Sharm el sheikh
 

Thomson won't be adding anymore flights to sharm el sheikh as other airlines in luton are increasing and thomson are reducing flights to sharm el sheikh

Carpatair
 

Im sorry boeing_eng, but I have just been through the last 2-3 pages of the thread and cannot see you posting anything. So I am unsure how I was meant to know this!

If you have ever been to Sharm in the summer you will know why there is only one flight a week! Get up, have breakfast, stay in aircon all day and don't see the sun again until 5PM - stupid summer destination.

Unrest in Egypt has cut demand.

Im sorry boeing_eng, but I have just been through the last 2-3 pages of the thread and cannot see you posting anything. So I am unsure how I was meant to know this!

No apology necessary!:}.....I wasn't having a go (just highlighting that I'd already mentioned the subject)......(back on Sept 7th)

Anyway, TOM seem to be shifting capacity to ACE from a number of UK airports for this Winter due to the SSH issues!

The £90 million Luton busway opens Wednesday. Services run every 15 minutes to the airport for most of the day. Timetable and route details here. Routes & Timetables

I counted five 737 business jets parked up at Luton today at the same time. Three were on stands 16 & 17, one was on one of the Harrods ramps and another parked on one of the RSS ramps.

The airport just seemed to be crammed full of business jets located in all corners of the airport and located on Luton's 7 business jet ramps if you include the south stands.

Long haul leisure
 

Why is it that long haul leisure flights, eg Florida, Mexico, Carribean routes, have rarely featured at Luton?

Is there simply not enough demand or do airlines like Thomson, Monarch prefer to focus purely on Gatwick in terms of their long haul ops in the South East?

Given other parts of UK, eg the Midlands, support such flights from both East Midlands & Birmingham, I wonder if there's a chance that such routes could work out of Luton?

Runway length
 

It's to short to go to these long haul places

Long haul leisure
 

Haven't Monarch used an A330 & Thomson a 767 in the past?

Many moons ago Monarch did St Lucia from Luton with B720B, with refueling stop either Gander or the Azores depending on routing.

I'm pretty certain 787 is designed for short runway long haul.
No reason at all why Thomson can't do Florida Mexico etc without fuel stop.

It's to short to go to these long haul places

No its not. The modern generation of aircraft can easily do the East Coast. Thomson used to do Orlando direct with a B767.

Its all down to economics, as they would be competing with the routes out of Gatwick, and possibly the lack of a comercial department at the Airport trying to get these routes in the first place.

When TOM flew to MCO with the 767's to guarantee a direct flight outbound it had to use either G-BYAA/AB which had the CF6-80C2 engines (hardly ideal from an operational standpoint) The Orlando market for charter carriers was stronger then as it was before VS & BA moved in with a lot of capacity.

The 787 can operate to plenty of long-haul destinations from a 7000ft runway. However, in the case of LGW, many airlines are now more interested in preserving the valuable slots they have there rather than moving aircraft elsewhere to operate a service from another London airport.

Yes Monarch did operate charters on behalf of Airtours in 2000 and 2001, but I think 9/11 signed the end of this route. From what I recall it was quite successful, but after this Airtouurs focussed back on using their own metal on long haul routes and primarily from LGW, BHX and MAN.

I remember been told, the aircraft was weight restricted and had about 30 seats blocked out, but that was the days of lower fuel costs and airlines could afford to that.

Those were the days when Airtours also had a DC-10 based here.:ok:

Are G-BYAA/AB the old 767-200's?

I think if Thomson really did want to fly from Luton, the 767-300's could operate non-stop to Florida without an issue... Thomson operate this type of aircraft from Bristol to Sanford non-stop in both directions, despite the short 6000ft runway. But the longer routes to Mexico and the Caribbean are flown via Manchester to top up on fuel.
(Happy to be corrected.)

Anyway back to reality... I think we need to face facts, that any long haul ops are not going to happen from the airport anytime soon... For all the charter airlines Gatwick is the primary base for London and the south of England for long haul ops, as is Manchester for the North. Unfortunately regardless of being HQ for Thomson and Monarch this has little baring on their decisions these days. With only a smattering of popular long haulers from the main regional airports.

Despite London being in the airports name, Luton is really treated by Thomson as a regional airport for the charter market it serves, with it reflecting pretty much the same short haul destinations and frequencies as the likes Bristol, Cardiff, East Midlands, Birmingham, Newcastle and Glasgow.

Are G-BYAA/AB the old 767-200's?

Yes, they were 767-200's

TOM now operate BRS-SFB direct because the long-haul 767-300's are in a low density 248 seat config (and very nice it is too!) :ok:

Did Court Line not operate long haul with the 400 seat L1011 Tristar back in the 70's ?

They did, to St Lucia. They did have to tech stop en-route though, usually Gander I think.

Who remembers Virgin operating a Luton to New York service using a Boeing 747? OK it was empty but it did arrive with passengers from New York.

The reason Virgin used Luton was that Luton was the only London Airport that would allow Virgin to operate a positioning flight back to New York in the early hours as the inbound was running very late.

Long Haul
 

Yes, remember it well LTNman - also Britannia used to operate B767s to Australia (not direct of course) for a few seasons which proved very popular. I remember it featured on ´´Wish You were Here´´ and Judith Chalmers was suitably impressed. Also in the 1970s B707s were also operated by Britannia on affinity group charters (members? of the The Luton Cat Club, etc) to Los Angeles and Hong Kong.
Monarch also operated the occasional charter to Ascension Island with B720bs. I think for the company running the radio installations there plus of course the MoD flights to Adelaide/Woomera with Britannias.