SOUTHEND - 4

[tophat27dt]

I assume they have done some homework. CityJet fly the Antwerp route from LCY 4x daily I believe, and Germanwings fly 3x a day average £100 return CGN-STN. (Personally I prefer Dusseldorf as a city to visit, but maybe CGN is a better business route). Groningen and Osnabruck were always on the cards.
Rennes and Caen; well, brave choices, but all six will need LOTS of continous publicity both sides. I wish them good luck.

[compton3bravo]

New Routes

Some real money-spinners there - I think not especially using aircraft the size of an ATR-72. Why compete with Cityjet on the Antwerp route, to me it makes no sense at all.

[virginblue]

So, the big question is: Which two routes will be double daily? Given the size of the market, my money would be on ANR and CGN, with RNS, CFR, FMO and GRQ daily flights late morning/early afternoon.

I assume they have done some homework. CityJet fly the Antwerp route from LCY 4x daily I believe, and Germanwings fly 3x a day average £100 return CGN-STN. (Personally I prefer Dusseldorf as a city to visit, but maybe CGN is a better business route).

No, DUS is a better business route, but it has tons of LON flights (STN by AB, LCY by BA, LGW by U2, LHR by LH and BA). CGN has only LHR and STN by 4U and LGW by U2.

STN-CGN will be reduced from the end of November to twice daily, so I guess there is a market for the lost capacity. Also, CGN-STN is the route of choice for Ford officials since the end of Fordair.

[Steviec9]

SEN/ANR

I was musing on this - does seems odd with WX established on LCY/ANR. However, there are a few pro's:
(i) charges at SEN likely to be lower = lower fares.
(ii) much of the steady market on this route is from the Jewish community in north east and east London and the banking/oil companies in Canary Wharf = easy connections to Southend Airport via Stratford
(iii) no large airports involved, ANR takes all of 5 mins to get out of the terminal = ease of use (once tried)
(iv) no direct competition from Eurostar, nor likely to be for some time, connecting trains at Brussel Zuid to Antwerp can take longer than the flight time SEN/ANR = no hauling luggage around
(v) CityJet/VLMs fleet of F50s are already pretty vintage and approaching retirement and I'm not clear about their fleet replacement = competition could be heading for dustbin anyway
(vi) anything larger than a turboprop is pretty much restricted from ANR = no additional competition

So, given that LON-ANR has been around for years in various guises (as an Anglo-Belgian family we've flown Gatwick with BCal Commuter, Air Europe Express, CityFlyer Express, Heathrow with DAT/SABENA, City with VLM/CityJet), this clearly is a niche route with steady demand. Could work..... Anyway, will be buying a ticket when they go on sale and go and see family and try it out. Good luck to this route and all the others.

[virginblue]

According to this, it sounds as if the routes will all be single daily with a planned increase of RNS and ANR to twice daily later in the year, with one aircraft doing RNS (2), GRQ and FMO and the other ANR (2), CGN and CFR.

Routes News - Six new routes for London's Southend Airport

Not sure what the point of a single daily CGN is, given that all competing LON routes from there are at least wice daily - but we shall see. By the way, SEN-CGN was one of the suggested routes of the stillborn Jump! Airlines.

[serko]

single daily CGN might be enough to satisfy Ford.

Rennes currently has no flights to London and given the below could be why it will be double daily

In 2009,the inner population of the city was of 206,604,and its urban area counted 663,214 inhabitants.
The inhabitants of Rennes are called Rennais in French.
Rennes has the second-fastest growing metropolitan area in France.

[Barling Magna]

Hmmmm...... interesting set of destinations. Why did they not select Edinburgh and Belfast? Easyjet has proven a demand exists on those routes albeit not for an A319 much of the time. Twice daily services to both destinations at the right time would surely succeed using an ATR...... From the list of six I think Cologne and Groningen have the best chance of permanence. I hope Stobart have plenty of cash for marketing and publicity - they're going to need it to fill those aircraft on most of those routes and it's already rather late for this summer's leisure passengers.

[virginblue]

Maybe the franchise deal does not allow domestic flights given Flybe's own (planned) presence at LCY?

