Didn't Concorde go into Exeter at some point?

Alright folks the point has been made - the runway is long enough. The facilities are not.

The "new" Flybe maintenance hangars were built with the capacity to take Boeing 737 sized aeroplanes but they would probably struggle with anything larger.
Hangar 9 - which was known locally as the Vampire Hangar due to its inmates during the 60's & 70's - has a "To Let" sign on it. The largest aeroplane I've seen in there though was a Viscount.
The rumour does seem improbable.

Until 27 Oct 2014, the early morning weekday trains from Exeter to London involve either a train calling at every station and taking around 3 hours or not arriving at Paddington until 9 am at the earliest. If the train company has a monopoly on all non-car transport to London, this is a profitable approach since stoping everywhere maximises the number of fare paying passengers. I'm ignoring the coach which takes 4h30 as it's not credible for people travelling for work.

If Flybe can launch a flight to effectively compete, First Great Western will presumably want to give some form of competitive response. I'm guessing the most effective way of making life hard for a EXT-LCY route is to add capacity and/or improve train times rather than dropping prices. I'm not familiar with train franchising or scheduling procedures and hope someone else may have more knowledge.

How easy is it for FGW to add a train departing Exeter at 0600, stopping only at Reading and arriving at Paddington about 0800 ? Would Network Rail just refuse track access ? Would the franchise terms make this difficult ? Are trainsets and staff available ? Is there room at Paddington for this ? How long would it take before FGW could operate such a train ? Comments from those with knowledge much appreciated...

I live in the West Country (Bristol, although some in Devon and Cornwall believe that Bristol is South Midlands) and FGW seems always short of coaching stock with trains packed in the rush hours with promises but little action about improving matters. Plymouth, much worse off than Exeter for any connectivity, has been trying to get better train services from London for years without success.

I doubt that there is any spare stock going, especially HST units, unless it's diverted from elsewhere in the region - unlikely!

Most of railway South West England is destined to remain in the diesel age for years perhaps decades to come, with electrification only coming to London-Bristol-South Wales (plus Newbury and Oxford) from Paddington in the next few years.

EXT-LCY does look marginal versus the train.

In 2003 and 2004 Air Wales tried a service, 3 x daily at first, from Swansea via Cardiff to London City. Within a few months Swansea was dropped and the CWL-LCY leg reduced to 2 x daily, which by the following year had become Monday and Friday only and that was then axed completely before the end of 2004.

Cardiff-London Paddington is typically about 20-25 minutes shorter in rail journey time than Exeter-Paddington. An air alternative didn't work for Air Wales from Cardiff. Would the extra 20-25 minutes swing it for Flybe? Must be something of a gamble although I certainly hope that Flybe wins the bet.

Addendum

I meant to say also that there might be a difficulty in finding a path for an additional train at peak time into the extremely busy Reading-Paddington section.

It all depends on the pricing really. Train fares from SW England to London are not cheap (especially if not booked months ahead). If Flybe can price themselves competitively versus FGW then they have a chance. I shall ignore SW trains Exeter to Waterloo service 'cos that trip takes ages!

I've said before that air travel from Exeter to London has traditionally struggled due to the relatively fast trains that are occasionally available. It's the extra hour to get to Plymouth from Exeter and 2 hours+ to get to Cornwall that have made services from there to London viable. I hope that Flybe can break that tradition. Good luck to them.

The simple arithmetic for rail vs air for Exeter - London (city centre to city centre) has always been the downfall of air services to Gatwick, which have been run, on and off, since the 1980s, as it would be to any airport near London. London City is on the edge of that category; we'll see how that works out. It's easy for Canary Wharf, quite a long ride to the City, and even longer to the West End.

Even with short check-in and security transit times, the air service cannot beat the rail service on overall speed. It can of course offer much less expensive fares than the rail 1st class fare, even taking the rail element of the air journey into account.

Passengers travelling out of the UK an air service to a hub airport can create a demand, but either the sector yield is too low to be viable, or the sector fare is too high for the passenger, who can always get a bus or train instead to the hub airport if it's in UK.

Part of the rationale of the CDG route is to access lower-cost long-haul services, perhaps even short-haul services, from there. As the London airports get more crowded and thus too expensive for (passengers using) small regional airlines, this makes more and more sense.

By the way, the worst case departure from Exeter's 2083m was a DC8 going non-stop to Toronto. It was a terrifying event for those on board, as the aircraft slowly gathered just enough speed to make a full-stop a crash. Concorde's several take-offs were fighter performance by comparison.

Not sure I've made my point clearly enough. Trains times tomorrow (Thursday) from Exeter to London leaving before 09h00 are, filtering out cases where a train is substantially overtaken:

dep 0510 arr 0846 takes 3h36, to Waterloo
dep 0546 arr 0838 takes 2h52, to Paddington
dep 0652 arr 0900 takes 2h08, to Paddington
dep 0753 arr 1002 takes 2h09, to Paddington
dep 0851 arr 1124 takes 2h33, to Paddington

I assume most people travelling for work and expected to spend the whole day alert will be unhappy with a 0510 train departure and even 0546 is less than appealing.

