I wonder if for many Northern Ireland is considered more an add on to a holiday in Ireland than a destination in its own right especially for Americans. Hence people start and end their journeys in Dublin rather than Belfast.

sure most of the republic have no internet coverage and the roads are horrendous, and before anyone takes offense i would ask them to go for a drive down the west coast and prove me wrong.

What's that got to do with people holidaying and starting in Dublin?

Thomas Cook - Summer 2020
 

Some changes for Summer 2020

Palma - NEW 1 Weekly (Wednesday)
Reus - Up from 3 Weekly to 4 Weekly (Monday, Tuesday, Friday & Saturday)

Enfidha - Down from 2 Weekly to 1 Weekly (Sunday)

Antalya - 2 Weekly (Wednesday & Sunday)
Dalaman - 3 Weekly (Monday, Thursday & Saturday)
Lanzarote - 1 Weekly (Thursday)
Tenerife - 2 Weekly (Tuesday & Friday)

Larnaca - Dropped

S/he's just another bitter person, spouting complete nonsense. Practically the same percentage of people living in Rural Ireland have access to 30mbp or above broadband as they do in Rural UK, and this isn't based on bluster (see page 20 here).

In terms of roads in the west coast, have you been there 2Para? Regardless of the fact that you can get to every city in the republic from Dublin on motorway quality roads, and the northern border, you can also drive from Tuam, to South of Limerick City on continuous 137km worth of motorway or HQDC quality roads (106km of which is actually designated motorway (M17/M18/M20)) which is 7 kms short of overtaking the length of Northern Ireland's entire motorway network which stands at just 113.1km per the source here.

Yet when I drive North of the Border when I want to go home, I go from the M1 to the horrific winding A1 "Dual Carriageway", get stuck at York Gate Interchange, and don't even get me started on the A5 and A6. There isn't even a dual carriageway connection to the "International" Airport for crying out loud!!!

Does anyone notice the massive hike in prices for Easyjet to STN since Ryanair has pulled off? I regularly seen £40-£80 return, now it is in and around £150-£200.

Can't see people from NI consistency paying that.

Owenc, that's rather a derogatory comment about us decent NI folk, I don't think we are particularly miserable!
Consistency?

That's back to front. Much air travel is discretionary, so beyond a base load the level of demand is established by the pricing.

It's not obscure economics, it's the entire basis of Ryanair's strategy! And indeed how Easyjet started ( fly to London for the price of a pair of jeans ).

On the Stansted, Easyjet seem to have calculated that they can maintain the route solely by milking the must-fly base load of passengers and discarding the opportunistic, discretionary demand that Ryanair had cultivated.

If your organised then no, £50-£60 return. If you want to travel last minute you will pay dear. The very reason for FR pulling out is they couldn't drive demand to a point where they were charging over the odds to last minute customers - they only did well numbers wise on both LON routes when they were loosing money. Simple. Blaming APD is nonsense it was there when they arrived.

I didn't mention APD? I just noticed the substantial hike in prices once Ryanair pulled out.

Usually, i'd book my flights a week or so in advance and i'd always get a decent fare. It seems now that one has to book his flight about a month before to get a decent fare.

Ok then..Americans and so on are flocking to Northern Ireland. Where are our Transatlantic flights?

And why does Dublin airport have over 31 million passengers per annum compared with BFS's measly 6.5 million? Explain that.

The reality is that foreigners want the authentic Irish experience, so they go south. They don't want to see Belfast or look at 'Peace Wall's'.

You're 100% correct. Tourists bar the odd one don't want to visit Belfast (no more than they want to visit Derry, Limerick or Cork city), as it's a kip, and there's nout to do other than look at poorly drawn murals, flegs, and an overpriced Titanic museum. Not that Dublin has loads more to offer, but it's got a party atmosphere and the pubs are busy every night. Those that do venture north, are either brave Southerners (the vast majority I have met living in Dublin for four years are terrified of what will happen to them in the north and afraid to speak when they do come up, even in "Nationalist" areas), Northerners that live in the South and drag people up kicking and scream (like myself), foreigners living in the South that have already exhausted the Bray Cliff Walk, Howth Head Walk, Glendalough, the Cliffs of Moher, and Galway, or gung-ho French and German´s. I think you were also kind about Southern Englander's too, they're on the whole terrified of the North too. But to be honest, with the carry on the way it is, it's not going to change anytime soon.

It was Ryanair that stated they pulled flights because of APD, sorry if I wasn't clear.

I would never leave flights to a week ahead to book, its normally months and even up to a year or more. We booked Lanzarote in April and we're travelling in July 2020 par example. Low cost airlines work on the basis they get more expensive the closer you get, the opposite to how airlines (charter in particular) used to work. They budget things like fuel on funds from early bookings.This is the whole reason Ryanair have reduced services, the fact you could get cheap fares at the last minute means they've sold below cost all the way through from when the flight went on sale.

Granted yes, I agree. But, if FR was making money they'd be there. And my sources tell me they literally could only fill all that capacity by deep discounting. easyJet have basically beaten them, twice, first at LGW and now in the holy grail of FR territory STN.