Was just looking at flights to New York and interestingly BHD now undercuts BFS by a fair bit and sometimes even DUB. Fares available at £401 for a large part of the year via AMS using the imminent KLM cityhopper to connect.

Now obviously the non-stop flights from BFS and DUB are preferable to most people but it does give another option for those willing to give up time to save a bit. In that sense it can only hurt the UA flights from BFS.

Arrived back home today and spotted a big advertisement for KLM one of the billboards was advertising America

Looks like KLM is going to go up against BA for connecting pax in AMS
Quite honestly I can see KLM going double daily from BHD with most of those passengers not seeing outside of Amsterdam airport

On an other note Willie Walsh said he wanted to increase IAG presence in NI with other routes being looked at for Vueling but with Iberia Express popping up all over Uk this summer to Madrid, could it be on the cards for 2016?

When did Willie Walsh say about new NI roures for NI?

I do hope he means LCY!

KLM
 

Is the AMS service year round as the web site wont let me book after OCT 15. Says we do not operate! !

Normally summer season runs to the end of October?
Maybe someone in the know will inform soon

I've found no winter timetable either, however in work today I notice every NI newspaper had a full page spread advert for KLM at Belfast, one hell of a campaign.

Saw the same but thought they would release winter very soon

If your stuck I'm sure there will be the normal EZY to AMS five times a week up at BFS........or maybe they will go daily during the winter !!

Albeit minus any connections.....

EI swtich BHD-PMI to DUB aircraft giving BHD two free slots...

I thought all are lingus summer routes where going to be a W rotation from Dublin. Meaning just 2 aircraft at BHD this summer and the aircaft must doing the usual LHR/LGW x3 and then the odd Verona at the weekend

Nope third aircraft operates AGP/FAO only. PMI was by LGW aircraft last year.

I wonder what they are going to do with the two free slots? Maybe the Tuesday one allows for a season long Verona charter? But what about the Saturday one.. They must have something up their sleeve! But it's getting abit late on to announce a brand new route! Anyone any idea!!

Pedantically, Belfast City doesn't have 'slots'.

It is a Facilitated Airport, so movements may have to be co-ordinated during peaks, but there is no must-have-a-slot-to-fly system.

http://www.acl-uk.org/default.aspx?id=105

I can't see two free slots? Only one at LGW on a Sat afternoon, looking into it I can see the a/c covers the LGW-NOC rotation with 1hr25mins on the ground at NOC, vastly cheaper place to lie idle than LGW I shouldn't doubt.

Didn't literally mean slots but slots available with the third frame based.

Looks like they have updated their booking system. Lgw back to 3 daily using bhd aircraft on a Tuesday, and as mentioned above the bhd seems to do bhd lgw bhd lgw noc lgw bhd landing back at 20:20 on a sat.

Bit of shame was hoping for something slightly more exciting. Odd how they have basically just changed the dub crew from doing the lgw to the Pmi. Think they're doing themselves abit of a disfavour. The old Pmi sat and tues times were betting for stags hens etc. must make sense to someone though.

So they have, my info was from Wednesday.

Forgive my ignorance here but when you say "PMI was by LGW aircraft last year", what does that mean?

I used the PMI service last year and from FR24 logs it seemed the aircraft operating was based at BHD (albeit almost exclusively on LGW's) and the crew both outbound and inbound were all Northern Irish which I assume points to BHD crew? Not disputing the point just wondering what "LGW aircraft" referred to.

AC

Pmi and all services last year were by BHD based aircraft with the exception of Tuesday flight in the evening on LGW which operated by non based ac, routing LGW BHD LGW, resulting in a later departure to LGW and a much earlier last flight back on the route.