They did operate last winter.

I can see LGW getting Air Asia X upon their return to London and as much as I would like to see them return to STN I think LGW will be successful in gaining the Kuala Lumper route.

So after a stint down the road, it looks like AtlasGlobal are back with their schedule to IST from the 31st October :ok:

It's a good win from its Bedfordshire neighbour and is what competition from rival airports is all about, as they try to poach each others business.

I am not so sure LTNman traffic to Turkey is way down for obvious reasons, you have only to look at Turkish Airlines reducing there services to the UK and other European countries. Being an old cynic I would suggest the Luton deal has run its course so let's go back to Stansted with a new deal there and compete with Pegasus.

I'm not that familiar with the London-Istanbul market, but there seem to be an awful lot of flights each day on this route. BA, Pegasus and Turkish all seem to fly multiple times per day and have a significant market share and large connecting bases to promote traffic. Atlas Global is a much smaller airline and flies just once per day to London. What is the market Atlas Global are targetting, and are they actually making money on what seems to be a possibly overserved route ? Is there really room in the market right now for a small number 4 airline against 3 big players ?

Northern Cypriot communities in North London as flight goes onto Ercan/Tymvou after the stop in Istanbul.

rutankrd - I'm terribly sorry if I'm being a bit thick, but when I look at schedules for the future, Atlas Global doesn't seem to have a particularly compelling connection via IST between London and Ercan - Pegasus via Izmir seems far more targetted to this connection. Looking on FR24 over the last 7 days, none of the aircraft used by Atlas Global have served Ercan immediately before or after going to/from London - the only route one could argue is being targetted is perhaps London-Trabzon on a few days per week but I imagine immigration requirements rule this out and I've not heard of this being a particularly lucrative market. Is there perhaps something else I'm missing ?

London-Ercan via IST has been a good market for Stansted going back decades and Stansted is best placed of all the London airports geographically for the Turkish Cypriot Community.

This AtlasGlobal move however has the feel of a "last throw of the dice" and I can't see them competing effectively with Pegasus but we shall see.

Neilson is to offer a new charter route to Zadar (Croatia) for S17.
Flights are operated on Sundays using Titan Airways.

You seem to have got Jet2, well done. Interesting times for easy and Ryanair.

It might mean that easyjet eventually leave Stansted once Luton has gained some capacity at the end of next year seeing that they don't seem to have put any effort into growing their business here despite their Stansted agreement.

Interestingly the only tweet about it so far is from 'Madeira Holidays'. So that could be one of the routes right there, and it is currently unserved.

I would think also Thomson and Thomas Cook will be looking over their shoulders as well with Jet2 holidays seemingly doing very well.

Jet2 had little choice if they were looking for a London base - nowhere else has capacity. Also, Jet2 competes with Ryanair from its northern bases, and will employ the same competitive tactics at STN, i.e. selling package holidays rather than lcc flights.
As Compton says above, it's Thomson and Thomas Cook who are under threat here, although they are accustomed to the competition from J2 Holidays elsewhere.

Big thanks to Ryanair for leaving the door open and MOL for throwing his toys out of his pray over Brexit.
I think Jet2 will do very well at STN as Easyjet have gone down hill in so many ways as well as a reduction in A/C just gives us all more options at STN :ok:

Jet2.com
 

As far as I'm aware it maybe a significant number of based aircraft so not a small network by any means... Guess We'll have to wait and see what routes are announced.

Dart Group AGM Statement and Announcement of New UK Base | Jet2.com


Dart Group AGM Statement and Announcement of New UK Base

08th September 2016

At the Company’s Annual General Meeting later today, Philip Meeson, Group Chairman and Chief Executive, will make the following statement:
"The good start to the financial year as reported in our Preliminary Results Statement of 14 July 2016 has continued, with summer Leisure Travel bookings showing no signs of slowdown. Demand for our higher margin package holiday products continues to grow and as a result the number of package holiday customers, as a proportion of total departing customers, is also increasing. Though airline ticket yields and load factors are slightly lower than those achieved in summer 2015, this is against a backdrop of a 13% increase in seat capacity. Leisure Travel bookings for winter 2016/17 are satisfactory at this early stage.
Continued encouraging progress is beingmade at Fowler Welch, our Distribution & Logistics business, which is currently trading in line with expectations.
The Board is also pleased to announce London Stansted Airport as our ninth UK base. We expect to welcome customers on board our holiday flights from this new base in spring 2017. We believe that London Stansted has great potential for our holiday business, serving the populations of North and East London and the East of England.
In view of the significant investment which will be committed in the second half of this financial year to launch our London Stansted and recently announced Birmingham Airport bases, it is likely that Group operating profit will be slightly behind current market expectations despite the good trading performance achieved in the year to date.”
The Group will provide a further update when it announces its interim results for the six months ending 30 September 2016 on 17 November 2016

Anything that dilutes Ryanair's power over Stansted has got to be good for the airport. Little acorns comes to mind:ok:

Luton will see this as a major lost opportunity but they should have started their redevelopment at least a year earlier so now they are reaping the reward due to a lack of capacity.

In all fairness STN I think is much better suited for this one, and the fact that it's a MAG airport I'm sure helps. As has been said a lot of the main holiday destinations from STN are under-served and in some cases only served now by Ryanair, so a bit of competition and more choice for customers is a much welcome addition.

LTN already has a much bigger leisure focused network with EZY, ZB a bigger TOM short-haul network and a bit of FR arguably on the popular sun routes that LS would want to serve.

