You are wrong southside!

Whilst those slots remain suspended, this winter period at LTN consists of 21 weeks or 147 days. For this whole period Monarch offered 254,187 seats, which equates to an average 9 movements a day but with possibly only 65% of seats per flight being sold.

I estimate that for November through to March 2018 approximately 27000-28000 passenger growth will be achieved each consecutive month.

Once the issue of slots has been dealt with and new flights are generated then the 2.8 or 2.9 % growth per month can only increase to that of handling an extra 70,000 to 80,000 pax per month!

How many of the LTN slots are actually valuable though? I would imagine big interest in the first wave of departures (and of course some overnight stands to go with them) but beyond that weren't most of Monarchs arrivals and departures sort of early-mid afternoon and late evening when things are a bit leaner anyway?

They had four early morning slots outbound plus a number in the afternoon and some late evening in the high season (July-September). The early morning 6-9 am - slots would be the ones most valuable I would suggest.
Got to disagree with you Southside regarding the negative figures for November. Monarch always flew less in the winter than most airlines, but happy to say I was wrong when the November figures are published. Stockholm was not going to be operated over the winter as well as Palma and the service to Gibraltar was reduced.

As far as I'm aware no slots at LTN have been sold as such. Biz jets etc continue to use them on a tactical basis. As previously mentioned, the first wave morning departures will be the most sought after. Obviously, for a non-based carrier this involves crews in hotels and overnight maintenance etc so is not necessarily an easy move.

First wave morning departure slots are incredibly valuable to the airline that gets them considering how scare a commodity they are at London's 5 airports.

New 08 taxiway should open on the 7th of December.

Compton3bravo, you mention the Gibraltar service which to me is an important service that needs to be reinstated by another airline. No current operator at LTN covers this route.

Expect EZY to operate GIB next summer. New route announcements usually around the 12/13th December for Summer.

Yes some days there are just two scheduled flights, Easy to Gatwick and BA to Heathrow plus the odd executive aircraft. Of course the RAF are there but what I have seen of the Typhoon it looks more like a gate guardian! The Gibraltar Tourist Board are crossing there fingers and everything else hoping the service to Luton is reinstated asap.

As someone who lives in Gibraltar and flies to the UK 2 or 3 times a month for work, I'm not hearing that Luton is an important service, at least from this direction - although I'd be surprised if Easy don't pick it up.

London has the choice of 2 airports every day yet for destinations any further up North there are only 2 flights a WEEK - down from 8 flights from Manchester.

Gibraltar
 

LTN was handling up to 7000 pax in a good month, admittedly not huge, but suggests there is a market worth continuing.

Travel Trade confirming recent route/airline announcements.

http://www.travelweekly.co.uk/articl...narch-collapse

I indeed do expect EZY to step in with the LTN-GIB route, especially since Monarch operated more rotations on the LTN-GIB route than the MAN-GIB route (and this was the same even before EZY started MAN-GIB).

I see one of the announcements in the Travel Weekly article is an extra El Al Tel Aviv on a Sunday until the end of March.

Confirmation of the three new routes by SunExpress from Airlineroute:

Antalya – London Luton 15JUN18 – 28SEP18 2 weekly
Ankara – London Luton 17JUN18 – 30SEP18 2 weekly
Gaziantep – London Luton 20JUN18 – 26SEP18 1 weekly

Latest NOTAM indicates that WIP for 08 Taxiway now finishes on the 27th Nov , a week earlier than previous.
Presumably work has progressed well overnight with minimal weather disruption!

BBC Look East stating that Wizz Air will initially base 5 aircraft at Luton by next June. Also announced new routes to Larnaca, Tallinn & Tirana.

Interesting new routes. Tirana and Tallinn are obvious omissions from Wizz’s Eastern European myriad of routes. Presumably Larnaca will pick up some of the slack from the demise of Monarch. I wonder if they’ll target other ex Monarch routes?

Bratislava & the previously operated route to Lviv, also appear in the booking engine re Wizz. Several other existing routes seem to get increases also.

Will these 5 A/C be operated under WizzAir UK (i.e.: G-reg aircraft) or include the two that night stopped this summer from other wizzair bases?

Daily to Tel Aviv, Bratislava, Larnaca and Suceava. Wonder if the daily Larnaca will have an impact on Blue Air although they have a large presence in Cyprus.

Do we know if these based frames are due to ex MON and allocated by ACL or due to the 08 work which has increased flow rates next summer?

Wizzair
 

Very good news for the airport!

In further press coverage WZZ rule out transatlantic ambitions & will not be venturing into the Western Med.

WIZZ AIR’S FREQUENCY INCREASES ON EXISTING LUTON ROUTES:

Destination

Weekly flights

From

Tel Aviv, Israel

daily from 4

25 March 2018

Suceava, Romania

daily from 5

20 May 2018

Prishtina, Kosovo

3 from 2

25 March 2018

Wow big news...

Congratulations to Wizz and LTN on securing the deal! :ok:

Being the kinda guy, whose glass is half empty and not half full, I wonder if a bit of the announcement might be "smoke and mirrors"...(?) :confused:

Going by the new routes announced, I'm not sure there is enough to cover 4-5 aircraft being based at the airport, so I wonder if a number of existing routes might switch to being operated by LTN based aircraft? Then that frees the aircraft up at other bases to open new routes.

For example the new aircraft could easily do a quick there and back rotation to Budapest or Warsaw, first thing in the morning and be back at LTN for midday-ish and then fly to Tel Aviv or Larnaca in the afternoon/evening...

The proof will be in the pudding, with the number of inbound Wizz Air flights first thing in the morning. I think at present, we see about 13-15 inbound and on the ground between 7.00-8.30am.

