Luton is London and as quick to get into Central London as Stansted.

That isn't the point AE is making.

London Route
 

Aer Lingus could do well on a daily rotation on the Gatwick route?

On some of the routes from London to NI and ROI where Ryanair operate, I think that Customers wont need much temptation away from Ryanair. What with the new charges for check in etc.

What does anyone else think?

EI-BUD

"It is now not really possible to use the London service as a first leg on a double flight, which it used to be. This is a disimprovement by any measure. No wonder passenger numbers have dropped. Anyone listening in Ryanair?!?!?!?"

Amelia Earhart, you can still hop on the Aer Arann flight to Dublin and then connect onwards with Ryanair or Aer Lingus:ok:

Don't get me wrong but is a very small airport, serving a small region, and with BFS an hour or so down the road, its maybe reached its potential. Its a bit like Carisle or somewhere.
If you live there and there is one flight a day to London, for the sake of a car journey you can have 4 flights a day, on a particular route.
Maybe if BHD didn't get a runway extension or it was delayed indefinately, Londonderry could be an alternative for FR to launch continental serves(depending on the length of the runway up there).

Your arguement doesn't make any sense. If we follow your rationale, nobody would ever use small local airports. Airports like Waterford, Kerry etc. are a similiar size to Derry but continue to be popular despite there being much more frequencies and destinations from Cork Airport which is only about 2 hours from either. Galway Airport also is popular despite being only about an hour from either Shannon or Knock. Derry is a much smaller airport than BFS, and is much quicker and easier to pass through. This is a major plus factor for many people. Also, tourists probably don't mind the fact that theres only one flight a day, or that it only operates on certain days. Derry is much closer to Donegal and the popular West Coast of Ireland, and Derry city is a tourist destination in itself. A lot of people prefer using their local airport, and cater their schedules around the flight times available.

FYI, FR already operate continental services from Derry, they operate to Alicante during the summer months.

Now if you read what I said, in response to the suggestion of EI starting a once daily flight LDY/LGW, would it be successful?. Well if I lived in Londonderry and I wanted to go out for a day trip to London, or a specific time during the day, and the EI flight is not that time-I will drive for an hour to BFS and fly from there. So this multiplied up causes alot of loss in passengers. So then you are talking about EI starting a 2 daily to gather up maximum market share. So then is LDY an area capable of 2 EI and up to 2 FR flights a day to London. I don't think so.
Or are you suggesting the likes CO are going into Carisle, simply because its a small regional airport, with 3 daily returns to Newark.

I think the original point from AE was that the Derry-Stansted route was established and successful, and has now been ballsed up by RYR.

BFS an hour up the road? Maybe in the middle of the day, but early morning, the time people want to get flights, it can take considerably longer.

But my point was that a lot of people will fly from Derry because its their local airport, and it a lot more convenient than having to travel to Belfast. They will simply use the flight times available. Also correct me if I'm wrong but if you don't have a car, do you not have to get the train from Derry to Belfast and then a bus to BFS. Surely this takes a lot longer than an hour.
Also, once daily London routes do fine at other airports. EI recently opened a once daily Knock to Gatwick service despite the fact that Ryanair already operate a twice daily service to Stansted from Knock. It seems to be doing fine with a 67% load factor in the first month or operation. Also, Ryanair operate a once daily Kerry to Stansted service despite the fact that they also operate a 3 times daily service from Cork to Stansted which is only around 2 hours away. Both services do very well. Also, Ryanair will operate once daily services to East Midlands, Glasgow and Birmingham during winter 09/10, despite there being multiple daily services from both Belfast Airports. These all seem to be doing fine. I really don't see what the problem with operating a once daily service from Derry to Gatwick would be.

FYI, Ryanair only currently operate 7 flights per week between Derry and London, and will operate 8 flights per week during next winter. Their flight timetables are useless for day trips. To say they operate a twice daily service is kind of misleading.

1) The runway is already long enough for continental flights following the recent works. Indeed we now have our first continental flight to Alicante, albeit from the timetable it seems to be summer only although it had been hoped to be all year round. Who knows, maybe next year it will be extended if the flights this summer sell well.

2) The statement that "if BHD doesn't get a runway extension then maybe Ryanair will start continental routes from LDY" begs the answer that Ryanair operated from LDY before BHD and so if anyone should feel that they are losing out it should be LDY if any continental flights start from BHD that are not also run from LDY.

3) Getting to the Belfast airports is not too difficult. The airporter service is usually quite good though perhaps not frequent enough at some times and yet sometimes is almost empty so I do understand the company's dilema. But it is expensive: £27 return. If flying to or from BHD, you might be better catching the Ulsterbus "Maiden city flyer" Goldliner instead. The timetable is also more frequent than the airporter but it doesn't call at Aldergrove.

4) Gatwick is one of the airports that could attract a large number of passengers from LDY. From Northern Ireland the main destination airports are Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh and Glasgow. LDY only serves Stansted, Liverpool, Birmingham and Glasgow. Luton is not one of the main destination airports and if Easyjet didn't fly there from BFS it would have very few NI passengers so I'm not sure why Ryanair thought that it would be a good alternative to reinstating our Stansted flights.

