities here:
- they just haven't finished loading the DUBBHX schedule (hmmm...)
- they've screwed up the schedule load;
- they are waiting to see if their "shock and awe" tactic vs MYL delivers results.
It looks as though one aircraft is doing DUB-BHX-GRO-BHX-DUB starting in the morning and another's doing DUB-BHX-MJV-BHX in the afternoon/evening. However there's an arrival into BHX from MJV at 2140 and no corresponding departure - I assume that sooner or later we'll see a 2205 departure from BHX to DUB?
Jetstream7: you were wondering why there are no Charlerois, Hahns etc? IMHO it's because this is simple competitive response on FR's part, not because they've chosen BHX as a new target city or anything (landing fees far too high for them, for a start). If MYL backs off and (for example) signals that they're going to come off Dublin after a decent interval, I wouldn't expect any of this supposed FR expansion at BHX to happen.