Loganair have a fleet of 30 aircraft serving 28 destinations and carried 765K pax last year with a load factor of 62.8%. They will be offering about 17K seats p.a. on GLA-LDY-GLA.

BMI Regional have a fleet of 20 aircraft serving 27 destinations and carried 415K in 2016 with a load factor of 54.1%. They offer 60K seats p.a. on LDY-STN-LDY.

For Derry/Londonderry the Loganair flight goes to the correct airport with Glasgow and the West’s links to Donegal, Fermanagh & Derry counties.

... and is a PSO route, operating with a Government subsidy.

Despite receiving a Government subsidy to operate the route, bmi Regional's fares on LDY-STN are in line with what they charge on their non PSO routes. That means that the subsidy isn't creating extra demand through lower prices. With or without the subsidy, LDY-STN is still a money-spinner for bmi Regional.

With regards to expansion from LDY, here's an article from December stating that bmi Regional want to expand from LDY in the future. It seems like the lack of spare aircraft to operate these new routes is what's hindering LDY expansion.

https://www.routesonline.com/news/29...-to-the-point/

"Schnadt (bmi Regional CCO) is keen to serve the Northern Irish city from elsewhere and expand frequency to Derry from Stansted"

This is a good question. Ryanair has been a bit of a conundrum for the airport. They attract large numbers of passengers, 80K on each of the Glasgow and Liverpool routes, but are rumoured to have a deal paying as little as £100 for each turn around. So each passenger is contributing less than 50p to airport fees.

The threat to the airport is not low passenger numbers nor lack of flights but the annual subvention of £2 million that the local council have to make towards running costs (capital costs being a further £1.5 million). At its peak passenger numbers were over 400,000 so to break even each passenger needs to contribute £5 not 50p.

Other carriers may not have the clout that Ryanair has and so may pay higher fees per passenger but with Loganair only carrying 12K pax p.a. on the GLA route the higher fees may not outweigh the lower passenger numbers.

The question is whether the additional passengers contribute sufficiently indirectly through parking charges etc to offset lower landing fees.

Certainly higher passenger numbers protect the airport's future even if it is loss making as it seems more important to the economy than if the airport had lower numbers so Ryanair is a benefit in that regard.

1 million passengers is often quoted as the break even point for the airport but that is a lot of routes carrying 12K pax per annum! The biggest help would be a reduction in APD for airports with less than 1 million passengers. The loss to the Exchequer would be minimal and there would be no need for any PSO routes.

What about asking passengers for £5 for the convenience of flying through Derry?

I would pay it.

Ryanair axed Newquay when they did the same.

Ryanair axes flights from Newquay Airport in Cornwall - BBC News

That BBC new link is 7 years old!!!!:ugh:

The news article is making a point - when NQY introduced a £5 surcharge, Ryanair axed all services from the airport. If a similar charge was introduced from LDY, as owenc suggested should happen, it is highly likely that LDY would lose Ryanair and potentially other airlines as well. Ryanair complain that APD is hampering their expansion from UK airports. Adding an additional charge is just making LDY an even less attractive airport from which to operate.

Thanks, I had posted that link but then got waylaid from making the point which you just made.

NOC has a €10(£8.90) "development fee", yet Ryanair are increasing services from the airport.

NOC doesn't have APD. £8.90<£18 (£13+£5), meaning LDY is at a disadvantage compared to NOC, even without an additional development fee.

Ryanair chop and change, and throw temper tantrums. But unlike other airlines that chop routes because of poor sales, they never seem to cut a route because of anything that might ever be their fault.
I wouldn't say you can read anything into them or the drivel they come up with.

Separately...

It is starting to seem a shame that BMI got the route :-( Not only does it appear that with the right operator it could have been perfectly commercially viable, but it appears that their unreliability may in time make the route unviable :-(

Can anyone remember why Aer Arann pulled their Manchester and Birmingham routes in 2006 or so?

Also they launched LDY-EDI in 2011 but cancelled before it began after poor sales.

The other option was stobart but then scored close to 50% on the tender.

XE back in service today

Where they not PSO services from memory

I thought Stobart was the better option. For Derry pax heading to London I’d say SEN is a superior and quicker option, Stratford offers far more and better connections than Tottenham Hale and both STN and SEN trains end up at Liverpool St. SEN is only slightly worse than STN for reaching the rest of the south-east of England.

Using SEN-DUB/GLA/MAN as a guide, the aircraft size and fares would have nicely fitted between FR and BM. Returns from £40-50 to bring in a bit of volume.

I thought Stobart was the better option. For Derry pax heading to London I’d say SEN is a superior and quicker option, Stratford offers far more and better connections than Tottenham Hale and both STN and SEN trains end up at Liverpool St. SEN is only slightly worse than STN for reaching the rest of the south-east of England.

Using SEN-DUB/GLA/MAN as a guide, the aircraft size and fares would have nicely fitted between FR and BM. Advance returns from £40-50 to bring in a bit more volume than BM, while offering the double daily needed for business that FR didn’t offer.

