CO flight goes to x5 a week from Nov 2006. Then goes back to daily Mar 07. Same as last year.

All 757 will be converted to winglets by year end 06.

I think it was a phenomenal achievement to get the CO away only around thirty minutes late yesterday, bearing in mind the destination and the airline.

Everyone concerned deserved credit in my view.

Incidentally, the arrival at EWR caused a scare, with part of the airport being evacuated because of a suspicious package brought over from Bristol that was detonated by the authorities and found to be harmless.

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index....680.xml&coll=1

In the interests of fairness, only one person has been banging on about this, and he has seemingly been banished for talking nonsense.... us Cardiff supporters know that there is room for both CWL and BRS to succeed, and we wish our near neighbours every success. (We just hope CWL does better!! :} )

Someone's definition of "official" clearly doesn't co-incide with the generally accepted one. I just checked the timetable on continental's website and it is daily next summer.

There is a piece in today's Bristol Evening Post saying that, Bristol International Airport could face turmoil over the bank holiday weekend as baggage handlers plan to strike over a pay dispute.

The report states that members of the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) employed by Servisair voted to reject a three per cent pay rise.

They have now voted to strike throughout Saturday, Sunday and Monday of the August Bank Holiday weekend.

A Servisair spokesman said the company had made its final offer to its staff.

The airport and Servisair said that contingency plans are ready and that they are pretty confident that disruptions will be minimal.

Will this TGWU initiative affect all airports where Servisair employees are based, or is it confined to BRS?

Apologies if this is being discussed elsewhere in PPRuNe but I did a search under 'Servisair Strike' and found no matches. If it is, perhaps someone would kindly point me in the right direction and I will then delete this post.

BBC news were reporting a similar strike threat (or is the same one?) at Stansted on their news bulletins this morning:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/essex/5266354.stm

continental
 

Read in the Evening Post that Bristol Airport is reaping the benefit of the security turmoil with the London Airports. Passenger loads have increased and the much debated EWR route has enjoyed a boost.

As they say,it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good.

Well, it's obviously blowing us a bit of good.

RA! RA! RA! For the ill wind!

mrloop - there wan't a Servisair strike at Stansted, this was Swissport. As I understand it the strike at BRS has been called off.

Bristol Evening Post's "Flights of Fear"
 

The Bristol Evening Post managed a front page story on the "15 Flights of Fear" that have passed over the city since 2003..................
"The Evening Post obtained the information from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) under the Freedom of Information Act"
(They're that short of NEWS!)
Link here...........
http://www.thisisbristol.com/display...entPK=15240658
:yuk:

Budapest
 

As it appears that Easyjet is dropping the route to Budapest from 29th October, is there any chance of Wizz starting a service as they do seem to be expanding at the moment with flights to Belfast, Liverpool et al. Can any of you in the know ;) enlighten us? I have used the Budapest flight several times and it was always nearly full and with reports in the Evening Post that the Polish community are pushing for a route to Northern Poland maybe there is an opening for Wizz?

kelly

easyJet is also dropping its NCL-BUD for the winter - we shall have to wait and see whether BRS and NCL to BUD return next summer.

A couple of years ago easy's BRS-CPH was dropped as was the airline's NCL-CPH. Neither returned despite apparently decent loads, although in the CPH case there was the question of the Danish government's £7 per pax tax.

One assumes that easy believes there are better opportunties elsewhere from BRS because the nine Airbuses seem fully occupied this winter.

I read the bit about the Bristol Polish community wanting more flights. There are apparently 15,000 Poles living in Bristol with 50,000 in the wider region, many of whom are men trying to make a start in this country.

It is thought that once they have 'bedded in' many will then bring over their families and there will be a big demand in the future for flights from/to Greater Bristol from/to Poland as families come over and extended families and friends visit.

There is a significant number of Poles driving buses (the land-based variety) in Bristol and Bath.

Budapest
 

MerchantVenturer

Yes I used to use the Copenhagen route as well and it was the same with Bilbao which was great for getting to San Sabastian. Why I mentioned Budapest is that it was an excellent alternative to Prague in the run up to Christmas. That is why I would like to see an airline like Wizz or SkyEurope step in.
I would also like to see a bit of competition for Easy, perhaps if the TFS route goes well for BA Connect (GB Airways) they may consider a route to Malaga as I would use them in preference to Easy anyday. :ok:

Kellycsi

The provisional CAA stats for July show 2030 pax used the BRS-Krakow link that month.

As the route did not commence until 21 July and it only operates on Mon, Wed, Fri and Sun I make that an average load of 145 (7 rotations - 14 flights), or around 93% load factor on the 156-seat A319.

