Volare’s naff LTN start
 

Volare comes to Luton this month after switching from Gatwick but their arrival at Luton is already an unhappy one.

Luton services will operate for 10 days from 26th October until 4th November, then all services will be suspended and re-commence 4th December.

This is due to Volare being an aircraft down for this period - Luton service were chosen to carry the cuts due a combination of forward sales for Nov and aircraft utilisation (the aircraft would have day-stopped at Luton Tue/Thu/Sat).

I heard that Volare has had some leased aircraft reposessed recently.

Anyone know if this is true?

Hope that these incidents are not an indication of problems within the Volare group (which also includes Air Europe).

Can't say I'm surprised. Haven't seen one piece of advertising for any of their routes, anywhere. No one knows anything about it. Seems to have all the hallmarks of HLX, on their short-lived love affair with LTN. If Volare are still using LTN at the start of the summer schedules at the end of Mar 04, it will be a miracle. Classic TBI.

I guess local advertising is paid for by the accepting airport using Ryanair custom and practice, well until Strasbourg anyway!

Re-possessed aircraft! Please tell Buster more?

Ciao Fly for now!! Or is that Volare(noworsometimes)web?

Look, if you are creating a airline operator, firstly you must tell everyone, then you must fly the flippin' routes.

From the London Luton airport web site tonight:

Italian Carnival as VOLAREWEB.COM transfer UK operations to London Luton Airport!!

Established airline VOLARE today announced the transfer of all its UK operations to London Luton Airport, with the launch of low cost services to three prime Italian destinations. Under their new low-cost branding of VOLAREWEB.COM the airline are moving their entire UK base to London Luton Airport, where from 26th October they will be flying daily services to Venice (Marco Polo), Rimini and Cagliari.

So who is blatantly telling porkies?

The Volare Group includes:

Volare
Air Europe
Volar (ex LTE)

Scott

newspaper reports in Ireland yesterday stated that a high court injunction was obtained by ILFC (leasing company) to prevent Volare moving 2 large airbus aircraft from Dublin due to a catalogue of missed payments and refusal to pay current outstanding amounts

Volare Group situation is the follow:


1) Volareweb division is performing very well. Good yield and high load factor on the domestic network and on a large part of European routes. They are using 18 A320.

2) Air Europe is still alive only to keep long haul rights. They have only one A320 in PE livery, but they put PE code on all long haul network.

3) Volare Airlines got the worst situation. They had all the old debits, low demand on charter flights and they provide all the fleet and F/As-pilots to all the group divisions.

So in few word only Volareweb is good, all the rest is really in a bad situation.
Plan is to try to sell all the airlines to a big company, or shout down PE and VA and keep only Volareweb.

At the moment:

A320 I-PEKO (stored in DUB)
A321 I-PEKM (stored in DUB)
A320 F-XXXX (stored in SXF)

2 A332 in MXP.

Reason of the situation:
1) Old debits when VA bought PE
2) Cost of the VAweb start up
3) Low demand in charter market
4) Strong cpmpetition in long haul charter from L4, BV e GJ

In any case Volareweb will start from mid december two new routes:
VCE-BCN
FCO-BCN

Their advertising in Italy are really good. They used all the main newspapers, radios and also national TV.
Their brand in Italy is well known, like Ryanair, maybe more in the south part of the country.

TBI/Luton Website
 

Buster - that text has been on the website since it was officially announced that Volare were going to Luton. there has been no attempt to update the words to reflect the true position.

Of course the first news of the move was announced ..... on PPRUNE ... wherelse?

My understanding is that Volare tried to re-negotiate lease rates for the A320 fleet with the lessors and one of the lessors refused to accept the suggested cuts, resulting in three aircraft being reposessed.

I have been very disappointed with the travel opportunities open to people wanting to visit Rimini from the United Kingdom.

When Ryanair dropped the low cost service from London/Stansted there were no other direct links to Rimini besides the once a week charter flights by MyTravel Airways from Gatwick, Manchester and Birmingham.

There was a lot of excitement from my family when MyLite announced they were to launch a Birmingham to Rimini route however that was quickly abandoned in favour of another Malaga rotation.