I think there was perhaps a theory that LDY - MAN / BHX could benefit imaginatively from a historic route support scheme which was operated briefly in NI?

PSO is an entirely different issue. LDY - DUB had a PSO designation for a while, under a raft of such routes supported under Irish Government policy. The route to London has been similarly designated and supported as a monopoly by the U.K. Government, connecting the ‘remote’ community in the north west into the U.K. capital for key economic reasons. Having decided on that PSO it would make a return to a similar designation on LDY - DUB much less logical under the broad idea of EU PSO rules.

The idea of having PSO status applied to other less well connected cities in GB from LDY - like MAN and BHX - would simply not follow the same economic logic as supporting and preserving the ‘lifeline’ connection into London.

Don’t forget UK has APD but Republic of Ireland doesn’t so Ryanair would be lessbothered about Irish airports doing the development fee

D-agra proair crj200 now on deck

D-AGRA arrived using the the flight number BM9366. Tomorrow’s STN flights had for the last week been showing as been operated by a S2000 until early this morning. Now showing as operating ER4. I am guessing that we will see tomorrow’s flights operated by this aircraft. If that’s the case then how long is this aircraft staying for??

Prob til next sat

D-AGRA is registered to ProAir Aviation. This aircraft operated for BM back in September for a couple days ex BRS. Does anyone know for sure what is the problem with this route... guessing it’s crewing shortage.. If it is surely it makes sense to lease a aircraft for a longer period until they sort it out. Rather than having a different aircraft every couple of days?.

Many seats left on the Superbreaks charter to Sevilla tomorrow?

54 pax outbound this morning

Sounds rather on the low side. What size of aircraft?

Enter Air B738 with 189 seats - 54 pax gives a load factor of 29%.

The airport won't work until the economy works and the economy won't work until Stormont stops discriminating against the 2nd city and supports a proper university with 1/3rd of the Northern Ireland students (15-18000 students), decentralises thousands of civil services jobs outside Belfast and sets ring fenced funding and targets for Invest "Belfast". Anything else is a waste of time and the A5 and A6 roads only facilitate further centralisation as opposed to leading to increased investment in the city and West of the Bann.

Someone speaking sense :ok:

I disagree Amelia. I want the A5 and A6 roads, (and also A26), we need more Dual Carriageways. There are plenty of places on those roads that are not in Belfast.

Enter Air punctuality worked well yesterday. Any claims will offset the cost of the trip

CAA Stats January and February
 

January 2018;

LDY handled 14,595 pax in January, which represents a 26% decrease since last year.

All three routes experienced a fall in passenger numbers;

GLA (-3%), LPL (-24%), STN (-50%)

LPL had the highest load factor (74%) followed by GLA (70%) and STN (67%).

February 2018;

LDY handled 14,977 pax in February, which represents a decrease of 29% since last year.

There was a sharp decline in passenger numbers on all routes;

GLA (-11%), LPL (-22%), STN (-52%)

LPL had the highest load factor (78%) followed by GLA and STN (both 72%).


I posted the total number of scheduled seats for sale in 2018 from LDY back in January, but a lot has changed since then, so here are the updated annual seats for sale;

GLA: 83,956 (80,514 + 3,442)
LPL: 66,528
STN: 66,248
EDI: 17,010
PMI: 2,646

There are 236,388 scheduled seats for sale in 2018.

LDY has handled 29,572 passengers on its scheduled services in 2018 so far. With 41,040 seats available over the period, the average load factor is 72%.

Given the airport's performance so far, it seems highly likely that passenger numbers will fall below the 2017 figure of 193,981. I estimate a figure of between 180,000-190,000 pax in 2018, though 2019 should see the airport just about surpass 200,000 pax again, based on current route frequencies.

New for S19 is a charter flight to Bourgas (Bulgaria) with BH Air on Mondays during school holidays (Jun, 17 to Jul, 22).

Fantastic news from CODA.

How do the load factors compare to this time last year? Many thanks :D

Load factors are down on both GLA and LPL, despite a reduction in flights. This doesn't bode well for the future of LDY-LPL, and if LDY-EDI performs worse than LDY-GLA, I can see Ryanair axing that route too. Ryanair really need to have an excellent summer at LDY, or their threats to move all operations to BFS could indeed become a reality.

Load factors for STN are the same with bmi Regional this year as they were with Ryanair last year which is a positive note, even though gross passenger numbers on the route have halved.

Glasgow;

Jan 17: 6,010 73%
Jan 18: 5,848 70%

Feb 17: 6,669 82%
Feb 18: 5,967 72%

Liverpool;

Jan 17: 6,623 76%
Jan 18: 5,065 74%

Feb 17: 6,822 82%
Feb 18: 5,334 78%

Stansted;

Jan 17: 7,485 66%
Jan 18: 3,650 67%

Feb 17: 7,606 72%
Feb 18: 3,654 72%

Will be an important few months ahead. Many thanks.

There were several cancellations, especially at Glasgow, in February. Hardly surprising numbers are down.

Unfortunately the load factors are alarming.