Eastern Airways didn't wait long after last night's flybe announcement. They now have a Leeds - Southampton route on sale operating 3x daily using a 2nd Leeds based Jetstream 41 aircraft.

Good for them. I see they're running the SOU-LBA-ABZ pattern again, which should strengthen the whole base and make it a viable proposition. I'm surprised that Flybe have pulled it, but equally given the poor reliability achieved - it always seemed to be the LBA route which was chopped when anything was cancelled or running late - then it became a self-fulfilling conclusion to a large degree.

More changes
 

Apparently Flybe are to also stop Nice, Palma, Malaga, Alicante and Faro earlier next summer, all around the 30th September, I imagine there will a few many unhappy people as I would've thought that there would be reasonable demand for Alicante and Malaga at the least past this date.

(Edited due to change of circumstances).

Bad news if true, I suspect SOU will find it very hard to get another carrier into operate these routes, what with the operational limitations of the airfield.

At least they have until the end of next Summer's season to try to sort something out.

I wonder what has happened to the talk that Flybe were rumoured to be (re)opening trunk routes from SOU, to the likes of FRA?....that all seems to have gone quiet.

I don't think we'll see Flybe launching many (if any) new routes in the near term.

The current focus is very much on consolidating on what is currently profitable and trimming/scrapping what is not. Only when that is complete and the company is on a much better financial footing will growth become a major objective again.

For Southampton I think it will signal the end of E195s flying to the Med after summer 2014 and the grounding if the E195 fleet. I also wouldn't be too surprised to see a reduction in summer seasonal regional France flights after 2014.

I guess the main problem is the seasonality of the routes... They may well be profitable routes, but the problem is there's not much use for the aircraft for the rest of the year. It's no good making £5m in the summer, just to lose £6m in the winter.

Interesting development but also rather surprising that it has come to this.

Can someone tell me what would prevent easyJet (A319 not A320) from launching a base at SOU and re-instating some of those lost routes?

I think SEN and SOU have many similarities so not sure why they wouldn't consider SOU.

Bad news for BOH of course if that was ever to happen.

EZY
 

Nakatta, Southampton's runway is too short for a significant year round operation by EZY or other similar operators with based Airbus or Boeing.

Southend is not the best comparison, look to Belfast which has two airports, the smaller of which Belfast city has a runway of 1829m, this is 100m longer than SOU.

EZY fly from the much longer runway at Belfast International, not city, because they can fly longer routes without payload restrictions. A319 are used at city but predominantly on the domestic routes to London.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Southampton faces two big challenges in 2014. The first is Flybe, but there are plenty of airlines to take up the slack left by any change of Flybe routes: KLM, Aer lingus, Loganair, Eastern & Blue Islands for example. We have already seen Eastern leap in following the Leeds route cut by Flybe.

The second challenge for SOU in 2014 is ownership. Based on what I see and hear, it is extremely likely that Aberdeen, Glasgow and Southampton airports will be put up for sale next year. I know there are already buyers in the wings for Aberdeen and Glasgow but what will happen at SOU is much less clear, but it certainly is not a viable additional runway for LHR, that role has been taken by AMS, DUB and DXB.

FF

Airport sale interest
 

Interesting development.

I think that it's a throwaway comment that MAG would be interested

MAG will need to be careful that they do not find themselves in the same position as the BAA did when required to sell airports.

Centre cities

Would owning both Bournemouth and Southampton airports really be acceptable to the relevant Govt bodies ?

MAG are interested in adding Glasgow to their portfolio. Like ABZ it makes Money. GIP wants ABZ. Neither BOH or SOU offer the kinds of returns that infrastructure investors like GIP and now MAG with its Australian investors, seek. There is nothing to suggest that MAG has any interest in SOU. I doubt they would Keep BOH now either if they could find a buyer at a sensible price. Neither of the south coast airports is big enough to warrant much value these days.

Ferrovial is a different situation. Their interest is in all three airports that will be up for sale, Glasgow, Aberdeen and SOU, which may be a more attractive bulk buy proposition to the seller HAH, than dealing with three buyers, one for each airport.

As individual airports only GLA and ABZ have interest apparently - as per my earlier post.

FF

All quiet on the SOU front at the moment, is that a sign of terminal decline with the BEE cut backs and the apparent demise of their Spanish routes?

Something for the parent company to ponder, look at what Southend have done with a 37 metre wide runway, with a TORA 1739metres/TODA 1799metres and an LDA 1604metres (less than SOU). Achieve that, finally resolve the close-in obstacle problems (mainly trees near Mansbridge), after 20 years of procrastination, the future could be Easy!!

If Easyjet come to SOU, what do you think would happen to Flybe on some of the fatter routes like Jersey or to Edinburgh / Glasgow ? Presumably these are of particular importance to Flybe's cashflow being year round and attracting plenty of people travelling on business who will pay higher fares than leisure travellers and other non discretional passengers.

davidjohnson6

Anything less than 60-90 mins sector length with a Q400 I would speculate that Flybe have nothing to worry about. Growth has been flat for years, the need is routes farther into Europe and even the Canaries, I see that Easy are operating an A320 to Tenerife out of Southend, that must be around a 4 hour sector (ie around 2000NM), look where you could go to Europe with that available at SOU.

EASYJET
 

If only the future was ORANGE for SOU.= :)

Will be interesting to see if Easy Jet or Ryanair move in more at Bournemouth from next summer if the Med programme is cancelled , its a large programme that Flybe have from SOU with good loads

Historically its been a bit hit and miss at Southampton regarding IT flights with a small programme back in the early 90 s using Palmair 146 a/c then a big expansion late 90 / 20 s using Air Europa 737 / Iberworld A320 and even Britannia 757 s before slowly the traffic went off to Bournemouth

Prehaps a Vuelling operation similar to Cardiff may be the answer using A319 ?