Seems to me to be a phenomenal start and evidence that there is scope for further Polish routes out of BRS.

There were strong and persistent rumours about Wizz and BRS a year or so ago but they seem to have fizzled out this year.

Chrikey! Has BRS really been trouble/rumour free since 28th August, there must be something interesting going on?:}

Hello WATABENCH

A new weekly ski destination to Kittila in Lapland has been announced to run from early December to early March 2007 - not sure of the carrier. Last year's ski programme was impressive with 16-17 weeky departures so there must be some enthusiastic winter sports enthusiasts in the south west. I used to toboggan on the Mendips when I were a lad.

easyJet is still cancelling flights - as I know to my cost. My NCL on 25 Sept is the latest Orange journey that I won't make.

I believe the ORK will return to 6 weekly rotations from this winter.

The final Master Plan has still not been published, despite the airport's web site still saying it would be in early 2006. However, the latest consultative committe minutes (July meeting), also on the web site, say publication has been delayed but the Plan should now be published towards the end of August.

Seems strange because at the time of the draft plan last year the airport said time was of the essence because the terminal building and other infrastructure were in urgent need of expansion, but detailed planning applications would only be made after the final Plan was published.

Finally, I used the airport last week to travel to Salzburg and I must compliment the security people at BRS. They were polite, friendly, discreet yet very thorough.

The Lapland flights will be operated by TCX

Thanks bycrewlgw.

http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/displ...pNodeId=144922

The above Bristol Evening Post link refers to an unusual little episode involving an Onur A321 returning to BRS from Antalya on Wednesday.

According to the report, the captain appeared at the front of the passenger cabin prior to departure, announced the aircraft was unsafe to fly, said he was getting off and advised the pax to do the same.

Not unnaturally some of the pax were a little disturbed by this and the paper, in the usual journalistic way, talks about panic and a mini riot.

Eventually another aircraft, and presumably another captain, took the pax back to BRS, although some apparently refused to fly and are possibly even now hithchiking back from Turkey.

The airline says the captain was serving his notice and decided to make a bit of a performance.

The fault in the original aircraft was described as a minor one.

Probably a story blown up a bit in proportion but nevertheless it must have been an uneasy time for the pax, especially those who are nervous flyers anyway.

Ah, the good old Evening Fascist, how I miss it when I'm away ;)

"The paper all of Bristol asked for..." - well, maybe all of those in Bristol with a two-digit IQ and political instincts somewhat to the right of Ghengis Khan but I'll personally give it a miss, thanks :ugh:

Cheers,

Rich.

Was talking to a FC crew member who's parents were on that Onur air flight, and hate to be a party pooper for all the Evening post bashers but the report is actually pretty much correct, Apparently they were sat on the ground with no air con or lights for quite a bit as well he he poor buggers!

CO's loads on their BRS-EWR route seem to have really picked up! People must not want the hastle of flying ex London! CO's LGW loads remain strong, so maybe some BA, VS, AA etc customers who normally fly ex Heathrow and drive/train from Bristol are flying CO!

jr2000

There was some talk in the Bristol media in the days after the alleged terrorist plot details were put into the public domain that this was the case.

CAA stats suggest that last year August, September and October were the best months for loads on BRS-EWR, even beating the BFS-EWR figures in each of those months, despite the Northern Irish airport carrying nearly ten thousand more pax in the first full twelve calendar months of the respective operations (95,700 - 85,800).

From the West of England's point of view it is to be hoped that these increased loads can be sustained year-round.

There is an item elsewhere on PPRuNe reporting that LH is looking to the possibility of using one or more of BRS, CWL and SOU for some of its German routes in view of security congestion at the major London airports, so perhaps this is a trend that will develop amongst both pax and airlines.

Merchant, re: Continental. I know you have written in the past about the challenge to attract Americans to travel from their side of the water to Bristol. Small thing only, but last week's New York Times travel section had a whole page on the delights of visiting Bath, and the prime suggestion to New Yorkers for getting there was the Continental to Bristol, then the train to Bath.............

LH at BRS
 

I'll be over the moon if LH decide that BRS would be a good base (and some of the letter writing over the past couple of years might have paid off).
BACon are trying to serve Germany (DUS, MUC, FRA), but it's all one flight a day stuff, tucked in whilst the Embys aren't pounding up to EDI and GLA. If you want to "nip out" to Germany for a meeting, you have to block three days out, or go with KL via AMS or go to BHX or LHR. And they're all dead-end flights, with no onward connection possibilities.
If LH picked up a BRS-FRA/MUC route with decent frequency, it would fit in really well with onward connections to the rest of Germany/Switzerland/Austria (currently badly serviced from the West), and it would finally be a decent alternative to hubbing with KL or (shudder) SN. Just imagine doing BRS-FRA-SIN-SYD or BRS-FRA-ICN. Perfect.
(And it would make maintaining Star Alliance Gold status more compatible with supporting BRS....)

