SOUTHEND - 3 The new beginning

[Barling Magna]

Yes, a nervous few days ahead for Southend - CAA stats early next week, and Southend United in the play-offs! I think I'll take a win on aggregate for both the stats and the play-offs.....

[Expressflight]

From reports I've had the SEN-DUB seems to have got off to a good start with all three daily flights achieving reasonable load factors. This week it's being operated by an ATR42 but next weekend will see an ATR72 back on the route for a few days.

[mart901]

Which aircraft have they been using? EI-CBK would be the best 42 to launch something I guess given its in full livery. Great that the routes gone live with 3 x daily frequency and looking at the schedules and gap in flight numbers it could easily be increased to 4 x daily, or maybe another route launched? NOC? SNN?

[Expressflight]

Yes, it was EI-CBK for the past couple of days.

There isn't sufficient slack in the schedule to operate an additional rotation to either of the destinations that you mention. I'm sure they'll leave it at 3 x daily SEN-DUB for the summer, with an ATR72 substituted when loads warrant it.

I believe there has been quite a bit of interest in through bookings to the US city destinations on offer via this route, with the SEN management stressing that no such service is available from either LTN or STN.

[LTNman]

Good passenger loads does not always mean a successful route but it helps. It’s what the passenger’s pay for their tickets that counts. 100 passengers paying an average of £40 before tax will earn the airline less than just 50 passengers paying an average of £85.

[EI-BUD]

Good passenger loads does not always mean a successful route but it helps.
It’s what the passenger’s pay for their tickets that counts. 100 passengers
paying an average of £40 before tax will earn the airline less than just 50
passengers paying an average of £85.

LTNman, I think everyone would understand this, but this is a brand new route and the focus at this time will be to bring attention to the new service, I think AerArann/Aer Lingus have done a good job of that. Yes they will want to make sufficient margin, the initial measures of success will certainly be around load factors.

Best of Luck to EIR on the new route... Will also be good to see Aer Arann getting a place on the busy Dublin / London market.

EI-BUD

[EI-A330-300]

with an ATR72 substituted when loads warrant it.

There will be a few ATR 72 flight over next weekend for the rugby match in London.

[mart901]

Anyone know why there was a positioning flight in today, landed 6.26am.

[Expressflight]

I believe it was to operate the 0700 DUB in place of the SEN-based aircraft which seems to be tech.

[EI-BUD]

CAA Stats

First month of stats since SEN Easyjet service as follows:

Amsterdam 9779
Belfast Intl 8945
Faro 5947
Alicante 5777
Istanbul 333 (charter)
Cologne 124 (charter)
Waterford 2839
Total -------> 33,744
Annualised 404, 928...... not a bad start! Vis a Vis stated goal of 2M...
Not all routes (Scheduled) were flying from day 1

It would appear that STN figures on some of the routes were hit, e.g Faro, Amsterdam, Alicante, though Belfast STN did well overall, with Bmibaby seeing over 10k on the route and Easyjet taking a drop of 5K for the month over LY. Early days to draw conclusions..

EI-BUD

[Expressflight]

The full passenger total for April was 41,626.

Those routes not mentioned by EI-BUD:

Barcelona 7,446
Ibiza 100 (one flight)
Carmoli 145
Unknown 191

A rough calculation of load factor suggests:

AMS 65%
ALC 83%
BCN 82%
BFS 58%
FAO 71%
WAT 65%

The above may not be wholely accurate as flight frequencies changed over the month as a whole, but they probably give a rough approximation to reality.

[vulcanised]

I would suggest that those figures are very encouraging, especially given the time of year that they relate to.

[Expressflight]

I'm very surprised at the deafening silence that the April figures have produced on this thread.

Surely at least LTNman has an opinion on them.

[mart901]

Please spare us! I know its early days and long before CAA stats will come out but does anyone in the know have an idea what kind of loads are going on the DUB route? Its one I notice is available to book into winter.

[JonEMA]

Any airline can fill seats. Yield is what matters..!!

[Aero Mad]

Any airline can fill seats. Yield is what matters..!!

Seems to be becoming rather clichéd on PPRuNe. Everyone who bangs on about yield is totally ignoring the fact that we do not have 'yields' figures, and CAA stats/load factors are the only way to gauge the success of a route or of an airport; it's either that or nothing. So every month when the stats come out, will you please not tell us that it is yield which matters - because we have no way of knowing what the yield might be . Rant over but you get the message.

[mart901]

In the absence of load figures to critcise folk start shouting about yield and how easyjet have offered low fares - how many routes do easyjet launch without low fares, I thought that was the business model! When the flights launched atc problems caused delays and people we're slating it as a bad launch. Its all green eyed monster talk in the end.

[Tagron]

Maybe the reason for the lack of commentary is that with 397 SEN posts in the five weeks since the thread was started there is nothing new left to say.
FWIW EasyJet have expressed themselves publicly as "very pleased" with the start of operations at SEN. But then they would say that wouldn't they ?

[pug]

Everyone who bangs on about yield is totally ignoring the fact that we do not have 'yields' figures, and CAA stats/load factors are the only way to gauge the success of a route or of an airport; it's either that or nothing.

JonEMA is right, however I believe you can more accuractely judge the success of a low-cost flight through load factors than you could of a legacy carrier. I think it was Stelios that said, as a rule of thumb, they need a 70% load to break even. That was a while ago though and things may have changed.

[JonEMA]

.......EasyJet had avg LFs of around 90% whilst at EMA but still packed up and left complaining of low yield...

Chat about loads by all means but they are in no way an indicator of success.