City Star to announce further ABZ expansion
 

Small report in my local this morning.

City Star are to acquire a 3rd DO328 to be used for ad-hoc work mainly.

They are also to announce two further scheduled routes from ABZ.

Official announcements to come next week.

I believe LCY may be one,but not sure what other route they have in mind.

They do say that they have researched the market & the new routes are in response to customer demand.

I guess that the company must be doing OK.

Do you know how the ABZ - BLK route is doing for pax?

I believe the general feeling is 'slow'. Hopefully as time goes on it will pick up.

Just came back from OSL with them yesterday, much better way to get to and from there. First time in a Dornier, must say I was very impressed with the amount of space and how quiet it was, nice get a meal on a flight that's not LH too.

Not sure re BLK,but probably a slow start,like OSL was.

Re OSL,CAA stats show 794 pax used the route in July.

There are 2 x rotations M-F plus 1 on Su.

I counted 47 flights therefore between ABZ & OSL for July.

Means 16-17 pax per flight on average,on a 30 seat DO328.

(IF my maths are correct! :\ )

Plus there will also be freight carried no doubt.

My only worry is if City Star "overstretch" themselves,however they have been operating a few charters as well as their schedules,so looks as if they are making money.

Maybe my math is not what it should be but I work out if they do two round trips every weekday and one on Sunday, that's 22 flights per week (94 for July) which, at 794 passengers for the month, is an average of just less than 9 per flight.

oops,forgot to count trips there AND back !!

:mad:

:mad:

The fact that they are expanding seems to suggest that they are satisfied with progress for them to continue with their growth plans.

Good for them :ok:

The latest news from Leeds/Bradford is that Aberdeen based city star airlines plans to operate one of there new aircraft on a 2 times daily Aberdeen - Leeds - London City service. Also a 3rd daily direct service from Aberdeen to London city been mentioned.

looks to be operating following patten

ABZ-LBA-LCY-LBA-ABZ
ABZ-LCY-ABZ
ABZ-LBA-LCY-LBA-ABZ

Can anyone comfim these plans?? I Don't know if there are ture as I heard from someone within LBIA.

Sounds like a reasonable idea, given the BMI debacle on the LBA - LCY route. It would give the airline a double bite of the LCY cherry.

Advertising and plenty of publicity raising awareness of the service offered would be the key to success.

Good luck if it happens

I think that would work extremely well for them. Two LCY routes, and two LBA routes would keep marketing costs down and hopefully get maximum exposure.

As a Leeds resident in just over 2 weeks now, this would be excellent news, as the LCY service will be very useful for me, I only got to use the bmi one once.

First Eastern vs Flybe now Eastern vs City Star

LBIA:

You're one up on me,I've heard nothing at this end.

Any start date mentioned?

Would be surprised if ABZ pax to LCY would want to route via LBA,as 2 of the rotations seem to suggest.

City Star can force passengers to go via LBA though as there is no one else on the ABZ-LCY route.

Can they? I think it would be just as quick flying to LHR and jumping on the Heathrow Express to Paddington and then getting a cab to the east end of London and probably for the same price considering that City Star are not that cheap!

Remember that ABZ-LCY has been done in the past with a British European 146 and then Scot Airways tried it using a D328. Both companies packed it in due to poor loads/yields. That was before bmi started operating ABZ-LHR and now with their low cost model that mainline has adopted it is now even cheaper to get to LHR!

ABZ-LBA is a waste of time since the loads barely fill a J32 with Eastern except on peak times e.g. Friday evening. LBA-LCY loads seem to a questionable with bmi but they have not really advertised the route so that might explain that!

But City Star say it's in response to customer requests.

"Yes,is that City Star? We'd like to fly to LCY,but via LBA,is that OK"?

Good on them for expanding but,if this is the routing confirmed I raise an eyebrow as to whether either leg fromn ABZ will be a success.Probably more chance of the LBA-LCY sector working.

Pure speculation and I suspect miles from reality - why take on a customer-unfriendly route with the first sector competing with Eastern (on a higher frequency) and the second sector on a route which even bmi couldn't make work with a higher frequency?

There are a lot of niche routes to the northeast of Aberdeen (such as more Norway and Sweden services) for them to make money on before tryig to eek a living by competing and taking on routes with poor history.

Hey there:

Correct.

Haugesund,Alesund,Kristiansund(all Norway)& Gothenburg(Sweden)spring to my mind.

I could see London City actually(I'm not too sure it would work now with BA v BMI on LHR these days,but I'm willing to be proved wrong),but not via Leeds Bradford.

In my local paper Energy(ie.Oil Industry)supplement:

City Star to SVG & onward to KRS.

Seems to be 1 flight daily?

Means CNO v WIF v X9 on SVG.

Not got a start date yet.

Update 1920: Been told it is in fact KristiansUnd (KSU) that City Star are routing to after SVG & NOT KristiansAnd (KRS!)

One letter,different places! :rolleyes:

Paper & I got the wrong Kristian...:O

They should do well on that route. North Flying are flogging that route to death on the Metro out of ABZ. At least pax will have the chance of going in comfort!

RS:

Yes,NFA are flying one,sometimes 2 daily oil charters to KSU & have been for a few months now,with their SA227s.

They have usually got one or two of the Metros sitting at ABZ during the week.

I agree that SVG & on to KSU may well work for City Star,a good idea to fly on to KSU.

Just to confirm that flights will be twice daily M-F to SVG from Oct 10,then onto KSU.A Su flight is planned to commence later.

BAA website "jumped the gun" & the flights came up on the depts page - X9 401 depts ABZ at 0645,back X9 402 0945.Then X9 407 depts ABZ 1830(no time for the return flight came up).I believe that is the plan,subject to change I suppose.I initially thought they were oil charters re Offshore Europe 2005 that is ongoing!

Any more word on the LBA rumour of ABZ-LCY via LBA? Has it turned out to be fact or fiction?

I wonder if X9 would look at HAU via BGO as their next venture?BGO with WIF is one of the fastest growing routes at ABZ & HAU used to be served until a couple of years ago.Just a thought,a service on the same sort of basis as KSU via SVG...:)