[Cyrano]

The timetable for the flybe Southend flights is here.

[sxflyer]

Re BE at LCY, where are the slots coming from? Putting 2+2 together, do they know something we don't about Cityjet and their future intentions - co-operation/franchise agreement with some routes including Antwerp to go? I see no other logic for ANR-SEN

[virginblue]

Apparently they are going after Belgians and French customers as the RNS and ANR schedules are pretty useless for SEN-originating passengers:

...RNS at thrice daily, but with the first arrival at RNS not before 1355 (!) (departures from SEN at 1140, 1515, 1840)

...ANR at twice daily with SEN departures at 1550 and 1830

The aircraft will overnight at ANR and RNS and not SEN.

[NickBarnes]

Return prices are 59.98 don't know how this compares to city jet from London city?

[virginblue]

Return are more expensive thanks to the LCY-ANR leg. ANR-LCY can be dirt cheap, though.

[virginblue]

Looking at the timetable, RNS will be thrice daily and CFR just 4/7.

Re BE at LCY, where are the slots coming from? Putting 2+2 together, do they know something we don't about Cityjet and their future intentions -

Cityjet has axed a ton of routes recently (EDI, DND, LUX, PAD, FMO etc.), so there should be sufficient slots available.

Rennes currently has no flights to London and given the below could be why it will be double daily. In 2009,the inner population of the city was of 206,604,and its urban area counted 663,214 inhabitants. The inhabitants of Rennes are called Rennais in French. Rennes has the second-fastest growing metropolitan area in France.

IIRC, RNS has had LON flights a couple of times in the past. Brit Air to LGW and Brymon to LCY come to mind.

[davidjohnson6]

Southend-Caen looks to be all about Brits going to Normandy for leisure at child-friendly times. Based on flight schedule, difficult to see demand for any other kind of demographic. Presumably this route will be a summer seasonal, with the aircraft being deployed to somewhere like Munster in the winter

[jdcg]

I can't see much benefit to the Caen flights, unless you're a south Essex resident with a holiday home in Normandy, and even then, the whole point about having a holiday home there is that you can drive there easily with your own car from home. Brittany Ferries are really expensive but the Calais ferries are really cheap albeit a long but not unpleasant drive from Caen.
This route was tried for a while way back by Buzz from STN and didn't last long. Popular with French students but that's about it.
Rennes is much more likely to do well. Vibrant city where the Flybe brand is already well established.
I hope these niche flights work well for Flybe / Stobart...

[kcockayne]

Rennes has almost no scheduled flights from anywhere, except France. Caen has even less.
So, there is definitely a gap BUT, does it need to be filled ?
I agree-brave choices. I don't expect to see these routes being operated for very long.
Hope I'm wrong !

[Cyrano]

Originally Posted by davidjohnson6

Southend-Caen looks to be all about Brits going to Normandy for leisure at child-friendly times. Based on flight schedule, difficult to see demand for any other kind of demographic.

Isn't it potentially also about French people from Normandy who want to come to London and whose existing alternatives are basically backtracking to Paris, or taking a ferry?

I'd see most of the new destinations as focusing on inbound-to-London traffic rather than outbound, serving the overall London market rather than just the Essex catchment. Apart from anything else, the cost of advertising these routes effectively in the wider London market would be very high. The schedules (aircraft overnighting in ANR and RNS) are clearly designed for non-UK-originating passengers.

It's going to be very interesting to see the effect on CityJet, and any potential reaction. Unlike some other LCY routes, Antwerp is less driven by financial-services traffic heading for the City, so a cheaper offer through SEN is likely to be quite attractive to the market.

Overall these destinations make reasonable sense to me, although I am still a bit puzzled by a once-daily mid-morning CGN schedule, which doesn't seem attractive to business and which faces competition for leisure travellers from other London airports.

[tws123]

You can tell which airports are most enthusiastic about this venture. Munster/Osnabruck and Groningen already have adverts of their websites and Facebook pages, Groningen even has a promotional video (in Dutch). Cologne also has a news article. Antwerp, Rennes and Caen have no reference as of yet on their websites.

[serko]

to be fair all Southend Airport has is the news story. Not much else.