KRISTIANSAND
 

Kristiansand is an airport on the far south coast of Norway, with slightly over 1 million pax per year. It's at least 4 hours drive to Oslo-Gardemoen and at least 3 hours to Stavanger's airport. Even Torp is at least 2h30 driving time away. Looking at stats for the busiest airports in the Nordic countries, it puzzles me why none of Norwegian, Ryanair, Stobart, Flybe or any other carriers have chosen to open a route to London in the last few years.

I know FlyNonStop tried briefly in 2013, but there were more than a few things going wrong with their operation - the strategy of the company alone seemed very difficult to understand.

If however KLM can sustain a 20x weekly E170/E190 feeder route to Amsterdam, then surely there must be sufficient demand for a direct route to one of London's airports on some days of the week

Anyone have any thoughts ?

If I remember rightly Ryanair operated Stansted to Kristiansand back in 2003/04

There is not a huge population in the local vicinity. The KLM service is probably appropriate for this market plus connections via OSL. Sustaining anything else other than low cost, low frequency sun routes I would see as a challenge.

When I worked with Flynonstop, I understand that the LCY route did ok. The problem was the chopping and changing of the schedule.

I think Kristiansand would be an ideal route for Flybe/Stobart Air into southend. Scandinavians love London.

TBH they love the UK - and they have a high disposal income - but the numbers are relatively low so it has to be a smallish jet into a cheapish airport - Southend/Stansted/Luton in the SE

Stobarts E-195s into Southend would seem ideal.

Kristiansand is one of many airports which have lost out from the move towards point to point flying by larger and larger aircraft. They will never have the demand to fill a 200 seat frame on a regular basis. The problem is that KLM can cross-subsidise their feeder and longhaul operations into their, hub which has enough capacity to accommodate both. LHR will never have the capacity for this, and LGW is also full. LTN and STN give decent forward operations, but only short haul and don't have a substantial based fleet of E1xx or similar (correct me if I'm wrong). SEN has too few onward connections; LCY might work after Crossrail opens. If someone was to set up such a fleet in MAN..

Yeah - Ryanair used to do Stansted - Esbjerg once a day and it was always pretty full - they now do Billund for Legoland

Be interesting to see if anyone could make money running flights to the smaller places tho'.............

I don't think that's a major factor in this case. The good burgers of Kristiansand and its environs just want to get to London as swiftly, and probably as cheaply, as possible. SEN offers that - it's a straight-in approach without worrying about the delays in London airspace, swiftly through the terminal, 30 seconds to the railway station and 53 minutes into Liverpool Street.

Do they just want to get to London? I would have thought that a viable route would require both destination and transit passengers, which will have different peaks throughout the day/month/year. That's surely the strength of the KLM operation.

When Flynonstop existed they were going to offer Manchester and Dublin also, even made their booking engine before going bust. Shame as could have been an interesting connection.

Kristiansand
 

It's a former Dan Air destination, which was served regularly from Newcastle. I seem to remember Dan Air dakotas routing Liverpool - Newcastle - Kristiansand.

The majority will do, I think. I remember fleets of Scandinavian airliners flying into SEN in the 60s and early 70s - Braathens, Fred Olsen and others - they weren't doing anything other than going on to London to shop and sight see. I know that fifty years have passed, but when you live in a town of less than 100,000 people London is still a big attraction.

Sure you don't mean Kristianstad which is close to Malmo, which they did fly to.

Of course it is easy to get it wrong :E

BBC News | EUROPE | Soldiers' map mix-up

IIRC there was similar mix-up in 1940 - soemone sent in an early report of large German ships operating off KRISTIANSAND as they moved to invade Norway........

the Admiralty looked at the map and thought it was off KRISTIANSTAD in the Baltic and so took no immediate notice....................

Isnt there a Kristiansund as well?

There is, GK. In Braathens' days they used to refer to them as 'Kristiansund N' and 'Kristiansand S' to differentiate them. Maybe the Italian army should have tried something similar :)