Easyjet to Budapest
 

Does anybody know if Easyjet are going to be flying to Budapest after the end of October? I know you cannot book it on their website at the moment but they are advertising it as a Christmas destination on their latest news under 'December Highlights' and it says that you can fly there from Bristol during this time?? :ugh:

CO Figs
 

Apparently some muppet did a typo on the CO website a few weeks ago which ment you could travel to EWR from BRS for the weekend for £60 inc taxes, no wonder the figures shot up :}

LH
 

Wonder if the Root Development Fund could tip LH in favour of CWL as it's near the top of their list of desired routes. Also BA have a habit of portecting their network - looked what happed when AF tried to muscle in on BRS CDG a few years ago

Kellycsi

It seems pretty certain the BUD has gone for the winter. Loads always seemed high as they do on almost every easyJet route out of BRS, so presumably it must be back to the yield.

I guess easyJet is being slightly economical, or perhaps clever would be a better word, with the true situation. They are not telling lies because it is still possible to fly from BRS to BUD – until the end of next month. The same applies to NCL which is also included in the December blurb.

WATABENCH

I really don’t know what is happening with the EWR loads. Despite all the talk of increased loads after the terrorism announcement on 10 August, the CAA provisional stats for August show BRS-EWR carrying far fewer pax than in August 2005 – 7432 as against 8777.

This is a load factor of around 70%. Whilst the final monthly figure can be expected to increase by a few hundred (for some reason this route’s figures are always increased when the final numbers are published) it still compares poorly with BFS-EWR (started at the same time) which carried just under 10,000 in August.

However, overall BRS had an excellent August with over 600,000 pax passing through for the first time in a calendar month, up 7.6% on August 2005. The rolling 12-month total is now 5,615,000, up 13.2% on the figure a year ago.

Ireland seems to be especially popular with 37,000 on the DUB route in August (up 30% on August 05) and 10,400 on Ryanair’s daily SNN – a load factor of just shy of 90% on the 189-seat B 738.

Having never been in the business, unlike you, I am still surprised how markets work.

For instance, for the past couple of years Flybe has averaged 3-4,000 pax per month on its BRS-TLS route (daily or 6 x per week year-round). Then easyJet joined Flybe on the route and a combined total of 11,300 used the two carriers in August. This suggests easyJet probably carried between 7 and 8,000.

Why didn’t some of these people use Flybe in the period before easyJet came onto the route? The Flybe load factors point to availability on their aircraft most of the time and both airlines market themselves as ‘low cost’.

It looks as though Flybe have already bowed to easyJet's dominance and stopped their own service to TLS - at least for the coming winter.

It looks like the next few week's taxiway resurfacing is going to be fun - total lack of activity to be seen on the building site at 8:00 this morning when we finally got going after an hour of slot delays & back-taxiing. When we returned at 11:00 there were 3 people hanging around.

Is there any sense of urgency to get this done quickly? A cynic might think Bristol airport are doing the resurfacing on the cheap while the airlines pick up the additional costs in further delays.

I think you will find that the business travellers to TLS (i.e. AIRBUS) are under instructions to use AIRBUS (EZY A319's) or UK types (flybe 146's). Unfortunately the Q400 and E195 fall outside this criteria.
It certainly was the case when flybe operated the 'airbridge' to Filton and Chester, thats why flybe got the contract.
The E195 will be operating the BHX-TLS-BRS-TLS-BHX run for the next few weekends.;)
DC

Been told there will be a Monarch 767 visiting this winter to do cruise flights to the caribbean, not sure how often or where its operating too, not just a once off though apparently.:confused:

Monarch 767:- to BGI 6th Dec, 22nd Dec, 15th Mar

Yeah they will be TOM lost the Fred Olsen cruise contract to MON so they will be taking over the BGI flights from regional airports for Fred Olsen.

BYCREWLGW

Menzies @ BRS
 

Any rumour that Menzies are looking at handling BA @ BRS????

Dash-7 lover - I haven't heard this. Mind you it wouldn't surprise me if it did happen, but then on the other hand there's also a rumour that BA won't last all that long once the EZY CDG route starts (so why would Menzies be looking at them) and another rumour that Ryanair will have 7 aircraft based here in three years time! What would the aviation world be without rumours? EZY Budapest is gone for the winter, probably got something to do with the CDG route start-up and the fact that the program has had to be squashed into less hours because of the winter runway closure; no more 0130 scheduled arrival times!