Interesting times ahead

Would Vueling really want to go back to Southampton after having left not so long ago ?
Once bitten, twice shy...

Vuelling only operated 1 season to Barcelona with rather low loads if i remember but with no competition to the Med perhaps they may look at it again ?

Problem with SOU is the size of the stands. The largest ones, 2-5 only fit up to an E195.
When an A320 or larger arrives it takes up two stands.
So a maximum of two at any time can turn round.
Hence no larger airline is interested and why Ryanair, Thomson and occasionally Monarch operate out of BOH which has no such problems.

Sun Routes
 

With 175's operating from BHX to AGP and PMI there is surly no reason for them not to do so from Southampton.

Centre cities

....except that BHX's 15/33 is a little bit longer (even leaving aside the extension) than SOU's 20/02!

Airlines are not interested in Southampton quite simply because it isnt fit for purpose.
Stands too small, runway too short, aircraft having to backtrack due to lack of taxiway.
Why not turn it into a business park and have a massive expansion at Bournmouth??

Errr, because SOU is very good from an accessibility point-of-view (rail, road, both far far better than BOH will ever be) and is also nearer than BOH to some affluent catchment areas.

I agree that operationally it is very restricted (and for more reasons than you mention), but the average pax who knows nothing about aviation doesnt care about this.

If its so wonderful then how can an airline that has a virtual monopoly on operations there make such a pigs ear of it?? Or does that say more about Flybe than the airport?

And its nothing to do with what passengers think, its how successful, or not, it actually is.

SOU and BOH are each owned by competing private companies. Neither will want to hand their business over to a rival for free. Govt is not about to pay £100m+ to compensate for intended change of use. There are simply far too many entrenched interests who would demand far too much money for SOU to be closed, never mind the monopoly issue

If an airport can pull in over 1m pax per year, there are likely good reasons for the airport remaining in place, regardless of issues that may exist.

Centre Cities

Problem with BEE's 175s is that they are underpowered, a choice that BEE made presumably on operating costs, rather than use the higher powered engine variants. Take the engines off their 195s, bolt them on the 175s, job done, Malaga, Faro etc here we come!

As I mentioned in my 28 January post, problem is not just the current runway length its " the close-in obstacle problems (mainly trees near Mansbridge".

SOU has two runway 20 Type A take-off charts, one climbing straight ahead towards the hill, and another making a right turn after take-off to avoid the hill. The latter is worth around 1-2 tonnes extra take-off weight when I last checked performance charts. Due to the close proximity of trees (Marhill Copse I believe is the name of their location) to the end of the runway many aircraft cannot take advantage of the angled take-off path. Remove the offending trees and they can. From my previous rants you will see that this was part of my 20+ years of frustration working for "the world class airport group" who's priority appeared to be more focused on world class terminal toilets.

Bournemouth Airport - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

BOH had it's place in history as did such an airport as LPL, get over it!

http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8...nkvco1_500.jpg

Yes it does: among highest seat-mile costs and lowest aircraft and crew productivities in Europe according to new management.

Bournemouth Airport welcomes new Turkish route with operator OSKA Travel

Flybe cancelled flights
 

The link about route cancellations seem to refer to the announcement made 2 months ago. Is there something new in the link that hasn't been widely publicised yet ?

Flybe are operating a new ski charter next winter for Neilson Ski on a Sunday to Lleida Algvaire ( Andora i believe ! )

Flights depart at 0730 rtn 1315 DHC 400

Flybe are operating a charter for Neilson / Thomas Cook from Southampton to Lleida this winter every Sunday as well.
The only difference, is that flight times this winter are about 20 mins later than those you mentioned.

SOU 0750 ILD 1120 BE9917
ILD 1205 SOU 1335 BE9918

If anyone knows a way to book a seat on this flight without buying a 7-night holiday, please tell me - I've spent ages on the phone to Neilson, Thomas Cook and Flybe in an attempt to get a seat but to no avail

One thing I find interesting is despite the reasonably well off catchment area there is only one route to Italy from SOU. Verona appears to be doing very well too having been increased from weekly in 2010-12 to 2x last year and it will be 3x this year. This has been helped by the various tour operators that sell seats/packages to Verona and Lake Garda.

The Palmair Italian routes from BOH always used to do well, and newmarket are also doing well from there with the limited number of flights/packages they offer. I guess the chances of additional Italian routes from SOU has been slimmed significantly by Flybe's decision to ditch the E195's in favour of the more efficient but underpowered E175's. Still, I would think the likes of FCO, MXP, NAP, PSA, VCE would be viable a few times per week, especially with the backing of a tour operator or two.

As for who could operate them Flybe might look at MXP/VCE as they are not much further than VRN. However I do wonder if Volotea would look into operating from SOU, as it seems to suit their business plan of operating 'secondary' european routes away from the major loco competition. They could also look at operating some of the sun routes which will be dropped from October.

Volotea
 

I too was thinking along the same lines regarding Volotea, that is just the type of airline SOU needs to replace Flybe on their sun routes along with additional routes as you suggested.

Forgive me, but I thought Volotea was actually flying into SOU this summer on behalf of a tour operator. Palma, I think?

volotea
 

Yes they are , chartered by thomson the first flight is 24 may.
Cheers col

Volotea
 

Although we are aware that Volotea are flying on behalf of Thomson this summer from SOU to Palma the point we were making was that this was the perfect sort of airline that could work on a scheduled basis from SOU, if you look at their route map you will understand what we meant.

Runway expansion