As for EI operating a Gatwick flight from LDY, while I've no doubt it would be sucessful, even at 2 flights per day, I do wonder why they opened a base at all at BFS given that they would face direct competition from Easyjet and others and why they chose the routes they chose, 9 out of 14 of which have since ceased. LDY could have made more sense: they wouldn't have faced such direct competition and indeed any of the 14 routes would have had no alternative flight operating from the same airport. I know some doomsayer is about to state that the routes wouldn't have worked from LDY, but they didn't work from BFS and direct competition has to one of the main reasons ........

5) Can Northern Ireland sustain two operators and multiple flights to continental destinations or does EI's failure to sucessfully operate the routes from BFS spell the end to any hope of LDY getting any operator to start continental routes other than to the usual suspects of Alicante and Malaga etc.

I think that if Knock can sustain flights to LGW, STN and LTN, if places like Kerry can support 2 daily on Stansted (both as examples) I think that City of Derry Airport can support a LGW route and once developed I think that it could far outshine the popularity of STN or LTN, given the opportunity to offer connections?

Other than the London offering I am surprised that MAN has not been looked at by say bmibaby or Jet2. I thought that Aer Arann would look to Derry like a Galway scenario and offer flights on the non Ryanair destinations to say cities especially Edinburgh, Newcastle, perhaps pick up the Bristol route, I would imagine that an ATR42 with some good lead in fares could drive good passenger numbers?

EI-BUD

Fear of Ryanair?
 

Is it possible that the presence of Ryanair at Derry airport, while being the main driver of passenger numbers, is also the main constraint on numbers?

In other words, is it possible that the failure of the Airport management to get other airlines to establish other routes is due to a fear of competing with the might of Ryanair?

Manchester and Edinburgh would seem very obvious routes, Manchester having previously been successful from LDY, and Edinburgh which together with the currently successful Glasgow route is one of the main Northern Ireland destination airports, and yet no airline seems interested.

Ryanair operate to both these destinations, but having so far failed to show an interest, one would have thought that other interest parties might and yet nothing!

Fear of Ryanair?

Now if Ryanair themselves, or indeed anyone else, were to establish Manchester and Edinburgh routes they could timetable them with the existing Liverpool and Glasgow routes in such a way as to offer a day traveller a method, albeit circuitous, of getting to Liverpool/Manchester and Glasgow/Edinburgh and back to LDY on the same day.

Ldy-bhd
 

Maybe FlyBe should look at the potential of feder flights into BHD from LDY as they did in the past similar to the RE operation into Dublin? Maybe LDY should try and develop the PSO potential for subsidies from LDY to BFS, ORK etc

Who in their right mind wants to drive all the way to Antrim. If we north - westerners want to embark on a car journey before we fly, we might as well travel a little further on to the Airport that serves Belfast - Belfast City.
As an aside, it's nice to see some Antrim people travelling an hour up the road to use this Airport.

Cork with Aer Arann
 

The Aer Arann website now lists LDY to Cork as an option but upon closer inspection it is an indirect service via Dublin. Disappointing . . . . . when are we going to get real new flights?

It would be great to see Aer Arann offering a direct Derry to Cork service and maybe offering onward connections to Aer Arann's French destinations from Cork. The double daily to Belfast is probably their most successful route out of Cork so I guess its only a matter of time before they connect up Ireland's third and fourth largest cities directly.

Flew LDY-BHX yesterday (Saturday). First of all the flight was rammed...and I mean, there were no available seats at all on board. No seat restrictions for takeoff. Great to see......BUT

.......what wasn't so great was the fact I arrived at 14.45 for a 16.05 flight, but didn't actually get through security until nearly 15.35!!!! Crazy!! The reason? Two full RYR flights (therefore about 370 pax) leaving the airport within 30 minutes of each other and only one baggage scanning machine working.

It must be a complete nightmare for staff (and pax) on a Tuesday (for example) when flights leave for three RYR destinations and one Thomson route within 90 minutes.

Great wee airport. Great staff. But bloody hell, the infrastructure needs looking at ASAP.

Still handier for me than any other NI airport.............

Cut...that's an on-going problem with regional airports with more than 1 Ryanair flight. There is no allowance for that in the scheduling AND is going to get worse as all 189 pax use web-checkin AND all turn-up at -40 to get through security. All they need is 1 x pax that needs a hand-search and the whole queue stops!!!

Chances of a Ryanair Base at City of Derry
 

What are the chances of a base being set up at LDY by Ryanair?
1 or 2 738s would be a real runner in my opinion, they could in addition to operating the current schedule of routes to existing destinations ie Prestwick, Stansted, Liverpool, Birmingham, Luton and Alicante.

Some w patterns could be factored to ensure max utility of the aircraft?

A few routes could be added eg Tenerife, Lanzarote and Palma(summer) aswell as increase of Alicante. Paris (few flights per week) and in winter ski flights to Austria etc. What about Manchester and Edinburgh?? Also could allow for an early and late rotation on the London route.


Reliance on based aircraft would help to ensure that there would not be more than 2 aircraft in at any one time??

What does anyone else think? Would be great to see it happen.

Does anyone think that this is a possibility.

And they will find the passengers for these flights from where?

Couple of flights to Paris...(well northern europe somewhere that he will call Paris).......The BIG airport is having difficulty filling those seats and you think there is scope for more?.

Blimey...