It is in the carpet air booking engine with late inbound and outbound flights, similar to Tarom. No doubt as a result of the expected influx due after 1 January

Kiv 2110 ltn 2240 ---4--7 v3 118
ltn 2355 kiv 0530+1 ---4--7 v3 117

Yes, I know that Kiev Zhulyiany (IEV) and Chisinau / Kishinev (KIV) have somewhat confusing IATA codes

Sorry about the lower case stuff - website seems to have decide that case must always match grammatical english - namely sentence starts with a capital and everything else is lower case

Unless there's an extra anti-social hours payment to crew, bit of a cr*ppy shift to be assigned to work. However, if the passengers have very little cash and are willing to put up with discomfort to save a few euros, then I guess all these late night departures from Luton to Bulgaria / Moldova / Romania are probably quite a good way for an airline to squeeze a few more hours of revenue service out of their aircraft

As far as I know Tarom, Carpatair and some flights by Blue Air and El Al have departures around midnight. Even some WizzAir departures are very late, around 10pm.

Has there been a change of some sort since the sale from Abertis maybe to offer a financial incentive to operate in these late evening hours? It's not like capacity is tight in the daylight hours.

On a completely different note... I wonder if Luton is one of those airports Ryanair may be cutting capacity at in 2014 in light of the Stansted deal given the geography and that there has been very little change with just four aircraft and virtually no growth for many years.

Ryanair's network at Luton is also very dated in that it looks like the typical Ryanair base 10 years ago. It stands out as serving a very different route network to Ryanair's other UK bases.

There is not much other than a few random selections that for what ever reason Stansted either serves less frequently (eg. Kerry, Malta, Marrakech) or not at all (Beziers, Nimes & Trapani).

I wouldn't be surprised if in the future we actually saw them close the Luton base. I'm not sure they'd leave completely as I would expect maybe one or two routes like Dublin, Girona or Tenerife for example could stay with services by inbound aircraft from those bases.

It's just that there simply seems to have always been very little future for them at Luton, especially now after Monday's news. Also, as Ryanair say "there is now an incentive for them to grow at Stansted," maybe meaning there is now less of an incentive to stay at Luton??

To me it looks a bit like the situation that East Midlands had with EasyJet that led to them pulling out. That's my view of what could happen, so nobody think about biting my head off if you disagree, but I would be interested to know what other people think of this?

Why close a base that makes money?

FRatSTN - in answer to your question, Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria and Israel are all 2 hours ahead of the UK.
Looking for example at the Chisinau-Luton route, the flight departs Chisinau at 2110 Moldova time or 1910 UK time and lands in Luton at 2240 local time or 0040 Moldova time. The aircraft then depart Luton at 2355 UK time or 0155 Moldova time and lands in Chisinau at 0530 Moldova time or 0330 UK time.
During this round trip, there has been 3h30 + 3h35 = 7h05 - ie earning revenue from passengers who bought tickets.

Suppose instead the aircraft left Chisinau at 2110 for Bucharest and then returned back to Chisinau at 2300 for the night with the next departure at 0600. If this happened, the aircraft has been flying (and thus earning revenue from passenger tickets) for perhaps 1h30 instead of 7h05. This means that rather than letting a valuable aircraft spend 5h35 sitting on tarmac doing nothing, Carpatair have got a load of higher ticket revenues instead.

Sure there are more miles in the logs and at the next maintenance check likely more work to do, but this is still an aircraft earning sizeable revenue and hopefully helping annual profits for the airline rather than just sitting on the ground doing nothing.

True, but maybe now they can make MORE money at Stansted. Certainly, as a base, it is probably one of the most stagnant in terms of growth and I would think now, it is probably at its most vulnerable.

I notice from mid december, Dublin is down to just two daily flights, seven days a week.

Well I can see Ryanair's Luton base going with maybe Ryanair keeping the Dublin route with a Dublin based aircraft. This puts pressure on Luton to do a new deal with Ryanair but as Ryanair has found out with new owners Aena they don't always play ball.


I would have also thought that merging bases saves money.

Ryanair
 

There would keep 1 or 2 aircraft at luton as some routes have a lot of profit

Actually this summer the Ryanair programe out of Luton has seen a slight rise due to an increase in W flights, eg. Malta, Gerona, Trapani and the odd Dublin. I would think if the routes are making money why change it. Also with the ´´expansion´´ at Stansted next summer everybody seems to expect the extra passengers to be just waiting to fly Ryanair, well with the publicity know one wants at the moment (Which etc) we´ll just have to wait and see.
I see the airport has don rather well with football charters this week - Basle and Tromso teams plus Arsenal of course and also a couple of charters to Barcelona (Enter and French Post)

Some interesting points people, thank you.

That's another point actually. Ryanair's presence is up this year but it in fairness has been going slightly up and slightly down for years. Dublin for example has been up to 4 daily before, now as low as 2 this winter.

For the last 6 or 7 years they have always done best just to stay on at Luton because Stansted was hardly a more attractive alternative. There has been no incentive to shift traffic from Luton to Stansted for at least that length of time.

Now that has changed, my gut feeling is that within the next few years at most, Ryanair may start going away from Luton now that there is that incentive at their biggest base for them. Luton only really lies in the way and is a barrier to some of that growth, especially with the lack of aircraft deliveries presently.