Will BA be affected that much by EZY coming on Paris?
It's one a day and in the middle of the day:
Won't be of too much use to business travellers!
Might be good for leisure customers if the price is right.
Might also just grow the market?

Comedy 7 FR's ha ha, and just where the heck to they expect to park them? let alone where are they going to check them in?(like that rumour:} :} ) BRS needs to start shaking a leg on the terminal expansion very very soon judgeing by this year, and what an earth is going to happen on sat mornings when FCA will have 2 757s and 767 checking in, in the 2nd hall? in theory that should be (AT LEAST) 10 check-in desks! leaving 6 left for the other charters who check-in down there MYT/KM/XLA plus normal sat morning visitors! Gulp i smell a debacle in the making, I can only imagine that a snake system would be easiest option,some mornings you will have an EZY queue comeing past the FCA check-ins with the FCA queues going the opposite way! but all this brings us back to the same old BRS story, the terminal is shockingly if not dangerously(fire reasons) to small for the amount who use it, lets not forget BRS is set to handle over 6 million this year in a terminal originally built for 3 million i believe, time to get busy with the building me thinks! Surely its going to get to a point where new carriers will be put off as theres no where for them to check-in, take example AA, if they turned round and said hey lets try BRS-BOS, they're going to want a similar set up to CO, so where the hell is it going to go? Also how long till pax really start getting wound up with haveing no where to sit? what happens if a few large jets take bad tech delays at same time, or even worse if ATC went down and no aircraft could depart for hours? Its a nightmare waiting to happen. Rant over!

W: So you don't think they could expand the terminal in two years then? I like your rants by the way!:rolleyes:

BRS’s tight timescale for terminal and other infrastructure expansion seems to have already slipped by at least six months.

The draft Master Plan was published around a year ago and the timetable set out within the draft was for the final Plan to be published and submitted to government in early 2006, followed by detailed planning applications in spring 2006.

This has not happened and in the July Consultative Committee minutes it was stated that there had been a delay in submitting the final Plan because revisions to the text had taken longer than anticipated following the public consultation. However, the final Plan would now be published ‘towards the end of August 2006’. We are still waiting!

In the draft Plan the airport management conceded that ‘the terminal building is increasingly experiencing congestion and is already operating at or near its capacity at peak periods’. Yet they then allowed vital departure lounge space to be taken up by new retail outlets.

The draft goes on to admit that this crowding has ‘an adverse effect on passenger experience’ and ‘more fundamentally’ operational processing capacity constraints and safety limits on occupancy. This all strikes a chord with WATABENCH’s comments.

The intention is to almost double the terminal building by 2015. This will require full planning consent. The draft Plan is unequivocal when it states that the ‘key milestone in the delivery of the Master Plan is the delivery of the extension to the Terminal Building’.

The idea is to increase the terminal building size in stages. The airport calculates the existing terminal can continue to function until 2009 when passenger numbers ‘are forecast to exceed 6mppa’.

This carries the unarguable implication that without a terminal extension the airport will be in major difficulties when pax numbers break the 6 million barrier and that the first part of the terminal extension must be in place by then. Well, 5.6 million was passed in August this year (it was just under 5.2 million at the end of last year) which suggests 6 million will arrive sooner than 2009.

This makes the delay in publishing the final Plan and then cracking on with planning applications even more puzzling.

The anti-expansion lobby is well organised and contains experienced environmental groups. The delay in publishing the final Plan might really be due to the airport having informal talks with planners to try to establish what might reasonably be allowed and what might not.

There is no doubt that the anti lobby will pull every legal trick in the book to retard expansion (I hope some of the more militant ones don’t go beyond that), so a target of 2009 for the first part of the terminal building expansion to be in place (and as I said it might be needed before that) might be a tall order.

I do have a lot of time for the competence and expertise of the BRS management (certainly in strategic matters) and am prepared to accept that they know what they are doing, despite an apparent tighter timescale.

My standpoint is that of a customer and an interested member of the public.

Watabench I think you have hit a very valid point on the hairy end!

BRI management really do need to wake up and realise the current facilities wont cope over the next year or so! Neither will half the staff that are lacking the attitude required to make it work!
Putting 'customer service' staff in to 'un snake' an over capacitated greenhouse will never solve the issue, and on the other end of the spectrum, not being a***D to repair a u/s ambi lift is also the other kind of issue to be flushed out!

The place is going to reach saturation soon!
Saying that the terminal can cope with X amount a year, is irrelevant when most of them X's are crammed through between 0700 0900!! Madness!! :eek: The place is a joke!

Girona
 

New Ryanair route to Girona :ok: