After the Stansted sale, perhaps a shift of some of those Gatwick routes to Stansted since EasyJet are dropping the key ones like Alicante and Barcelona? Only Ryanair remains on those now, not even a Thomson charter or anything like that!

The only problem is that Monarch, amongst many other airlines like this view it as the tradition to serve Gatwick since that was designated the holiday/leisure/charter flight airport of London and a move to Stansted would be ultimately unrealistic. It's an approach that airlines need to drop and airlines should cater for the under-served markets, rather than overcrowding airports with too much direct competition having duplicate routes from several airlines. For example there will now be about 15 daily departures from Gatwick with 5 airlines to Barcelona in the summer, Stansted and Luton will have only up to 2 departures with 1 airline each! There is no way that demand for this route is more than 5 times stronger round Sussex than in Essex.

Particularly after the Stansted sale, Monarch could acheive much higher yield at Stansted than Gatwick, but it's this biased sort of "tradition" that makes them soldier on at Gatwick, where they have now just become obscured as one of a load of operators, they don't scream out as a highly attractive option with the likes of EasyJet and BA alongside them. They would at Stansted since many would happily pay that bit more to avoid flying with Ryanair!

Monarch are a highly attractive option at LGW and other airports.
Their costs are competitive and they have a large base of regular passengers who appreciate the higher standards offered.
Monarch are a well known and respected operator.

Precisely! That's why they are sort of shooting themselves in the foot by offering the same routes as EasyJet, Thomson, Thomas Cook, BA in some cases and now Norwegian as well! In all fairness, their costs are not that different to EasyJet if cheaper at all and the frequencies of most of their routes are considerably less so what (other than the slightly higher standards as you put it) about Monarch really screams out to the consumer over the above airlines?

All I'm saying is I beleive Monarch could still remain highly competetive by competing indirectly with those airlines by stepping into Stansted (not suggesting Monarch should completely leave Gatwick) since it's fairly under-served on their key routes such as Alicante, Faro etc. as only Ryanair now flies those routes from Stansted. Monarch could take advantage of the EasyJet closures of those routes by opening a small base at Stansted since Ryanair is less of a threat than it's current direct competitors at Gatwick since the service differenciates on a greater level. As I say, a lot of people would choose to pay a bit extra for the standards of Monarch and avoid Ryanair!

The 'higher standards' of monarch itself refers back to a bygone era. There is very little between various LCC/Short haul charter these days.

You would prefer them to avoid popular places where many people wish to fly to and diversify into places to where no one wishes to visit?
Do you perhaps work in marketing? I feel we may have been in a meeting together at some point....

What's the point of basing aircraft at Stansted, when you already have a base, headquarters and primary maintenance facility at Luton? Monarch aren't exactly going to fill 10s of stands overnight, so space isn't going to be a huge issue at Luton.

Have to say as someone who uses a few of he LC,s MON are certainly a cut above the likes of jet 2

No I think they should continue to fly to their destinations but could consider doing some of them from Stansted since only Ryanair flies to the popular destinations in a lot of cases such as Alicante, Barcelona and Faro whilst Gatwick has loads of alternative flights and airlines. They could get themselves a good deal with the new oweners of Stansted and fill the gap left by EasyJet who have been axing the popular sun and city routes.

EasyJet have four London airports, all on a much greater level than Monarch so they could easily serve Stansted alongside Luton. The problem is that Luton also has a similar problem with either EasyJet (the low-cost option) or Thomson (the better service option) if not both, offering the same routes as Monarch. For Stansted, many popular routes are now only left with the low-cost but very basic service of Ryanair and Monarch could benefit by bringing something new to Stansted since Essex, Cambridgeshire and Hertforshire are all very affluent areas and would all desire something with a little more service from their local airport

Stansted is not a popular airport with many travellers. It has good facilities and is uncrowded, but it just isn't where people want to fly from. Hence it's major carrier is Ryanair, whose main attraction is price. If you want to fly cheap, you go to STN, otherwise you go to a more convenient departure airport.

If MON went into STN, they would be going head-to-head against the lowest-cost and most aggressive competitor, for a share of a tiny market (that area they don't already serve from LTN or EMA).

So, let's face it, they won't be going in to STN any time soon.

Sorry but I disagree. What is it really that makes Stansted so unatractive to passengers when compared to Gatwick and Luton. The demand for flights around Stansted is certainly very high indeed and since it has impressive load factors of about 80% on every flight throughout the whole year on average, clearly people do want to fly from there!