As LTNman kinds of points out what O'Leary has said "some services will have to relocate [to Stansted] from other airports." This may just mean traffic from other bases across Europe, but may it not insinuate services from Luton and routes like Beziers or Nimes shifting to Stansted??

Of course Ryanair makes money at Luton, but it isn't all about that. There is no future, the future lies next door. Luton serves a decreasing purpose as a Ryanair base now.

EasyJet made good money at East Midlands but like Ryanair's Luton base, growth just stagnated. They moved aircraft elsewhere where they simply had more of a future, not because they weren't making money.

The future of Ryanair it seems in the UK is with MAG at Stansted, East Midlands and Manchester, now their UK top 3 I believe. Liverpool and Edinburgh as well maybe, the other bases seem much less involved in Ryanair growth.

No it's about a romance between MAG and Ryanair, true love forever and ever and ever. It's not about money at all, great point.
Unless you work in a commercial role at FR, that's fanboy wishful thinking. Did you go back to work for FR as last time I asked you were with EZY? If I may be blunt, you're being naive. As a commercial business, FR plays one desperate airport off against the other. PIK vs EDI, "Prestwick doomed, future's EDI." Result? Three years later PIK has it's busiest summer in years. It's swings and roundabouts, MOL is not about to put all his eggs in one basket, Stansted needs to play BOHICA every few years, as Luton is about to now.
A base at Luton has been and is likely to remain a useful stick to batter whoever owns STN with. He's not about to give that up now is he?

Because Ryanair now loves Stansted and it's for good this time. "MOL and MAG up a tree, K I S S I N G...."<that's enough, behave now !>

If you haven't got anything sensible to add then how about considering not adding anything at all and keeping your weird sense of humour to yourself!

That's right, great point, you got it!!

I pointed out to you that your prediction that your favourite airport was the future and Luton was doomed was wrong, I gave you a recent example of why, named two similar airports where FR play one off against the other. There are many more, if you read this thread they are all on here. I would say good I gave some good examples of what FR will continue to do and why it's not sensible to think of FR and MAG in the fanboy terms in which you continue to write. It's not a love in, it's a ruthless business where loyalty counts for nothing. If you understand this, and I suspect you can't, you'll see why LTN and Ryanair are likely to agree terms rather than the LTN base closing and STN becoming some King of the Hill. I also said FR need LTN to beat STN over the head with, if you read either of the two decent books on the history of Ryanair, you'll see this is a common theme.
I apologise for mocking you, it was inappropriate, however your username doesn't help.

You may be correct by all accounts and am far from saying you are wrong as it could go either way, but don't convince yourself that anywhere is safe, because it's fair to agree that Ryanair at Luton is more vulnerable at the moment.

You need to look at the facts, not what you think I might view as the king of the hill or love relationship between MAG and FR, or indeed what you view as full on profits.

Most of Ryanair's UK growth in recent years has been at Manchester and East Midlands, it can't go unnoticed that MAG own both those airports and that there is potentially some loyalty there (and nothing more than that!)

If Ryanair are basing six more planes and bringing 1.3 million not necessarily new, but extra passengers to Stansted next year compared to this year, with that level of growth projected for the next five years (whether it happens is a different story) then surely you can at least see how it might have damaging effects on Luton. And especially as Ryanair have said themselves that there will be relocating of services and capacity cuts at some airports.

In case you haven't noticed, this is the way Ryanair negotiate. Threaten, act on the threats if necessary, but keep their options open always.

Not loyalty, commercialism. Loyalty in business is a sign of weakness. Ryanair isn't weak.

Absolutely right!

FR is all happy now with MAG, the recent growth at MAG airports including the suspension of winter flights at BOH was the plan all along. They were buttering up MAG for a deal on chargers. If FR don't meet there targets at STN for the discount on chargers things could turn very sour if MAG don't give the a discount.

FR are not stupid and they have and are playing MAG. Who will win the game is the big question which has yet to be answered.

He's got business experience. Loyalty is a weakness. SRB's Virgin Atlantic was ruthless enough to make sure Laker MkII failed when they tried UK-Florida, all above board and legal. Business is about trying to do one over on your suppliers and competitors. With respect, you don't work in business, but terrible as that sounds, it keeps many, many good people in work.

Don't dismiss little old Luton, remember Luton will soon be under new ownership, with Luton and all of the 21 Spanish airports Ryanair fly to and from operating under one umbrella . Also Alicante is one of Ryanair's biggest bases so while Ryanair uses 3 MAG Airports it is nowhere near the 22 Aena airports they also use. Don't forget that Aena is the world's largest airport operator

Can't help wondering how this will affect the Chisinau service operated by Air Moldova to STN.

It seems we have agreed. The overall thought is that Ryanair will be staying at Luton, thanks for your input. But unless you are actively involved in the deal then none of us can be so certain, regardless of how much business experience we claim to have or what we have seen happen before or we think of loyalty and profitability.

It's two flights per week so hardly significant if the worst does happen, but it's competition and that is the whole point for the break up of BAA. Still good news if you ask me.

Your point being??

22 airports? worlds largest airport operator? Does Ryanair give a fig? Ryanair have made it clear they don't get on with large airport monopolies because they are generally high cost operators.

Is there a cost based incentive with AENA in Spain? No not really, that's why they have reduced traffic at Madrid and Barcelona and well, I don't think we need to be reminded about what disagreement they had at Alicante. So is Luton going to be any different? Possibly, but possibly not.