CAMBRIDGE
 

I see Cambridge Airport (previously called Marshall Airport Cambridge) has decided to expand its services to include 24hr opening, refrubish the passenger terminal, etc. It also sees ''a range of regional passenger services''. The full story can be seen on the BCC News Website but unfortunately I cannot seem to link it.

Is this it Compton3bravo
BBC News - Cambridge Airport sets out plans for future

Will Stansted survive?

Yes thanks Ian. Besides Stansted what about Luton and Norwich. They must all be really worried. Probably take a Jersey service for a few weeks in high summer - remember the British Midland Viscounts!

What's the obligatory waiting time before it gets renamed London Cambridge?

That will be when Ryanair move from STN to cambridge

Watch out Stansted. Just announced: flights from Cambridge to Dôle in France, twice weekly in an ATR for the summer, operated by Danube Wings (!). (Given the OTT enthusiasm of the airport director in the press release, it's just as well that this isn't a real route to a real destination with a known airline, or the poor chap might have a coronary.)
See well-known Cambridge landmark in this poster. :rolleyes:

The service avoids nav charges and routes low level under the bridge!

I thought that Southend were expecting that series of flights?

Quote: "See well-known Cambridge landmark in this poster"

So it's already happening. If FR start up there could it become "London North"?

Anyone reading this working at Cambridge ?
All systems go for return of scheduled flights ?

Cambridge flights
 

Went out on the inaugural flight from Cambridge to Schipol yesterday. Flights operated by Darwin Airlines with a Saab 2000. Flights were far from full - I'm not sure that there has been enough advertising - but it will be interesting to see if they can get enough business to make it pay. They will have to make their money from business traffic, I think, though the promotional fare we paid was pretty good.
PBW

As it's been almost 4 weeks since the route started up, anyone living in or near Cambridge able to report on how Darwin is likely doing ?

Having seen scheduled passenger flights from Oxford struggle on more than 1 occasion, despite the oft-claimed "bookings are better than we expected", am interested as to whether Darwin are managing to make a better go out of flying from Cambridge. Would be interested to know how visible the local marketing has been, the reception it's had in the business community, what sort of passenger loads there were (1st day of flying is not representative), etc...

Yes, I know the CAA will publish provisional stats in mid October, but I'm an inpatient b*gger who wants to know earlier rather than later !

The flight I was on was great but the load was lower than the number of people handling the aircraft. Ok they were still training staff so that is probably why they outnumbered us. :}

There was some advertising downtown so let's hope they have learned from the Oxford disaster...

CAA stats
 

CAA provisional stats are out for Sept 2013
Amsterdam AMS - 1155 pax on 51 round trips = 11.3 pax per one way flight
Geneva GVA - 264 pax on 12 round trips = 11 pax per one way flight
Milan MXP - 333 pax on 13 round trips = 12.8 pax per one way flight
Paris CDG - 199 pax on 25 round trips = 4 pax per one way flight

As Darwin flies scheduled, I've ignored charter flights

Assuming a Saab 2000 with 50 seats, load factors are
Amsterdam - 23%
Geneva - 22%
Milan - 26%
Paris - 8%

I'm not 100% on the number of round trip flights flown (particularly on the Geneva route) so if anyone has better information, please do say

For a first month, the load factors are less than ideal but I guess it's posssible that Amsterdam, Geneva and Milan might get into healthier numbers given a bit of time.
Not sure what happened with Paris though - am guessing that it's difficult to compete with 45 mins by train to King's Cross followed by the high frequency Eurostar

Paris route
 

Although I don´t know- easyJet seem to do rather well out of Luton (average 20,000 monthly) and have done for a number of years even with a First Capital Connect service straight into St Pancras next to Eurostar. I would suggest the Darwin operation out of Cambridge will not last too long I am afraid with those sought of load factors.

compton - you may well be right, but it's possibly worth noting that Easyjet fly Luton-Paris 19x per week (3x on weekdays and 2x on weekends), making a day trip for work quite possible whether you live in the UK or France
Darwin fly Cambridge-Paris 6x per week (not Saturdays), and at times which make even an overnight trip for work really quite inconvenient.

CBG 0950 CDG 1200 12345--
CBG 0900 CDG 1110 ------7

CDG 1240 CBG 1240 1-3-5--
CDG 1655 CBG 1700 -2-4--7

Main story on BBC Look East last night was the poor passenger loads on the new Cambridge routes. BBC iPlayer - Look East - West: 22/10/2013 The link will only last until around 6:30 tonight.

Return fares to USA from £320 announced

http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/News...023103728.htm:)

Passengers statistics have been released for October
They are;

Amsterdam 1146
Paris 459
Geneva 162
Milan 198

Still very poor I believe not sure how many sectors flown but figures are very Close to last month although Paris has improved whilst Geneva and Milan have dropped but again could be due to sectors flown so if anyone knows that would be good

Very very rough calculation, assuming for the sake of simplicity a 4-week month and frequencies in line with those originally announced (I'm happy to be corrected by those with better data):
AMS 24/week -> 4800 seats over 4 weeks (24% LF)
CDG 12/week -> 2400 seats over 4 weeks (19% LF)
GVA 6/week -> 1200 seats over 4 weeks (14% LF)
MXP 8/week -> 1600 seats over 4 weeks (12% LF)

Unless the capacity was reduced hugely compared to the original schedule, those are truly shocking load factors. (And I assumed a 4-week month so the actual load factors may be a little worse.)

Media reports have suggested that Darwin may be in talks with Etihad for a shareholding. If this is the case and if something comes of it, I would assume that Etihad would have to change something here pretty rapidly: either focus on feeding EY traffic at AMS or CDG (and advertise it very heavily), or call a halt to the Cambridge adventure.