Bcn Route
 

A case of sour grapes Nakata?

As discussed on this forum many times Sou and Hurn do not compete but compliment each other.

I think we can all agree that if a route has been served and discontinued by either ryanair/easy jet then its safe to say no one will make money on it.

Bcn is a city destination so will likely be better served at Sou but it hasn't even been anounced yet! Lets wait and see.

Cloud Surf
 

Yes slightly sour! Apologies. I guess I am worried that if Vueling can make SOU work with a 320 what is to stop easyJet with the A319? (GVA) and then BOH's future really is only Ryanair! )-:

I can understand your frustration to be honest at Bournemouth. Why invest 45mil if you havn't got an airline lined up to fill your new terminal! Maybe Ryanair stiched them up, anything is possible with that shower!

"Why invest 45mil if you havn't got an airline lined up to fill your new terminal! Maybe Ryanair stiched them up..."


Stitched up maybe the wrong turn of phrase but remember that Ryanair were going to base four (or was it six?) aircraft at Bournemouth when the new terminals were completed. They also insisted that CAT 3 ILS was installed etc

You can hardly blame Bournemouth for the subsequent economic crash and Ryanair changing their mind. If this was the only deal they had on the table then were they supposed to turn it down in case somebody else came along?

Also, it seems that the voices now saying '£45m spent .. what a waste..not a penny returned' etc are the same ones who two or three years ago were saying 'why don't they invest in a terminal...no airline will come unless money is invested..."

Bournemouth will scrape through hard times and grow if the aviation business grows again, at least it is now largely ready to cope if numbers increase and airlines look to expand.

''if the aviation business grows again''

I think you mean the 'UK aviation business'. The UK was the worst performing region in Europe for air travel in 2010. Most of Europe, even Spain and Greece, saw growth in their regional air travel market.

One of the main reasons, in my opinion, is the ridiculous APD levels that really do nothing to assist environmental goals and serve only to choke off any potential recovery in the regional aviation business in particular.

Ryanair are quite right when they say they will return to the UK regions (and BOH) when the irresponsible APD is scrapped.

BOH must tempt VUELING
 

If I was in MAG senior management team, I would get on the phone to Vueling and tell them whatever SOU is offering to them to commence services, we will double/triple it and offer some kind of tourism marketing incentives. The terminal building badly needs the additional footfall.

Watch this space. There is still time to act.

Having returned to area after a while away I passed by the airport the other day to find not a single aircraft parked on the apron. This was day time and totally and utterly nothing was to be seen. As a long-time local it was a very dispiriting sight indeed :-(

I really hope someone gets to grip with this situation soon.

Are there any niche routes from BOH that could make money with say 19/46 seater aircraft that an airline such as Blue Islands could operate?

KLM & Vueling
 

Not in my opinion because SOU has it all covered. Any and all airlines that have tried to operate from BOH with a similar business model have failed. BOH's only option is low cost or medium/long-haul. Potentially a KLM AMS service would work.

I'll re-iterate what I said in an earlier post: MAG senior management need to get on the phone to Vueling and tell them they will double or triple whatever incentives SOU has provided them to do their rumoured BCN services in Summer 2012. The BOH terminal badly needs the additional footfall.

The trouble with that is that (leaving aside some operational considerations), SOU is usually going to be more appealing, due to:

- it's existing network of domestic & near-european routes
- a main line railway station outside the terminal, which can convey you to London in around an hour (or Reading, Basingtoke, Oxford, Birmingham etc. without a change of train)
- a adjacent Motorway, again feeding London, the Midlands as well as the south coast (east and west)

As others have said, the niche for BOH is serving the routes/markets that SOU can't, eg, mid-haul charter and lo-co.

But even when Thomsonfly had two based aircraft and Palmair one it was still quite common to see an empty apron as flights tend to operate in waves!

Surely with Bournemouth its the age old situation of supply and demand? It's ok ryanair coming along and offering a few thousand seats at a pound a go but that doesn't spell longevity.

