W17/18 Summary
 

As usual, here is a summary of this Winter's flights, please let me know of anything I may have missed.

Crystal Ski

Turin - 1 weekly Thomson 738

easyJet Switzerland

Geneva - 5-6 weekly 319/20

Hays Travel

Barbados - 04/11, 24/11 - TUI 787

Hurtigruten

Bergen - 05/11, 21/02
Tomso - 09/03

All operated by Germania

Newmarket Holidays

Pajala - 18/12 (Santa Trip)

Omega

Northern Lights Flight - 15/03

P&O Cruises

Barbados - TUI 767/787 02/02, 10/03

Ryanair - (1 based 738)

Alicante - 2-3 weekly 738
Faro - 2 weekly 738
Krakow - 2 weekly 738
Malaga - 2-3 weekly 738
Malta - 2 weekly 738
Tenerife South - 1 weekly 738

Santa Holidays

Ivalo - 02/12, 08/12 Operated by Small Planet

Super Break

Akureyri - 22/01, 26/02 - Enter Air

TUI - (1 based 738)

Arrecife - 2 weekly 738
Kittila - 20/12
Las Palmas - 1 weekly 738
Paphos - 1 weekly 738 (ops during November and 28/02-)
Tenerife South - 2 weekly 738

Transun

Enontekio - 16/12 (Santa Trip)
Kiruna - 21/01, 01/02 (Northern Lights Trips)

Both using Enter Air


Overall

Average of between 23 and 27 weekly departures, or 3-4 per day.

W17/18 Summary
 

Thanks adfly for your compressive list,it's always interesting to see what's going on at Bournemouth I wish there was more but that's another story,I have added a few extra which I still hope are operating:

05/11 Bergen Hurtigruten Cruises
24/11 Barbados Hays Only Charter
08/12 Ivalo Santa Flight
221/ Akyurei Superbreak 4 Day holiday
21/2 Bergen Hurtigruten Cruises
26/2 Akyurei Superbreak 4 Day holiday
15/3 North Lights Omega 3 Hour flight

If anyone has any more info then please add.

Thanks to martinairmd11 and also MARKEYD for the extra information. Seems to be a fairly substantial number of one off flights this winter which is good to see, as the 'core' operations are looking pretty flat.

Bournemouth had a good Sept with passengers up 7.3 % to 77, 000 through the terminal

Will give a bit more detail when the figures become available

Nothing new for the winter 2018 /19 season with TUI unfortunately , just the usual collection again

Superbreak have added a departure to Seville in March 18 using Enter air
They seem to have expanded there departures from UK regional airports quite considerably recently. They may well take over from where Newmarket Holidays left off for next summer , who knows though !

Rumour about Airport Sale from local pape
 

If this is true it could be a double edged sword.

Advantages are that MAG seem not to know what to do or how to handle this size of airport and have probably been responsible for some of the losses at BOH in recent times. BOH seems to have all but dropped off MAG's radar in terms of new route development. Rigby group will hopefully be able to focus a little more and start to compete more effectively for business. Not sure if the site would also include the aviation park which is quite profitable to MAG.

Negatives are that Rigby group will not be able to afford anything like the economies of scale that MAG was able to offer so further investment in the airport will most-likely stop. They are also working with some of the smallest and most niche type airports in the UK including Norwich and Exeter - neither of which are Ryanair customers. I doubt that one of the 'richest men in england' will know how to deal with o'leary and his demands.

Rumour of sale
 

Nothing has been confirmed yet so hold your horses. Exeter and Norwich do quite well for their markets in terms of basic offerings and consistent year on year growth albeit small. Bournemouth could benefit from the more attentive management a new owner might provide.

If a sale to the person mentioned goes through it may not bode well for BOH. Look what he has done to Coventry, ATC downgraded to AFIS. Next stop the planning application for non-aviation use for the site?

Lots of rich people fly on biz jets, doesn't mean they all want to buy the airport they land at. I'd need more evidence before i made a speculation

September was a good month for Bournemouth and saw 78 , 067 passengers use the airport up 8 %

TUI as usual had high loads on all of there flights with the new Naples service averaged about 185 pax per flight and high loads on the Palma service again
Dalaman finished the season with about 160 pax per flight on a Freebird A320

Ryanair had equally good loads with Murcia and Gerona doing well with average loads of 189 and 175 pax per flight respectively

Krakow again averaged about 176 pax per flight

All very quite now though !

Time TUI added a second based aircraft and collaborated with Thomas Cook on some new services like Funchal, Fuerteventura, Almeria, Verona, Kos, Skiathos, Dubrovnik, Pula, Split, Reus etc etc - plenty to occupy a second based aircraft and not offered by any other carriers from this region/catchment

good choice for the locals and similar stuff to Palmair

Thomson's have always been 'stuck in the mud' and are loathe to enter new markets until the boat has usually sailed

no idea why they adopt this stance - BOH could be very lucrative again with IT's but as with EXT they seem to fiddle and meddle with gold standard products that sell - meanwhile the likes of Easyjet from BRS and LGW plus BA from LHR are creaming off the leisure routes

Bournemouth Airport handled 69,000 pax in Oct'17 apparently flat compared to Oct'16 but if compared with Oct'15 has lost 10,000 pax in the month (Flybe?)

Source: news just released from MAG (not CAA stats yet)

Absolutely agree with the last 2 posts regarding new IT destinations from Bournemouth , its what Bournemouth does really well and always have done and what Southampton does really well with is scheduled services !!

Thomas Cook would be a welcome addition with new destinations to compliment TUI , but they really do seem safe with the 1 based aircraft .

