Edinburgh-4

[Planeraz]

SunExpress S23

Major expansion planned to/from UK in S23.

Antalya - daily
probable new routes - DLM and Izmir. Expected to be 3 x weekly.

Will Turkish be up for the fight or concentrate on their core route (IST) which continues to perform well?

[Link Kilo]

Originally Posted by nighthawk117

Can you provide more info on what you are talking about here? Have they announced they are dropping the routes?

They've not announced it to the best of my knowledge - airlines rarely announce such things - but a quick look at the TK website will show you that DLM isn't bookable and AYT (originally launched as twice-weekly) goes down to one-weekly (Saturdays only) from the end of May then doesn't operate at all from Saturday 9th July to 27th August (inclusive). That covers the entire Scottish school holiday period, so it's a bit odd to do that and then resume in September for the final two months of the season. That said, sister airline SunExpress increase their AYT service to three-weekly from the 14th June, so there's still plenty to concern those worried about over-capacity.

The news about AYT going daily with SunExpress in S23 is in the tweet below from Routes 2022 where it seems EDI's marketing team was out in force.

Twitter

Facebook Post

[Planeraz]

Virgin W22

Edinburgh-Barbados dropped. No surprise. Will Virgin take a punt at another US destination from EDI next year?

[Breathe]

Originally Posted by Planeraz

SunExpress S23

Major expansion planned to/from UK in S23.

Antalya - daily
probable new routes - DLM and Izmir. Expected to be 3 x weekly.

Will Turkish be up for the fight or concentrate on their core route (IST) which continues to perform well?

Why would they be up for having a fight with SunExpress, in which it owns 50% of the airline along with Lufthansa?

[Planeraz]

I wasn’t aware of the tie in. Happy to be informed.

[Sk1schoolsam]

Originally Posted by Planeraz

Virgin W22

Edinburgh-Barbados dropped. No surprise. Will Virgin take a punt at another US destination from EDI next year?

Disappointing news but felt they were never fully committed and would have liked them to try a full winter season. Perhaps extend Orlando to all year round or increase the current summer frequency.

[tictack67]

Originally Posted by Sk1schoolsam

Disappointing news but felt they were never fully committed and would have liked them to try a full winter season. Perhaps extend Orlando to all year round or increase the current summer frequency.

Why do you feel they were not committed?

They offered two Barbados a week and two Orlando at a time of uncertaintyand lockdowns.

They are a business, and if people don't use the service, they should rightly consider their stance and protect their finances.

Question is why it's so much more expensive to fly direct across the Atlantic than go via Europe or London

[willy wombat]

Maybe moving airport wasn’t the smartest thing to do.

[Flightrider]

Disappointing news but felt they were never fully committed and would have liked them to try a full winter season.

I do have to wonder about some of these comments. Anyone launching a new route - especially a longhaul one - is committed otherwise they wouldn’t be doing it. “Cut too soon” or “needed more time to prove itself” are all very well to say when you’re not the one watching the losses rack up in the short term.

[Rutan16]

Originally Posted by tictack67

Why do you feel they were not committed?

They offered two Barbados a week and two Orlando at a time of uncertaintyand lockdowns.

They are a business, and if people don't use the service, they should rightly consider their stance and protect their finances.

Question is why it's so much more expensive to fly direct across the Atlantic than go via Europe or London

Economics 101 especially in the back of the bus/Dreamliner.

The major players from the Golden Triangle in a variety of shades of blue, white, grey, and occasional red accent, operate generally high frequencies on prime routes targeted at squeezing yield and for (convenience demanded) for those in bathchair seats, oft leading to massive over capacity in steerage .

That over capacity is price dumped via a range of consolidators lowering prices for many of those seats in economy and frequently below market rate.
Incidentally also putting pressure on those few flexible carriers margins (much to their delights) .

Whilst those lower frequency services from Manchester and Edinburgh and similar sizes European cities are required ( by bean counters) to maintain the recovery margins. At the same time these will inevitably have fewer corporate contracts for the front end seats ( lower yield) and therefore become exposed and risk rationalisation if the general economy travels south .

Use of the 757 whilst providing those links for some years is now hampered with rapidly rising maintenance costs and compounded by the equally claimed poor service for those up front, and that do travel from the regions.

Result is more of the valuable yield potential generating traffic will shuttle to the various hubs; further weakening those remaining services.
Add mileage bribes you see where I am going with this !

Evidence look at the load factors ( not yield) of some of the Heathrow flights particularly in shoulder and winter season - they are dreadful

Also an example of yield potential collapsing due to weaker demand and the loss of corporate business both freight and self loading is that of American services from Manchester to Philadelphia. The service viability pretty well ended when the pharmaceutical trade from Wilmslow evaporated.

This phenomenon is decades old through the alliances have simply emboldened it further in recent years.

Hence the general reductions on secondary routes and high(er) fare demanded on those that do remain.

[Skipness One Foxtrot]

I think EDI-BGI was an unlikely punt as they needed to try SOMETHING to get flying again. Moving MCO across to EDI is interesting, but getting to GLA at the moments is a massive pain due to the M8 so EDI continues to win.

[Planeraz]

Delta S22

BOS-EDI 18/7 & EDI-BOS 19/7. Aircraft upgrade to A333. Like JFK aircraft upgrade, I assume their must be big demand from Americans travelling to/from St Andrews for the open.

[nighthawk117]

The United flights have been full almost every day for the past few weeks, so there's plenty of demand.

[Sk1schoolsam]

Originally Posted by nighthawk117

The United flights have been full almost every day for the past few weeks, so there's plenty of demand.

Great to hear, United still plan to drop back to the 3 x 752s in July when ORD restarts, will be sad to see the 764 go. Just hope they have enough reliable 752’s now 😉

[figgi_gsm]

With Turkish sending their A330-300 on 18th, 25th and 29th, here is how it’s looking for visitors those days:

Sat 18th:
Qatar-DOH: 0650A 0820D (788)
Virgin-MCO: 0720A 1020D (333)
United-EWR: 0805A 0940D (752)
Air Canada-YYZ: 0835A 1015D (788)
Delta-BOS: 0850A Departs 1050 to JFK (763)
Turkish-IST: 0930A 1100D (333)
Delta-JFK: 1010A Departs 1215 to BOS (763)
United-IAD: 1045A 1230D (764)

On the Wed 29th you can also add:

Westjet-YYZ: 0905A 1025D (7M8)
TUI UK-CUN: 1155D (788)
Qatar is an afternoon flight

Nice to see things picking up again.

[Sk1schoolsam]

Originally Posted by figgi_gsm

With Turkish sending their A330-300 on 18th, 25th and 29th, here is how it’s looking for visitors those days:

Sat 18th:
Qatar-DOH: 0650A 0820D (788)
Virgin-MCO: 0720A 1020D (333)
United-EWR: 0805A 0940D (752)
Air Canada-YYZ: 0835A 1015D (788)
Delta-BOS: 0850A Departs 1050 to JFK (763)
Turkish-IST: 0930A 1100D (333)
Delta-JFK: 1010A Departs 1215 to BOS (763)
United-IAD: 1045A 1230D (764)

On the Wed 29th you can also add:

Westjet-YYZ: 0905A 1025D (7M8)
TUI UK-CUN: 1155D (788)
Qatar is an afternoon flight

Nice to see things picking up again.

curious- Does anyone know if EDI has had as many wide body jets in one day than expected over the next few days?

[Asturias56]

"Question is why it's so much more expensive to fly direct across the Atlantic than go via Europe or London"

Direct flights always command a premium - it's very high transatlantic from Heathrow - much more so than out of AMS.

Applies in the other direction as well - often much cheaper (especially in Business) to go Australia - AMS or to CDG and then Eurostar to London

[Link Kilo]

Originally Posted by Planeraz

Will be very interesting to compare similar sized English airport by pax number - such as BHX. I strongly suspect Scottish airports such as EDI and GLA will recover much slower compared to airports down south. EDI CEO is on record as saying that Sturgeons complete refusal to engage about a safe return to travel hugely damaged the airport and sector more generally. For purely political reasons, only a few weeks ago, her deputy was suggesting that Scots should not travel overseas in 2022 due to the risk of importing variants of the virus. What chance do you have when individuals in power or with influence continue to brief against the travel sector?

April 2022 as a % of April 2019 passengers numbers for main airports reported to the CAA at the time of posting.

[A350Saltire]

Originally Posted by Sk1schoolsam

Great to hear, United still plan to drop back to the 3 x 752s in July when ORD restarts, will be sad to see the 764 go. Just hope they have enough reliable 752’s now 😉

I’ve heard that the 764 will remain on IAD until August now and that will be alongside the ORD 752 when that route restarts and the EWR 752. Seems it’s pretty busy at the moment.

[Breathe]

Originally Posted by A350Saltire

I’ve heard that the 764 will remain on IAD until August now and that will be alongside the ORD 752 when that route restarts and the EWR 752. Seems it’s pretty busy at the moment.

That will be a great catch for the spotters given that only 37 of this variant were ever built, so it's pretty rare to spot it in the wild.