Loganair claims first blood in airline battle | Shetland News
LOGANAIR chief Jonathan Hinkles said his airline is performing better than Flybe on routes to and from Shetland - but he warned having two operators at Sumburgh Airport "isn't sustainable" at current passenger levels.
The battle between the rival airlines swapped the skies for Lerwick Town Hall on Thursday afternoon as representatives for both operators gave updates at the latest meeting of the Shetland external transport forum.
Hinkles revealed passenger figures for the two operators since they quit their franchise partnership and went head to head from 1 September, with his airline seemingly winning so far.
But figures showed that all of the planes were on average flying less than half full as thousands of seats went empty.
Hinkles said Loganair had nearly double the number of passengers than Flybe travelling to and from Sumburgh on their competing routes in the first three weeks of September, despite it having less seats available on its smaller Saab planes.
Flybe interim chief commercial officer Ronnie Matheson said the figures were in line with the airline's initial predictions as it builds on encouraging more people to travel to Shetland with lower fares, with future expansion possible.
Flybe - in conjunction with Eastern Airways - competes with Loganair on routes to Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow using a bigger, faster Embraer 170 jet on nine flights a day.
Hinkles told the forum that 6,176 people had used Loganair between 1 and 20 September, while 3,199 travelled with Flybe.
He added that Loganair had 12,690 seats on their routes and Flybe 13,684, meaning the former had an overall load of 49 per cent and the latter 23 per cent.
Hinkles' statistics also showed that Loganair had a market share of two thirds and Flybe had 34 per cent.
Loganair's performance this summer compared to last year was up on 2016, he said, while planned developments include adding defibrillators to aircraft and adding more overhead baggage space.
Hinkles also attacked Flybe's schedule over the upcoming festive period, with Loganair set to operate on every day Sumburgh Airport is open while Flybe is set to cut back on its Edinburgh and Aberdeen routes, for example.
He added that Loganair had evaluated using the Embraer 170 - taking over five years of weather data from Sumburgh - and concluded that it is three times more likely to "suffer serious delay or cancellation due to weather than the Saab 2000 on the same flight".
Hinkles concluded that "the market is not growing to sustain the extra services" but said "we are here to stay - and we will be here to stay".
To me, underlines the unsustainability of competition in the current climate, and of using jets on the LSI run.