As mentioned by other posters Bounremouth should be targetting the bucket and spade routes that Southampton doesn't cater for. I guess with the recession this area of the market has seen the most erosion so perhaps why Bournemouth has an empty apron.

What you many of you do not see or realise at an airport is the people working there. Yes the traffic figures are poor, very poor, down on last year almost back to 2004 levels. Management realise this obviously but the problem Bournemouth had was having a bigger brother airport in EMA.
To cut costs EMA took most of the jobs away from Bournemouth, things that could be shared out such as financial, human resources and marketing. Thankfully the latter has been restored because quite simply having a 'remote' marketing function was a mistake as the local knowledge was lost. They didn't know what would work or not. I think it was a couple of years ago, that they tried Bulgaria, it was a disaster.
Now that they have a 'local' commercial team headed by a Director with a manager for routes and a manager for non-aviation related (Car parks/shops etc) things (revenues not just passengers) should pick up.
They have a problem, airlines are not risking anything, they are sticking to what they know will return a guaranteed profit if these times of high fuel prices and an expensive Euro, which has a lot of uncertainty in it. Not only that but the team has only been going for a year, other airports have established team with established relationships with airlines, they are working from scratch, dealing with people from airlines who've never been to Bournemouth for years.
Another issue is that they are working not just for next summer but into next winter, do you know what the economy will be like then?
It's a hard job and I have plenty of respect for their efforts but the airlines will come.

I only wish I had your confidence.I worked at the Airport for over 30 years
through good times and bad, and can confidently say I have never known
it so bad. i appreciate that there is a reccesion but other airports seem to
be coping(allthough at reduced levels of traffic).Most dissapointing for the future. Can someone give me more confidense.

bob1810
 

The negatives

This winter is bad. But don't forget before 2002/3, peak passenger volumes at BOH never surpassed the 250,000 level. 2011 looks to be around 550-575,000. Other airports like CWL, PIK have lost the same number of passengers too albeit off a much higher total number. Those services lost, mean that pax numbers stabalize at the competitive airports to those that have lost services (BRS, GLA, & SOU in BOH's case)

Fuel price increases might mean that domestic routes are unlikely to ever be operated from BOH in the future. I would leave this area to SOU. Even SOU is struggling to maintain passenger volumes on domestic services with yields crumbling.

The positives

Bournemouth's future is not only dependent on scheduled air travel. Being located in an affluent area of the South, the future could support more medium to long-haul development. This will depend on economic recovery.

Despite the worst economic crisis since WW1, BOH is sustaining three of Europes major carriers - Ryanair, TUI and easyJet. These airlines could easily have ditched the airport, but they haven't. Thats something to remain positive about.

I am a person who enjoy's visiting bournemouth airport, and I do feel the airport could benefir more from mid to long hual flights as southampton can't offer these cause of the runway ! its good to see ryanair adding another route, but only one ! :( hopefully they could add more would be good and i feel thomson would do better using 737-800 on its spain and greece routes and the 757-200 on it's turkey and egyht routes as they could run more services

Looks like Ryanair have chopped the only daily service Bournemouth has to popular Alicante next summer from 7 a week down to just 4 flights a week , probably more to do with the air bridge dispute than anything else as loads were extremely good on this particular route !

Not sure how the impending announcement of Vuelling starting services next summer from Southampton to Barcelona will impact on the 5 flights a week to Gerona from Bournemouth ?

No news yet on Malta route possibly being re started

i think they are missing the heraklion route that Eurocypria did, cause load factors on that were a good number and this a popular destination with the youth and bournemouth has a lot of youth

"i feel thomson would do better using 737-800 on its spain and greece routes and the 757-200 on it's turkey and egyht routes as they could run more services "
Im not sure I understand that.

I think he is saying they should base a 738 for the shorter routes (Spain, Portuagal, Greece) and a 757 for longer routes (Turkey, Egypt, Cyprus). However I think a 738/757 base would work best if the 757 was stuck on the most popular routes, regargless of their length (PMI, DLM, TFS etc).