BA Cityflyer

[davidjohnson6]

compton - with your own car I agree Granada is reasonably accessible, although 90 mins drive after a 3h flight is not brilliant.

Plenty of people flying from London do not want to hire a car, especially if on a city-based trip - for them it's 2h30 by bus from Malaga or Almeria airports, with trains either irregular or taking longer. No AVE high speed trains to Granada so getting to Madrid by land takes ages.

Yes you can get from London to Granada via Malaga but from a residential street in London you would be lucky to do the trip in less than 7h45 without a hire car or 6h45 with a hire car. Add a direct London-Granada flight and door-to-door takes about 5h15

[Omnipresent]

Omnipresent-
What other "Sun" routes have been dropped by BACF recently?

Faro has been virtually dropped with just a small number of frequencies in the summer peak.

[Flightrider]

Granada should do OK - it's not so much a case of being a London City-Granada service as being a London-Granada service in general. Both Monarch and Ryanair pulled out, but a service with a smaller aircraft should be sustainable, particularly as I presume there is some regional support in Spain to underpin the launch of the service.

[BAladdy]

I travelled on the ANG route in mid July and on the UIP route in late August. Not one of the flights operated with a load factor over 60%.

Does anyone know if the load factor I experienced was typical on both routes last summer?. Also what are the yields like on both routes??

[virginblue]

Does BACF have spare capacity in the winter schedule? Apparently they have received suitable slots for a DUS route for W13/14, but this would require more than half the capacity of an E-Jet. At the moment, all 14 jets are fully utilized in the mornings / evenings. Any rumours about one of the newer routes with an overnight stop (ARN, MAD, ABZ) struggling so that the required airframe could come off one of those routes?

[Skipness One Echo]

ARN is apparently struggling and may follow CPH in the being axed, indeed I think it's suspended for a few months in the school holidays to allow more capacity to the beach destinations.

[virginblue]

The interesting question is whether or not BACF would indeed use that aircraft for a DUS route. The Duesseldorf market was served for quite some time (1996 to 2010?) by VLM, EAE and Lufthansa with cheap-to-operate 50 seater turboprops, but apparently was never a real money-maker. Not sure why BA is interested if even Lufthansa was unable to make it work with a smaller aircraft.

The other question is if a spare E170 would be needed for IOM if BACF is interested in that market in the long run - I guess a few pax now travelling on BE from IOM to London will be uninterested to move their business to the big red orange which will be the only alternative once BE is gone,

[cornishsimon]

In which case would the S2000 go or be deployed elsewhere ?


cs

[BAladdy]

The other question is if a spare E170 would be needed for IOM if BACF is interested in that market in the long run - I guess a few pax now travelling on BE from IOM to London will be uninterested to move their business to the big red orange which will be the only alternative once BE is gone,

I have used the IOM services more than a 20 times over the last 6 months (Departing IOM on either the 17:45 on a Sunday or the 07:30 on a Monday. Returning from LCY on the 19:30 on a Thursday or Friday).The average pax load for my flights is about 15 pax (Lowest ever load was just 5 pax and the highest was 23). Recently heard that the route has been operating at a loss since it's launch and a friend at BACF said the loss if anything would be far greater if the route was operated by the larger 76 seater E170.

I personally think this route has potential to be profitable for BACF if they were to make the following changes.

- Replace the leased 50 seater S2000 with a smaller 32 seater D328, which could be operated by Loganair or from the BA franchise carrier Sun-Air.

- Adjust the timetable so that the first flights departs IOM earlier at about 06:30 and last flight departs LCY at 20:00 so as to offer better connections too and from Europe.

I have over the last 6 months chatted to a couple of my fellow pax about the route. The number one gripe they all have is the unreliability of the S2000.

Does anyone know how long BACF have leased the aircraft from T3 for?

[virginblue]

My thoughts re an E170 on LCYIOM were of course based on the assumption that there will be additional demand as a result of BE axing IOM-LGW.

[Haven't a clue]

Disappointed to hear your report BAladdy. I've been using the service since it started (with the E170 exactly a year ago). I've flown 39 sectors in that time, and I count the pax most trips. Lowest I've seen is 17, norm seems to be >50% and it's been full a few times. Of course it all depends on yield though.

I think that business traffic in/out of IOM is generally down though, and although a combination of BA and LCY is attractive, LGW and FlyBe/BA codeshare and interlining will have been very popular with both business and leisure pax. If U2 are the sole operators to LGW and codeshare/interlining disappears then I would expect more traffic to LCY. Let's hope so anyway.

[GolfTangoFoxtrot]

Does anyone have any thoughts on this new Odyssey Airlines start-up? Is it a threat to BACF? Does it upset any possible BACF expansion plans?

[flying officer kite]

Regarding the low numbers on the IOM flights, i wonder would they ever consider basing the aircraft in Belfast instead. Its already a BA 'base', and if it departed early each morning it could probably fit in nicely with the current IOM schedule.

The BHD-LCY route was tested a few years ago with Cityjet, but operating an expensive 328 (£200 a ticket, if i recall??) on a route like that will never make money, at least the Saab could pick up extra business- the fares are more reasonable

[Haven't a clue]

British European (before it became FlyBe) did exactly that. I used their iOM to LCY often. I think the aircraft also went on to JER. But that was probably around 10 years ago, and while it would suit me perfectly (it was an 8am or so departure ex IOM) I suspect BHD>LCY with a stop would have to be priced too low to generate a worthwhile yield. But I'd love to be wrong...

[AirLCY]

How low are the passenger loads? I doubt anyone would want to fly BHD via IOM to LCY, but maybe they should move the plane if IOM is so bad

[Tonyq]

It's possible to extrapolate from the IOM website that the average LF in April was c55%

[cornishsimon]

BA to start LCY-DUS on the S2000 three times a day.

Either IOM being dropped or more likely a 2nd eastern leased Saab joining the fleet.


cs

[jdcg]

Is this likely to be a codeshare with DUS-based Air Berlin resulting in the cancellation of their route from STN?

[tarnehat]

Looks like a second Eastern S2000, as it's on their website to book as operated by Eastern.

[BAladdy]

Flights to DUS will launch 1st September. Schedule below

BA3270 DUS 06:35 LCY 07:05 S20 x7
BA3274 DUS 13:15 LCY 13:40 S20 x67
BA3276 DUS 17:45 LCY 18:15 S20 4
BA3276 DUS 17:55 LCY 18:25 S20 125
BA3276 DUS 18:00 LCY 18:25 S20 3
BA3276 DUS 18:05 LCY 18:25 S20 7

BA3271 LCY 07:35 DUS 10:00 S20 x67
BA3275 LCY 14:15 DUS 16:40 S20 3
BA3275 LCY 14:25 DUS 16:50 S20 x367
BA3275 LCY 14:50 DUS 17:15 S20 7
BA3277 LCY 18:55 DUS 21:20 S20 x6