Interesting to see how markets have developed over the last 10 years... Some of it's surprising how much we've lost in terms of passenger numbers, routes and charters... For example:
Destination, 2007 - 2016
-Heathrow, 495,366 - 499,479 (stable, but there must have been HUGE leak onto the trains considering LGW/STN were dropped!)
-Amsterdam, 334,254 - 363,690 (peaked more when EZY were on the route)
-Palma, 298,604 - 257,176 (might come back up to near 300 thousand next year with FR on the route)
-Stansted, 297,882 - Dropped
-Bristol, 246,808 - 164,595 (*Best not mention this one, it can get heated!)
-Paris, 234,370 - 148,784 (I believe CDG will have been EZY on their 737's and Brit Air CRJ 700's at the time)
-Dublin, 227,066 - 232,538 (huge growth recently, there must have been a considerable drop on NCL-DUB around the turn of the decade)
-Belfast, 224,565 - 250,418 (One of the more stable routes, probably the same 30,000 people that used to go to Belfast City)
- Gatwick, 109,649 - Dropped
- Prague, 90,244 - 26,194
- Murcia, 87,623 - 19,355
- Krakow, 67,316 - 27,196
- Rome, 71,847 - 17,744 (all 4 of these have gone from multiple weekly frequencies on EZY's 737 700's to x2 weekly on Jet2's 737 300's - Both of which have 148 seats if you're interested - EZY must have already dropped Budapest, Copenhagen and Berlin by 2007, I assume? )
- Brussels, 38,958 - 19,431 (SN RJ100 to BM E135 I believe?)
- Dusseldorf, 20,760 - 41,630 (Surprising result! Wasn't DUS twice daily at some point with the CRJ?)
- Orlando, 18,621 - 17,453 (Back when we had a MON A330 and TOM 767 every week - interesting that there are no figures for Cancun, 2007... Was it not operated that year?)
- Stavanger, 13,086 - 6,587 (WF, Dash 8 - BM, ERJ135)
- Copenhagen, 18,891 - 22,371 (Cimber Air, CRJ 200 - SAS, CRJ 900 - Dropped 10/17)
- Bergamo, 38,580 - Dropped (almost 40k and nobody's taken a second look since FR swapped us out for Manchester)
- Belfast City, 37,208 - Dropped (Back again on the Jetstreams)
- Hanover, 32,470 - Dropped (2007 was about the time of the transfer from HLX to TUI on the Hanover route wasn't it? After HLX's other routes to Cologne, Hamburg and Munich went under - If I remember correctly)
- Bergen, 20,486 - Dropped
- Birmingham, 24,169 - Dropped
- Puerto Plata, 16,704 - Dropped (I never knew Puerto Plata was operated from NCL, I thought it was just Punta Cana. I assume this was a TOM 767?)
- Valencia, 12,089 - Dropped (I never knew we had a route to VLC either! Who operated it?)
- Torp, 10,331 - Dropped (Just add to the list of Oslo airports we no longer have service to!)
- Thessaloniki, 9,982 - Dropped (hope it pays up for LS and TOM next year)
- Luxor, 7,695 - Dropped ( another route I never knew we had! XL I assume? They were adventurous)
- Toronto, 7558 - Dropped
- Izmir, 5,568 - Dropped (We had this too?? XL?)
- Plovdiv, 4,375 - Dropped (another one! Was this XL or Balkan?)
- Varna, 2,898 - Dropped (I knew this was somewhere down the line, but not the operator... XL/BH?)
- Venice, 2,193 (These were charters I assume, too early for Jet2... But a considerable amount of passengers)
- London City, 685 - Dropped ( The first 2 months of Eastern's ill fated LCY service, IIRC. Wrong airline, wrong aircraft, wrong business model...)
- Alghero, 668 (again, must have been charters, but somewhere I never knew we had service too - Sardinia is a bugger to try and get to!)
- Hamilton, 5,941 - Dropped (were these troop charters? Seems like an awful lot of passengers! Another odd one that I didn't know about/can't understand why it ever happened! It wasn't one of those oddball Flyglobespan routes was it? I know they did a few routes to Hamilton but I never thought from Newcastle...)
It's good to see that routes like Almeria, Thessaloniki and Santorini have come back online, or will be. Were Thessaloniki and Santorini XL routes?
I think a x4 weekly evening flight from Emirates, about 8-10 months of the year, is the best we can hope for in the immediate future.
Maybe one day we'll be a Cat F airport...