Can we assume by this announcement, Wizz Air has swallowed up Monarch's slots, or with the new apron space and parallel taxiway coming online soon, these slots were going to be available regardless?

I've flown Wizz numerous times this year and have been really impressed with them, friendly crew, nice aircraft and been on time.
BUT, a part of me is slightly disappointed, it is not a new airline or one of airports smaller customers expanding. As I do feel the airport is heavily dominated and too reliant on easyJet and Wizz.

I think the airline is making a sensible decision to not get entangled and involved in a price war on the summer routes to the likes of Spain and Portugal.

I do wonder if we will reach a point where Wizz cannot expand any further east of Germany, from Luton, as they have nearly every market sown up between London and eastern/central Europe? I wonder if the airline might look further afield to expand from Luton, possibly the likes of Moscow and St Petersburg, with a UK registered aircraft, as I believe two UK airlines can operate the route and since easyJet dropped it, there is room for a second airline to take up these rights. With them buying a stake in some Turkish Airline, I wonder if we will see them operate to Turkey more and they are very successful on the Dubai routes from cenral Europe, and that could be achievable with an A320/321neo from Luton.

Here's a nice InfoGraphic!
https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...90&oe=5A95E7A3

So who will take up Tenerife that Monarch has vacated ?

Plenty of airport's still to be served in central/eastern Europe yet Giles. Who would have thought that Suceava would go daily, I must admit I had never heard of it until Wizz started flying there.

Ryanair and easyJet currently operate the route...

When you have Europe's two largest carriers flying to Tenerife from Luton, I highly doubt many other airlines really want to come between them and will leave it for them to flight it out!

easyJet fly it 3x weekly and Ryanair 2x weekly, each operating it on alternate days. I would imagine both airlines feel this covers the demand and without over saturating the market and pushing prices down.

Monarch had the Canary Island scheduled market to themselves for a number of years from Luton, and I would imagine with easyJet joining the market on these routes this summer, did them no favours and was another small reason for their demise.

Such routes are bloodbath, if there is good money to be made expect EZY to up their capacity.

BBC News: East of England - Bucket List Airport Tour

"Reg Grace, 82, has terminal cancer of the liver. Top of his bucket list was visiting London Luton Airport, so that's what he did. How adorable are these two?"

How nice is this, great work by the airport and Macmillan...

Wish this couple all the best!

From 'Travel Mole':

Wizz Air is to expand its Luton base, with the addition of four aircraft to its Luton fleet by June 2018.

The allocation of four more Airbus A320 aircraft, each equipped with 186 seats, brings the total number of aircraft in Wizz Air's Luton fleet to five.

Five new routes have been added, including daily flights to Larnaca and Bratislava. A four-flights-per-week service to Tallinn and three-per-week to Tirana in Albania and Lviv in Ukraine make up the remaining new routes.

The additional aircraft will also allow an increase in frequency of flights on three of the airlines most popular routes.

Wizz Air is expanding its capacity at Luton by 15% year on year, and will offer in 2018 more than 6.9 million seats on its 46 routes to 20 countries.

Starting spring 2018 flights to Tel Aviv and Suceava become daily, while Prishtina in Kosovo flights will increase from two to three times per week

Over the 12 months to October 31 2017, the airline has carried more than 5.5 million passengers on its Luton routes alone, an increase of 11% compared to 2016, making it the second largest carrier at Luton airport.

The arrival of the new aircraft and additional routes will create 150 new direct local jobs, increasing the number of Wizz Air employees at Luton to 180.

Wizz Air chief corporate officer Owain Jones said: "Our main markets in Central and Eastern Europe are all enjoying strong economic growth. More people want to fly because they can afford to do so. There's growing demand and a lack of supply."

The interesting thing to me is the Larnaca route - afaik only the second route wholly outside Central/Eastern Europe (the other being Luton-Tel Aviv).

With the news Wizz have said they are not looking at transatlantic as well... So the Romanians were wrong on that by the sounds of things, and we can rule that out of at least near-term expansion.

Don't forget TUI on Tenerife as well - they have quite a few of those markets covered and are making more seats available to book as seat only.

That's not the full story. Last year the airline had one officially based aircraft at Luton but it was actually 3 based aircraft so this announcement adds another 2 aircraft and not 4.

Still good news though.

Interestingly both Larnaca and Bratislava are shown as 10.00/10.15 am departures.
Has the benefit of being in the quiet time for the departure lounge but these can't be the first departure for a based a/c and certainly not using a ex MON slot.
So Wizz must be having a re shuffle with first wave arrivals or something doesn't seem right.

So Monarch 4 based slots have gone with 2 going to Wizz and 1 to Thomas Cook. So that means still 1 spare plus stand 46 is back. LTNman do you know when the airport can use stand 46 again and will that side of the pier also go to 4 stands or stay at 3. At minimum LTN has 2 more overnight stands for someone to use. Can't see them being left empty.

Wizz air have bought a 51% share in Borajet and will be allocating 5 a321 in January/February. Could Istanbul be on the cards with Wizz air/borajet???

4 stands either side once the construction village is removed. As for when that will happen and this is just a pure guess I am thinking both will be removed late summer.

According to CH Aviation, Wizzair has denied the equity purchase of Borajet?

There are still NOTAMed overnight closures planned for between 6th January and the 14th although the charts for the new taxiway goes live on December 7th. As can be seen the old taxiway holding point Bravo 1 is now part of Taxiway Hotel and has been renamed Hotel 1. Holding point Bravo 2 will become Bravo 6 and Alpha 7 and 8 becomes Bravo 7 and 8 which crosses the tunnel.

Also noted that the compass swing bay has been removed from the charts as it is now part of the taxiway extension.

No doubt that when taxiway Alpha is extended next year Taxiway Juliet will be added.

https://i.imgur.com/38BvYsp.jpg