It will be interesting to see if this leads to any future impact on EZY at SEN, ZB from LGW and LTN in particular and of course the TOM and MT networks out of STN... I'm guessing also a more immediate impact is that the Luton thread on here may go a bit quieter than usual for a few days :E

I think this is a great win for Stansted and the London & SE area. A big 'two fingers up' at Ryanair who are still harping on about 'Brexit' whilst throwing their toys out of the pram. :rolleyes:

In recent weeks Stansted has gained...

I'm not sure Easyjet would leave Stansted, if anything they still have a massive foothold on the more business focused routes such as GLA/EDI/BFS/AMS etc. We could in fact see them try to protect their turf. What we need to do is wait until Jet2 announce their route offering and for EZY to announce their schedule for next summer.

Pamann



Iam not sure why you should be so keen to stick two fingers up at Ryanair, theyprovide a lot of Jobs in the area and have shown more commitment to STNthan any other airline.


I agree that their dominance is not healthy and the news of a Jet 2 base is most welcome but remember this is the first foray into the South for Jet2 and the yields are much lower and the competition much tougher than the North. This is compensated by the size of the market which is much larger than the North.



Aircraft are mobile assets and both Easy and Jet2 are stock market listed companies they have to make their assets work hard for the shareholders and neither will have a second thought about moving these assets to another location if they can make more money at the other location.



Personally I wonder if this might end up being the final nail in the coffin for EZY at STN. If the leisure routes become unprofitable due to the competition then, with the increased competition from Ryanair on the business routes, they may just throw the towel in and close the base. In that case it’s a zero sum game and Stansted will not have benefited from the change.



On a final note I wonder where the Slots have come from, it’s fairly crowded in the morning in the terminal and also airside.

STN Ramp Rat

I am fully aware of Ryanair's dominance at STN.

What I am saying is that whilst Ryanair harp on about 'Brexit' and use it as an excuse to base aircraft elsewhere, it's great to see a British airline such as Jet2 having good faith in the UK and expanding. Simple.

We can all sit here and speculate, but we will just have to wait and see, won't we. ;)

Stansted slots
 

I see that all Ryanair's new aircraft are to be based outside the UK. It is possible that some of their existing STN routes will now be operated from the other end, freeing early morning slots for Jet2.

Another Brexcuse. Blaming Brexit for moving out actually benefits the UK. An English airline has benefitted by opening another UK base, so more profit and more tax to be kept and more good quality real jobs. There really are no losers if Micky bases his aircraft but at least be honest. You're doing it because it's cheaper and that's nothing to do with Brexit.

FR bases new aircraft outside of the U.K? Fabulous news.

Never make the mistake of believing Ryanair’s publicity. News is just free advertising. There will not be much more Ryanair Expansion at Stansted there is no more room for a first wave departure, although I accept that the airport must have found some for Jet2, and they have fairly much filled the airport around 8AM with aircraft arriving from Europe.



Hearty Meatballs ~ I am glad you think that opening a base means more profit, hopefully it does but it’s not a given. I suspect this will hit EZY more and unfortunately that's also British Jobs and British profits. Like I said earlier, I think this will work out as a zero sum gain for the airport but I would love to be wrong.

I wonder how long before we know more about destination and how big or small the operation will be at Stansted
Most if not all Airlines have listed their summer 2017 schedules so I guess Jet2 will have to act fairly quickly to get seats on sale
I also hope Jet2 have thought about Cross media advertising including TV adds because the Jet2 brand is up there with Easy and Ryanair in the north but not so much down south

Jet2 have been in the media (TV) in the south for ages now thanks to Sky. I regularly see them advertise during ad breaks.

Pamann
I agree but if people have see and gone to look in the past they would have seen no offerings for flights from any London Airport
What's needed is an TV add campaign like Norwegian are running at the moment ��

I'm sure they'll be TV advertising for flights from Stansted. In the Midlands there's been lots of general Jet2holidays and "Jet2 Now flying from Birmingham to 15 Summer Sun Destinations" TV advertising.

I think this is probably the best story to come out of Stansted for a good couple of years. Ryanair can bluster and still sulk about Brexit but there is a British airline that has a bit more faith in the UK than the Irish harp.:ok::ok::ok:

I suspect there are more than sufficient slots for a significant Jet2 operation. FR used to base 42(?) aircraft, now it's 34/35?. EZY as we know have lost 4 or 5 aircraft. Yes FR operate more from overseas bases now but even some of those slots were broadly used by Air Berlin, Germanwings, Skyeurope and others when STN was at its previous peak.

FR's night arrivals are also concentrated between 11-midnight. From 9 until 11 there is a lot of capacity, also after midnight. Looking at MAN and LBA that would seem to suit Jet2 who have just one arrival at each between 11-12 and actually quite a few before 9pm and after 1am.

Lack of route announcement and aircraft compared to the BHX press release! Wet/Damp lease maybe? STN based ACMI/Charter airline?!?

I think we'll likely know more by next week.

There was word here earlier down the thread of a possible five aircraft from the start.

I'd guess it to be more leisure based rather than head to head on the more business focused routes, time will tell.

Or new Boeing 737 delivered to Stansted with a media fanfare and an official launch next week?

Initially 6 based 737-800s from Spring 17

That will focus a few minds!

Stansted based Titan seem to have a good relationship with Jet2 leasing aircraft for them this summer at Leeds and Manchester and also previous summers at various UK airports.
So maybe leasing aircraft from Titan is an option for the new Jet2 Stansted base.

It crossed my mind but Titan don't have any Boeing 737-800's so would be unlikely. I see no reason why it won't be on their own metal.

Jet2.com website has an ad on their home page adverting Stansted as 9th UK base inviting customers to sign up for email offers and to "find out first" when Stansted flights go on sale.