I have not seen a bit of advertising from VolareWeb, the only way I know about the RMI flights ex LTN is because of reading airline industry magazines.

I am certain Volareweb's routes ex LTN would do very well if they only advertised a bit more. Ask the average Brit about a low cost airline and they'd just say EasyJet so ... advertising would help!

As Volareweb are only moving thier UK operation from Gatwick to Luton, marketing should be much easier than announcing a totally new service.

When was the last time an established BAA customer left to come to Luton? Any ideas Mr 1 BRAVO?

Buster - even with my steadily advancing years, I can not remember when an airline totally left a BAA airfield for Luton ... although maybe the years have affected my memory! As you know, it's usually the other way round.

The only thing I can think of would be in the late 1960's or early 1970's when Air Bridge used to run Vanguards/Merchantmens on Heathrow - Brussels for DHL and they moved the whole operation to LHR.

Maybe EGGW Relic will know - maybe ask him monday night before he has too many!!!

Buster / Olney 1 Bravo

Reckon this is the first time (effectively "in living memory") - and v.nice for lil' ole Luton to be able to stick one on BAA for a change...

Volareweb.com are clearly after the large Italian ex-pat visiting friends and relations market in Bedfordshire / Herts and North London - so it makes complete sense for them to leave Gatwick for Luton

Sorry got to go now - got some Bingo to call...

Love Eddie

Eddie, where have you been and as usual you are correct?

Mr 1 Bravo, are the drinks on you (From your large hospitality budget)?

The time is 19:50, what is that roar I hear? No not the Tiger, but Ryanair off to Dublin!

Ryanair started life flying Waterford to Gatwick then transferred operations to Luton when they got their 748’s. Mind you they went onto Stansted leaving only a token Dublin service.

Well, it arrived.
40 minutes late, but an impressively swift turn-round.
Don't know how many pax though?

Oh dear!. After only about a week into their revised launch out of LTN, the Rimini route has already been cancelled twice, in consecative days, due to lack of pax. If they can't get the pax in the the run up to Xmas, methinks an early chop of the route, at least for the winter, is on the cards.

Of the other destinations, the Venice routing is doing ok and the Cagliari is looking extremely good. Hope it does not end up doing a HLX, which started from LTN this time last year, only to leave in June.

Rimini Cancellations
 

If you mean yesterdays (i.e. Sunday) and todays flights being cancelled ... then todays is operating according to the Luton website.

I'm also told that yesterday's flight was cancelled due to thick fog at Rimini, which is borne out by the NOAA Weather website - I see there is an ILS at Rimini but don't know if it is CAT3

Well that lasted a long time didn't it. Both Venice & Rimini flights pulled from 11 Jan 2004. Continuing Cagliari ops 3 x weekly where loads seem to be ok based on a CAG-LTN-CAG operation. Are they heading back to LGW for the summer?. I thought HLX was short- lived but this takes the biscuit. Yet another loss to TBI who seem incapable of keeping any airline at LTN unless its easy, ryan, monarch. No wonder no foreign LCCs want to come to LTN, it always seems doomed before they start.

Helios is a Luton success but the only one I can think of. Maybe it is down to Stansted sniffing out the airlines that are going to fail leaving Luton to pick up the business or is it just bad luck?

Easyjet has shown that there is strong demand for services from Luton in fact they have just dropped their Zurich service from Gatwick as they can’t make any money from it while their service from Luton continues to make a profit.

Luton will pick up business as slots become scarce at Stansted but the challenge will be to hang onto business when the second runway at Stansted opens. Ryanair and TNT were established Luton based airlines when the might of BAA looked to Luton for business for their “new” Stansted airport. I don’t seem to remember them poaching airlines out of Gatwick.

While the government has given the green light for expansion at Stansted and Luton, TBI are a company that hasn’t got any money and now can’t even fund the new pier to the north apron in this financial year. Work starts on the new dual carriageway into Luton Airport in the New Year but that is government funded.

It will only be a matter of time before TBI sell their Luton asset now that permission for some serious growth has been given. Lets hope it is to a company with vision and money. :ok: