Rather bizarrely Ryanair have loaded in 2x weekly STN-EDI flights from the 4th of December until the 8th of January. Dates after that show a loading sign so possibly more to come. Flights will be operated by Ryanair UK.

Canary Wharf...

Do all business travelers sign off from their office desks & then travel to the airport per chance or do they travel from home to the airport as well ?

An interesting stat though unavailable would perhaps be the % of staff in Canary Wharf who reside in Essex/Hertfordshire...The City/Square Mile numbers would certainly bear that out.

No, I saw it. But there is quite a difference between closing a base, or closing a base to then hand over all of your slots to your largest competitor. Most airlines hand their unwanted slots back to the coordinator and hope that they don't go that way!

Makes me wonder what they have received in return - cash? A promise of an equivalent number of LTN slots by seat capacity?

Doubt whether these figures have changed in recent years, so the question would be why didn't Stansted have more business class traffic when times were better? Would be interesting to know who was filling the EK flts.

Any prospective disrupters have been dealt with by the big boys in the past. I would have thought they would now fight even harder to protect their key markets (assuming they can...) - maybe JetBlue will be better equipped to go toe-to-toe?

I had a feeling there may be a full scale assault on EZY’s remaining routes. I wanted be surprised to see AMS and GLA added with BFS vastly increasing

Business travel to the Wharf is (was) hugely finance related where people are often flying business class on the assumption they are going from the plane straight to work. That was why BA's JFK-LCY was loved when it first launched. You're also often expected to work the full day in London before flying out. However post COVID no one knows, the whole concept of Canary Wharf may take a large hit.

Canary Wharf should be known as ‘Little Essex’. A massive proportion of the workforce live there. So leaving from home or leaving from work, Stansted is a big advantage for many who otherwise suffer the M25 or trains across London.

Time will tell. Covid has kind of pressed the reset button on a lot of things within aviation. Who would have imagined a Gatwick without Virgin twelve months ago? Dynamics within the aviation sector look set to change over the coming few years. We’ve already seen a fair few surprises.

Another argument in favour of STN, on the assumption JetBlue have done some homework, is how successful EK have been. There is certainly a gap for them to be the equivalent for those heading West and a decent market who would value the convenience.

The argument now against STN is that if they went into LGW they would probably also be the sole operator assuming Norwegian have gone and BA won’t be bothering.

THE by what measurement? Definately not start-ups or software any more, Universities do their bit but once ideas up and running do they stay local with the cost of living so high round the Silicon Fen now?

JetBlue are the only airline interested in doing transatlantic from STN apart from the odd startup and we know what unfortunately happens to them. With JetBlue being so well established I think their new venture would prove to be very successful if they did choose STN. In the event they do choose Stansted, could we see AA return in another attempt to block new competition?

Add into the mix that JetBlue codeshare with American Airlines, Emirates & Aer Lingus so how does all that work!

On que the trope that was BAW LCY-JFK raised its head...

Desk to plane to desk..."Speedbird One" ala Concorde `an all that.

Largely commercially flailing misconception by BAW at LCY provided by an a/c without the performance hidden by a pre-clearance fuel stop at SNN.

Already winding down but its final demise unannounced BAW breathed a huge sigh of relief when they could eventually can it.

Quote..."You`re also often expected to work the full day in London before flying out"...Ah... back in the day then that accounts for a proportion of the evening EOS pax at STN...never would.

BA hasn’t been the kind of airline to need an excuse to cut a route for years. If it didn’t make money, BA wouldn’t fly it. They don’t operate routes for prestige. They all have to pay their way at BA.

It is apparent to many that it was operated for "prestige" & to keep a certain bank or two happy.

"Prestige" certainly in the trip number "Speedbird One" on the first outbound of the day for instance.

How much the cost of convoluted crewing...How much the costings of a unique pair of aeroplanes.

If it was to keep the banks happy then those banks would pay for that privilege. BA don’t run loss making flights just for fun. The bean counters got their way long ago.

It's not about bean counters or whether they got there way. The bean counters don't select these projects. The board would approve something like this. The rationale at the time was that they believed that a select number of routes ex LCY would work, many were mooted including Dubai, Washington, as I understood. So investing in 2 318s was a worthy experiment.
There was a prospect that Odyssey would come in and take some of the highest paying business away. So LCY JFK was an experiment on one hand and a measure to protect their turf. Hindsight is a great thing. Clearly we see now that Odyssey never materialised and who could have forseen covid...

I think that’s a re-invention of the past... the A318 LCY-JFK was a response to the likes of Silverjet, Eos and to a lesser extent Maxjet offering all business class flights to New York from Stansted and Luton. By the time the pair of A318s were delivered in 2009 though, all the above has ceased operations...

I don’t believe there was every any talk of operating other routes apart from among plane spotters. There were only ever 2 aircraft for 2 daily flights, and significant restrictions on number of A318 sized aircraft that LCY could accommodate at the time. The unique aspect of pre-clearance on the tech stop en route to JFK was used to offset the tech stop, it would not have applied to the likes of Dubai, and places like Washington had neither the volume or the financial capital status of NYC to make such routes ever viable.

Odyssey did not announce their launch plans until 2013, when the BA service had already been running for 4 years so there is no possibility that BA were responding to them.

The allusions not correct or ordered of course...

BAW commenced JFK ops ex LCY in 2009.
Odyssey was not even mooted until 2016.
Odyssey were never a serious player...a crowd funding paper airline project taking advantage of the publicity at the time abetted by the manufacturer of a new airliner on the block..