It's clear that a train can do Exeter to Paddington in 2h08. However assuming a business location is not adjacent to Paddington, it's very difficult to make a meeting before about 0930 or 1000.

Alternatively
EXT dep 0640 LCY arr 0800
Just late enough to be palatable to those who like a good night's sleep, and arrives early enough to make a 9 am meeting viable anywhere in central London.

Frankly a rather compelling option to anyone who would otherwise be travelling early morning from Exeter to London for work, and potentially slashing demand in first class on the early morning trains. Will First Great Western respond, and if so, how ?

EXT dep 0640 LCY arr 0800

You wouldn't want to be checking in/hitting Security much after 0605, and that's after parking and getting to the terminal, or spending a lot on a taxi.

STA LCY 0800, out of the airport door at 0820 on a good day with no baggage, arrive in the City at 0845 by cab, 0900 by rail, West End by 0915. It might be worth having a look at the airport schedule for 0745 - 0815 to form an assessment of what the actual slot time might be and the likelihood of being on the stand at 0800 precisely. Marketing promises are one thing; operational reality another.

Railway is 0652 - 0915 to West End, 0652 - 0930 to City. Hmmm, the only thing going for air service is price, IF it's lower than 1st Class on the railway, and the dreadful service provided by FGW, which is getting steadily worse. ("We are very sorry for .....no catering/late/cancelled/no driver/no catering/so service/no seats/no wifi/no seat power sockets; so sorry....please don't complain or we'll have you arrested". Guaranteed to be one or more of those on any service, as you trundle towards London in repainted 1980's rolling stock.)

Curious that Manchester Airport to Heathrow Airport is about 15 miles further (on land - source google maps) than Exeter Airport to London City Airport, but BA schedule the trip for 65 minutes, rather than the 80 minutes that Flybe are allowing. I would have thought that unless you were unlucky, the holding time around 8am into LHR would be greater than into LCY. That would suggest that quite a bit of extra contingency has been built into this service to try and ensure that it has a good chance of getting a reputation among frequent flyers as being very punctual.

Surely the bigger challenge for Flybe will be to generate a healthy load on the first flight back to Exeter from LCY... If they do not succeed there then the loadfactor for the morning rotation taken as as a whole will not be too wonderful regardless of how full the first leg is.

Just noted that the new BE network from LCY has been added to the airports website in the schedules section - with the exception of Exeter. :confused:

To avoid conflicting traffic flows at both Heathrow and City your Dash is going to have a choice of lovely detours depending on runway direction and prevailing weather

The Northern route over Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire passing just south of Luton towards St Albans Hatfield Cheshunt and entering the circuit for City around Romford/Upminster

The Southern route towards Southampton through Gatwick area traffic around Midhurst up towards Biggin entering the southern pattern around Bexley/Dartford.

No way straight across the city other than transiting at above 14,000 feet towards Sheerness and backtracking into the circuit towards Dartford

Air mileage probably greater in reality.

As to the Manchester shuttles two circuits of Bovingdon with fellow shuttles and combined with European Lambourn traffic filtering out Heavies and hold times can be pretty short.

For optimal separation purposes ATC operate a policy of grouping Heavies where ever possible at Heathrow not all slots are equal !

Thomson have added Rhodes to there destinations from Exeter for 2015 no carrier been listed at the moment otherwise its the same programme as this year

Still no sign of any carrier taking over the Flybe routes to the Med which finish at the end of Sept / Oct this year

Same sort of situation as Southampton with no carrier in the pipeline

Back before the Flybe Spanish routes and the TOM (then Air2000) base Exeter had a nice mix of traffic from overseas operators. A number of those have disappeared over the years but maybe we could see Air Europa back or Voletea or Vueling start operating even if it's just once or twice a week.

I would guess it will be TOM operating the Rhodes next year - if not maybe Aegean.

'New' flights for W14
 

Just seen the NCL flights are back for W14 as hoped, with an extra MAN flight and the new LCY flights looks positive so far.

Once again, BE has filed slots requests at DUS for twice daily flights to EXT, this time for the upcoming winter schedule. Has there been any serious talk about such a route at the EXT end? I am inclined to believe that EXT as the destination filed might just be a filler for a more likely destination, hence my asking.

The reality is that UK APD is UKL26 per round trip, a staff ticket costrs an additional UKL18, so the airline gets nothing, however that is not the point.
A commercial passenger costs the same UKL26 APD plus most of the remaining UKL18 as airport charges, I think EXT is UKL13, so Flybe gets UKL5 for a staff ticket.
Relate that to a commercial fare, the same UKL39 taken by AFD and airport charges, on a UKL 49.99 fare??? How does that work?
So much for goverment regional support. Conservatives, Labour amd the other lot are all two faced... may be Farage... come on Nigel ,support the regions and regional air transport!!
G

Scheduled services? Highly unlikely I would have thought.

Flybe. to terminate Exeter's Portuguese, Spanish flights - ch-aviation.com

Just read this, doesn't look like good news if true