FlyBe - 6

[NWSRG]

BHD to Scotland this morning

Folks, pure curiosity here, but any ideas why both the Glasgow and Edinburgh flights were delayed this morning? The Glasgow flight I was waiting for ended up getting a 195, and a flight time of 23 minutes...

[Leg]

Dash in BHD tech so spare 195 de-mothballed to help out.

Quite a few tech issues today, as most days on the trash 8 fleet,
and the new idiot in charge thinks the future of the company
is the tractor.

[davidjohnson6]

Leg - if you're unimpressed with the boss' strategy, perhaps you could tell us what you think should be done to restore Flybe to financial good health ?

[Centre cities]

New Routes.

In respect of the above post, not to sure about BHX to Alicante and Palma up against Monarch and Ryanair.

Centre cities

[Flightrider]

The new BHX expansion is very odd indeed. They must have extremely short memories of BHX-PMI and BHX-ALC, given that they flew these a few years ago, got run out of town very quickly and pulled off. All I can assume is that this is a cashflow generation exercise to get advance bookings in the bank, paid for up front.

And BHX-Cologne? Once a day, off peak? Surely the logical thing would be an extra frequency on BHX-Dusseldorf especially given that it's an existing route and the train services from DUS airport to Cologne are so good.

About the only one which makes sense is BHX-FLR - though it seems like rather high frequency.

[GCILover]

I haven't looked at the others but the BHX-ALC is showing as a 175. Perhaps they think it will be more successful if they have less seats to worry about filling.

Now let's get some new decent routes from sou.

[globetrotter79]

BHX-OPO, ALC, PMI....so much for the 90-minute airline. A bit off message given all the spiel we've had so far from the new management team?!

[E75toDUS]

I haven't looked at the others but the BHX-ALC is showing as a 175. Perhaps they think it will be more successful if they have less seats to worry about filling.

Given business travel seems to fall in summer, BE have to find something to do with their fleet (e.g. DUS is usually only 2x daily in summer vs 3-4x in peak). MON already want >£250 pp on BHX to Alicante, and maybe BE think they can put a decent load factor into a 175 at that price, then the fiscals make sense. But outside of school hols may be a struggle.

And BHX-Cologne? Once a day, off peak?

I'm not sure Duesseldorf could take another flight, but I agree, it's hard to see this being really appealing to business passengers. And as soon as it looks like working, surely 4U will pick it up and demolish BE's business case?

No sign of Munich where BE have applied. OK there is LH competition, but the people I talk to give me the impression that BE could make progress if they can offer an attractive late afternoon/early evening returns to the UK, as with the current flight timings, business trips can be properly shattering.

[GCILover]

They might even help themselves somewhat if they advertise these new routes on their homepage.

There's nothing unless you look on the route map, timetable or go to book a route

[Daza]

Flybes new routes ex BHX

Flybe have now added a link on the website main page!
Flybe | Corporate | Media | News archive

Daza

[ATNotts]

And BHX-Cologne? Once a day, off peak? Surely the logical thing would be an extra frequency on BHX-Dusseldorf especially given that it's an existing route and the train services from DUS airport to Cologne are so good.

If you'd ever tried driving between the Düsseldorf and Cologne areas you'd realise that the two airports serve different markets. Fly to DUS to reach industrial centres such as Essen, Wuppertal, Duisburg, Moenchen Gladbach, Neuss etc., and CGN if you're looking to reach Cologne (the major commercial centre) and the southern Ruhr conurbations of Leverkusen, Aachen, Bonn and Düren. The market for CGN is going to be smaller businesswise, but for leisure Cologne is always going to win out over the more industrial cities to the north of the Ruhr.

I think they may have pitched it just about right, and if CGN does work, then they can always increase the service to double daily M-F.

[bad bear]

lay offs or recruitment?

To support these ‘Magnificent Seven’ routes, Flybe is also adding three of its 2x2 seat Embraer 175 jets to the airport thereby creating its biggest ever regional base with 12 aircraft, thereby creating more than 50 new Flybe jobs.

The sad saga started with headlines of a large number of routes that were not covering their direct costs and hundred to loose their jobs, then a little good news here and there as the odd extra route or rotation was added, now it seems good news at last with a return to recruitment?

bb

[virginblue]

And BHX-Cologne? Once a day, off peak? Surely the logical thing would be an extra frequency on BHX-Dusseldorf especially given that it's an existing route and the train services from DUS airport to Cologne are so good.

It is a new route at CGN, and usually this means that incentives are being coughed up by the airport. A fifth daily rotation to DUS at an off-off peaktime would probably attract few passengers and be more expensive to operate than a new service to Cologne.

Cologne has seen various BHX services over the past decade. It has been served - in that order - by British Airways, Lufthansa/DLT, Augsburg Airways, Duo, HLX and Germanwings in the past. The HLX and Germanwings flights were operated by 150 seaters which were too big for the market, but an 80 seater should do okay. Problem is that Germanwings now has CRJ900s at its disposal. They have begun operating W-patterns from DUS to include thin routesto/from CGN, e.g. WAW or ARN. Germanwings could always try to do BHX with a DUS-based aircraft in order to keep Flybe out of its CGN sandbox.

[munrobagger]

On the subject of 195s I see Thomson have retimed their EDI-MAH to Sat afternoon using BA , used to be Flybe 195s .

[Hotel Tango]

ATNotts: As one who does it often, the time difference driving Aachen-DUS or Aachen-CGN is negligable. Same goes for Leverhusen. I can't see very much high yield business traffic using the CGN service with the frequencies and timings offered. The Aachen, Duren and Leverkusen businessmen will opt for the higher frequencies offered from DUS. There will perhaps be more demand for leisure traffic from April to October. I'll be surprised if it continues into the Winter.

[ATNotts]

As one who does it often, the time difference driving Aachen-DUS or Aachen-CGN is negligable.

I must keep encountering the autobahn network between the 2 cities at very bad times, as it seems to me about as bad as the M6 around Birmingham!

[Hotel Tango]

I guess you must be I've been doing it for the past 40 years from a departure point in The Netherlands just West of Aachen. The time difference is less than 10 minutes. Of course, it can vary depending on road works (there's always road works). There are two ways from Aachen to DUS v.v., both via the autobahn network.

[virginblue]

It should not be forgotten that Cologne is the fourth largest German city and a considerable market in itself (add to that the region south and east of it for which CGN is the logical choice over DUS). If DUS can support 7 daily flights to BHX by BE and LH, it does not seem outlandish to assume that BHX can support 80 seats daily, given the fact that HLX and Germanwings did not fly empty planes, although they could not fill a 150 seater.

Plus, the BE flight opens up daily, reasonably priced connections from CGN to GLA, EDI and BHD (and IOM) which are not served from CGN at all / on a year round-basis.

[adfly]

It confuses me further that Flybe are getting rid of the E195's and yet flying BHX-Spain/Portugal on the E175!

[Wycombe]

They had to take a certain no. of 175's so I guess they have to use them for something (summer and winter).

With most of the 195's going I'm sure the pax would rather that than BHX to Spain and Portugal in a Q400.