You're always going to get these 'anti-Stansted' comments from 90% of those who frequent PPRuNe who believe that Luton is the centre of the universe. So quit whilst you're ahead and only time will tell.

Just for the record I'd be grateful to see anyone on the routes you mention other than Ryanair.

80% load factors isn't that impressive is it? They'd be extremely dissappointed it was lower than that. I'd say a sure sign that passengers don't want to travel from there is the number of routes and airlines the airport has been haemoragging in the last 12 months. Carriers such as Air Asia moving to Gatwick and several easyJet routes moving to both Southend and Luton.

I'd say Stansted has been the main victim of Ryanair's vast success. One carrier with so much leverage and power at one airport. Smashing the competition.

I've been bemoaning Monarch recently; what they're doing at the moment is probably quite good; their load factors in the 90s% this summer. What I'm afraid of is where they're going to go when their fleet grows to the upper 40s? Especially as the fleet will be just A320/1s essentially.

Greater variety of airlines and routes/frequency's (Less so of the latter for LTN) and neither airport has anywhere near as much dominance by one airline as STN does with Ryanair. Better rail links and also locations (Luton is good for a lot of London + Oxford/Buckinghamshire & Gatwick has South London + Kent, Surrey/Sussex, Hampshire) also play a part along with onward connectivity mainly @ Gatwick. Stansted still has a strong catchment and high demand but these factors are the main reasons that many people choose LGW or LTN over STN.

Dannyboy 39, I'm not even going to bother differing on your view. You live in Luton and are quite clearly an 'anti-Stansted' person as pamann quite nicely put it. All I will say is that 80% is very impressive for the entire year as an average and load factors are climing at Stansted despite passenger declines, clearly showing the demand is there. Considering the less than half full planes that most airports get outside the peak seasons, 80% for the whole year is very impressive and suggests virtually full, if not completely full planes operating through the summer and it's LF's are actually now above Gatwick's!

Stansted is probably the first choice airport for all those North and East London, Essex, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk with parts of Northamtonshire also. Even a good amount of people from where I live in Leicester (in the Midlands!) use Stansted easily as much as Luton despite being half an hour further away by road and are both on direct rail routes but Luton is much faster in that sense. Yet despite that, everybody I have asked round here say they still prefer Stansted! Now what could possibly be the explanation to that???

Is that your only argument - that any who disagrees is "anti-Stansted"? Delusional. I think we all want a booming UK aviation industry don't we. Heck, I do and I bet the vast majority of others on this forum, rely on it for work!

The numbers and facts speak for themselves. In an era, where air transport is supposed to be booming and numbers are supposed to rapidly growing, Stansted bucks the trend by going backwards.

To be honest, I blame BAA as much as Ryanair.

Could we move the discussion of the merits (or lack) of Stansted to the Stansted thread ? There are plenty of people who wish to contribute to this discussion, but they won't be aware of the points being raised if it remains on the Monarch thread

I'd be ready for some PR fall out over the new Monarch hand baggage policy and its implementation timescale.

I think the PR spin being put on this is disgusting, and not at all what I would expect from Monarch.

Old policy was a single item, 56x45x20cm. Hand bags, laptops etc were fine - so long as they fitted inside the single hand baggage item permitted to go through security and boarding.

Monarch have announced this as 'two seperate items now permitted through security and boarding', however both must fit together within the permitted space.

And the permitted space is reduced to 56x40x20 cm!

That's 5cm narrower, and means a 10+% reduction in overall volume. Effective thursday 1st November, regardless of when passengers booked.

The previous size was the same as BA and U2 maximum size, now it is smaller than standard.

Expect some problems from people who booked when their bags met the dimensions, and turn up at the airport on Thursday not having been advised of the change. And thouse people on return trips who flew out before the changes, etc.

And at Luton, it is still one item, so a pure and simple size reduction.

In a way it is quiet a sensible move, although I don't understand the 5cm reduction. It's not going to make a real difference, but just cause hassle.

My cabin bag is usually small, even smaller than the Ryanair allowance. However, I often have a laptop - this is very difficult to get inside the small bag. My cabin bag + laptop side by side would easily fit into any airline baggage cage (inc RYR), but for all LoCo airlines this isn't acceptable, which really is a nonsense.

Hand luggage still 10Kg weight though.

So, Monarch have, apart from 1cm, dropped to Ryanair size for hand baggage.

As for Luton, you can take 2 bags through security IF you pay for fast track.

.....and it does cause hassle.......if you have one flight on Monarch during a set of flights, you now need to buy a new bag.

The email is a little naughty as it sings "two bags" loudly to you, without drawing attention to the size reduction.