Did anyone think it would work?

Minoan were just the same at Oxford.

To make Regional work, you must start from a small base, not numerous destinations.

Darwin means just what to folk in the Cambridge area?

If your locals are not aware of your product, what hope do you have?

Maybe Etihad will throw £millions at Cambridge.

You just cannot start up routes with minimal advertising despite what your sales team tell you.

Pick one or two routes, make sure the airline can connect you onwards, or failing that undercut the market for 24 months.

Darwin Airline/Etihad Regional
 

From 30 March 2014, the Milan-Malpensa route is cancelled, and the Amsterdam route reduced from 12 to 7 weekly frequencies. Still no news on the possible Dusseldorf routes.

CAA stats are released, but Cambridge and it's routes do not appear at all := wonder why :rolleyes:

its

London City have no figures either. It's provisional.

And inbetween the two STN is also lacking figures.

Nick - the CAA provisional stats are released over a period of a few weeks. On the initial release date, data for approx 75% of airports is released. Over the following few weeks, the remaining airports are added. Weekly updates of provisional stats are usually published on Fridays

Provisional Airport Statistics Notes | Aviation Intelligence | About the CAA

My understanding is that Darwin has been unable to secure the required slots at DUS (which is severly slot constrained). They hold some noon-time slots, but these are more or less useless for their plans.

my mistake:uhoh:, sorry all

If their investor really wants to change that situation they can do so merely by 'asking' Air Berlin to give up/swap the requisite slots to suit their onward long haul departures.



SHJ

AFAIK, airberlin has no slots at the required times (and as most AB flights are operated by DUS-based aircraft, a slot exchange is not as easy as it appears on paper as it would ruin the aircraft's rotations for the whole day).

CAA provisional stats
 

1,708 scheduled passenger at Cambridge in Nov 2013.

Breakdown from the CAA so far for Cambridge is:
Amsterdam - 1,061
Geneva - 240
Milan - 206
Paris - 201

This would suggest that 1,708 passengers flew with Darwin.
I believe in November there were
51 AMS round trips - 12x per week - 21 % load factor
13 GVA round trips - 3x per week - 18 % load factor
13 MXP round trips - 3x per week - 16 % load factor
17 CDG round trips - 4x per week - 12 % load factor

With 94 round trips, this suggests an average of slightly more than 9 passengers per flight on a 50-seat aircraft, so an average load factor of 18.2%. Of course, some routes will do better than others. As has already been mentioned, effective late March 2014 CBG-MXP will close and CBG-AMS will reduces from 12x weekly to 7x weekly

Yes, November is a quiet month for commercial flying in Europe, but these passenger numbers must be of significant concern to some people at Darwin airline and Cambridge airport.

Dec 2013 stats

Amsterdam - 1103 pax
Geneva - 335 pax
Milan - 209 pax
Paris - 226 pax

I'm presuming around Xmas, some flights did not operate - I'm guessing all day on 25+26 Dec and the evenings of 24+31 Dec there were no flights. This would indicate
AMS - 47 round trips - 23% load factor
GVA - 12 round trips - 28% load factor
MXP - 14 round trips - 15% load factor
CDG - 17 round trips - 13% load factor

Overall, 10.4 passengers per flight, or an average load factor of 21 %

Slightly better than November but still a lot of improvement needed

Obviously needs a challenge.

Oxfords December figures -
ATM's -77.8% on Dec 12
Pax Dec 13 -91.1% on Dec 12.

I stand by comment #41 above.

Just tried to book my summer holiday flights; was willing to take the risk that Darwin will still exist and operate flights from Cambridge by then.

They've changed the timetable to what? :-( The current timetable of two flights a day three days a week is more useful than a daily late evening flight. That's a) no use if I'm going to stay in Amsterdam and b) No use if I'm going to change at Amsterdam :-(

1,708 scheduled passenger at Cambridge in Nov 2013.
<<Breakdown from the CAA so far for Cambridge is:
Amsterdam - 1,061
Geneva - 240
Milan - 206
Paris - 201

This would suggest that 1,708 passengers flew with Darwin.
I believe in November there were
51 AMS round trips - 12x per week - 21 % load factor
13 GVA round trips - 3x per week - 18 % load factor
13 MXP round trips - 3x per week - 16 % load factor
17 CDG round trips - 4x per week - 12 % load factor>>

Dear god so happy I'm not an investor.
We're talking Imperial Airways 1920s load factors here.
Stop it now before more good (but naive) peoples' money is dispatched down the tail pipe.

Slot applications by Darwin at DUS (for flights to CBG, LCY, TXL) have apparently been withdrawn as no suitable slots could be obtained. Not sure if this will have some effect on the remaining CBG summer schedule.

Jan 2013 stats

Amsterdam - 1,097 pax
Geneva - 356 pax
Milan - 169 pax
Paris - 136 pax

This would suggest that 1,758 pax flew with Darwin
I believe in January there were
AMS - 52 round trips - 12x per week - 21 % load factor
GVA - 13 round trips - 3x per week - 27 % load factor
MXP - 13 round trips - 3x per week - 13 % load factor
CDG - 17 round trips - 4x per week - 8 % load factor

From March:
Amsterdam goes from 12x weekly to daily
Geneva is reduced to 1x weekly (Saturday)
Milan is cancelled
Paris is cancelled

Looks as if Darwin's adventure at Cambridge is coming to a close

Looks as if the LEJ and CBG operation is combined so that it can be operated by a single, LEJ-based Saab 2000. The aircraft will do LEJ-CDG twice daily, LEJ-AMS once daily and AMS-CBG once daily, therefore also providing a one-stop LEJ-AMS-CBG vv. service. However, I cannot find any flights later than the end of March.