The "turf" BAW was actually protecting was their very high end market ex LHR & a "project" within BA thought it a good idea to attempt to nail down that traffic by flying ex LCY & encouraged by LCY...Prestige for both simple as..."Speedbird One" still no coincidence.


The project obviously overrode the alleged bean counters with the counter argument that although not totally quantifiable but effectively still a non profit operation it would deny competitors ex LHR very important revenue & clients & close a win that way ultimately.

Killing the competition was a BAW thing back in those days still.

Covid was the end or handed excuse finally as the operation was already being wound down long before.

The fact that no other destination was flown is indicative in it`s own right.

When has BAW ever stuck with anything spun out of & away from the "fortress" anyway.

The A318 was never the right aeroplane operationally with it`s lack of performance westbound from a severely limiting r/w but pre-clearance & fuelling at SNN helped mask those difficulties & was actually cleverly marketed as advantageous to the client.

The A318 was a misfit in the BAW fleet...itself a cobble up by Airbus to "fit" a perceived market back in the day (probably a home market spec briefly proposed by Air France.)

The A318 was hardly a misfit, it's a smaller version of the A319/A320 of which BA have a substantial fleet. The costs of using the service were high and I understand it did well for a period, novelty value initially. You say "killing the competition" is a BA tbing, well I am amazed that news of a certain "Ryanair" never made it to the south side. They took out KLM uk and mutilated what remained of Buzz. When easyJet tried to fly LGW-Ireland the response from Michael O'Leary was vengeful and focussed like a laser beam, just as they had attacked Go when they entered GLA/EDI-DUB. It's what succesful airlines do, they defend their home markets. Ryanair defended STN/DUB, BA defended LON-NYC.

Your anger that BA launched LCY-JFK is misplaced, LCY is a core BA market, it has the highest % of Gold Card holders per flight on the whole network, proportionally more than LHR. And given New York and London are both key financial centres, a LCY-JFK operation was tempting in it's own right, regardless of anything going on at Stansted. And stop calling them "bean counters", it just shows you have no clue about how a business actually works.

You make some excellent points here Skipness One Foxtrot. BA are well within their rights to compete to protect their business.
There are vastly fewer airlines than there were say 15/20 years ago. The big guys are getting bigger, and we'll continue to see the bigger guys flex their muscle in their core markets.
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The A318 certainly was a misfit within the BA fleet as when the operation began to be wound down the first out the fleet only found a home with a part deal/understanding with specialist operator Titan.The second is idle & has too not been absorbed back in the main fleet.

The post/conversation is not about STN per se & I have not mentioned it...it developed into reasoning concerning BA operating over LCY/JFK & BA attempting to kill competitors high end revenue at LHR on the route or certainly curtail it & not influenced by anything going on at STN let`s be clear.

For info I used the word "alleged" in front of bean counters" as the phrase is certainly not mine but introduced in post #2534 in a previous post to defend the LCY ops.You cannot both be right with the use or denial of the phrase though...eh.

The word "anger" is curious & certainly misplaced.

So why hasn't BA taken their A318 back into the LHR fleet to make it fly in the 120-130pax category like AF does its A318s?

BA hasn't taken the A318 back in to the LHR fleet as it's an all Business configuration of approx 50 seats unlike the AF A318.

...& we turn full circle...a misfit.

Looking at the ACL S21 report, interesting to see reference to "Fly Play" a new Icelandic outfit forming out of the ashes of Wow and securing slots to KEF with Icelandair doing the same.
Other reported new / significant changes incude
SATA International to PDL
Air India listed as operating to BOM.
and the much discussed JetBlue to BOS.

Obviously early days and how much of this lot not to mention the bread and butter stuff will actually come to fruition remains to be seen.

JBU have evidently filed for a 2x BOS-STN & a daily BOS-LGW service commencing third quarter 2021.

Interestingly the applications reveal that the A321LR`s will be premium heavy with just 138 seats making them the lowest seating in any commercial A320 family operation.

One analysis indicates STN is a stop gap as the requested slots were offered & that JBU requires to set plans to start but may settle for 3x LGW in the medium term with the aim of all LHR eventually.

Only time/slot distribution/availability together with how STN & LGW fare & JBU will tell.

But a bird in the hand....

The LGW slots are actually for JFK.

Apologies...correct JFK for LGW.

Yes it's LGW-JFK and STN-BOS double daily but only 1 of the LGW slots allocated. They could happily change the destination though once they secured the slots

RYR add extra weekly services from STN to Bucharest +5 Athens +2 Budapest +1 Malaga +1 Seville +1 for Christmas & New Year between 17 Dec & 9 Jan.

So are they hoping and in fact encouraging people to ignore travel bans and quarantine or is their expectation that restrictions will be lifted so we can all enjoy another spike in the new year in either case.

Can’t blame them for trying to get some cash into the business, obviously those booking should know the risks. Officially our restrictions end in a couple of weeks, until that changes (and I don’t believe lockdown will end then) FR are doing nothing wrong.

Can't remember many complaints when Wizz flew from LTN during most of the spring lock down.

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

People here have very short memories then.

It’s worth remembering that these slot reports are preliminary and most new applicants don’t ever use the slots, and if they do are often different to what they were originally allocated. I think it’s still just as much of a guessing game what airport/airports they will fly from at what frequencies, but at least the reports show what airlines have an interest in operating routes.

Wow, I hear a curtain G650 which was outside Inflight for two years has gone!

To Farnborough it seems.

Only night stopped before going to states for possible sale.