Naples was the only new destination this year and has done really well so I am surprised they haven't expanded .

TUI could quite easily get 3 rotations a day in on some days if like Exeter they did night flights but I am not sure how this would happen as I am guessing they are heavily restricted on opening times at BOH ( something they could start to discuss with MAG about opening times ? )

Need to look at history - Thomas Cook used to operate from BOH - pulled out. Thomsonfly (as was) used to have two based aircraft - now have only one. I think they both know how to run their businesses.

the ThomsonFly ''lo-co'' attempt from BOH and other regional airports with 737-300 and 500 was pretty much a disaster for them and they pulled out PDQ

we are talking here about pure IT package holidays - not attempting to go against the likes of Ryanair or EZY selling (sometimes) cheap flight only

Jet2 have a very good package holiday model and have now entered STN in a big way.
as Jet2 was born from BOH as channel express one wonders if they are waiting to see if they can go into Hurn and make a go of it

the business case would suggest it makes sense, they already operate from the other 3 MAG airports (questionable, given the rumoured sale)

They would probably question the lack of links and it's proximity to London, particularly LGW, which might scare them a little

It'll have to be years down the line though, they've already got their hands full with BHX/STN growth

I would suggest Jet2 are an unlikely addition to Bournemouth any time soon. They have expanded at all of their bases, and each has a substantial number of aircraft based. BOH could sustain no more than one or two, so would be much less attractive.
They don't seem frightened of competition, so I would expect their next base (geographically) to be either Gatwick or Bristol.

What Do You Think Will Help
 

We hear a lot of reasons why airlines don't choose Bournemouth. What would make BOH attractive to new services? Direct link from A328, half hourly shuttle service to the rail and coach station, any other suggestions to help the MAG sales and marketing team?

Convince airlines that there's a profitable market for their flights?

The other issues are peripheral.

The other issue is catchment area. How many millions or even thousands of customers are within an hours travelling time of the airport. That is why Manston could never succeed, and it tried so many times, because there just weren't enough customers within it's area to give it critical mass.

Southend is working just and it has, if my memory is correct, a population of 5 million within an hours travelling time, plus an integrated railway station with up to 8 trains an hour to London.

Perhaps Bournemouth airport is just in the wrong place to attract enough farepayers.

There is virtually no difference between Thomsonfly back then and TUI from BOH today - apart from routes and aircraft numbers. Thomson package holidays used the Thomsonfly flights and anyone can book seats on TUI flights today.

The only thing that works from BOH (as has been demonstrated countless times over the years) is low fares and holiday/package flights that are not offered from SOU. This gives BOH a bigger than otherwise catchment area as people will travel from further distances to access the low fares.

What's odd at the moment though is that fares on some TUI services are much higher than those from LGW or LTN so it seems to me that demand is outweighing supply.

Eventually this will naturally lead to additional aircraft from TUI or spill over from another airline after BRS and London gets full.

What gets me upset is that this type of 'organic' growth only gets delivered every 10-15 years! If MAG was half as 'proactive' for BOH as it is for EMA, MAN, STN then we would be seeing more activity more quickly.

What do I mean by proactive? By slashing the cost of flying in and doing business at BOH. Right now the costs are sky high - higher than London airports for sure.

Newmarket are advertising many departure dates to Barcelona from Bournemouth from next summer May18 through Sep18, does anyone know if these are special flights or seats on Ryanair to Girona?

Ryanair I am afraid
Newmarket have stopped all ad hoc charters from UK airports and just concentrating on scheduled flights now

Superbreak are the ones to watch now

Looks as if there could be a few charters to Gibralter next summer. (Linked posted by GAZMO in the Belfast thread)

https://www.euroweeklynews.com/3.0.1...lled-next-july

enter air?
they have sent in a 738 last summer on a charter to GIB

but the 738 is not the ideal a/c for GIB at all - operates at a severe penalty

who else might it be? small planet?

Titan would be the most obvious. They operated many of the GIB rescue flights when Monarch went under. Not many airlines with crews trained to operate there (EZY/BA/Titan)

ah yes forgot about them - they have 757 and 320 family which are more suited to GIB's runway and wx conditions

I know Monarch, British Airways, Easyjet all mostly used Airbus A320-200 At GIB.

Titan Airways have 3 x A320-200 (168-180 seats) and are due to reconfigured the leased Airbus A318-100 to 112 economy seats in the first quarter of 2018. I think Gib government & local businesses are part funding this and assume if they are they will be wanting A320-200s if possible.

I think the Gibraltar flights are actually only 1 flight from each airport listed ( 7 UK airports ) for the month of July giving GIB 2 flights a week

Imminent sale?
 

http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/15696200.Bournemouth_Airport_sale__to_be_announced_imminentl y_/

For those in the know is this good news?

So just to clarify the above link below:-

Mr Bath, former boss of Bath Travel, whose father Peter’s firm Palmair operated from Bournemouth Airport for half a century, said Manchester Airports Group's (MAG) tenure since taking over the airport in 2001 had been “a disastrous spiral”.

He said the firm had relied too much on Ryanair to provide flights, spent too much money on a new terminal in the mistaken belief that it would entice more passengers, and started charging £2.50 for cars dropping off passengers - “without a shadow of a doubt the most disastrous PR decision of any airport in Britain”.
“
My father said people fly from Bournemouth Airport because the parking is cheap and they can get home in 20 minutes,” he said.
“They lost Palmair and got a new terminal that didn’t make an iota of difference to passenger numbers, which people have to pay £2.50 to see, which is a lot of clunking in the machine and people hate it.
“If they hadn’t built the terminal they wouldn’t have had to charge extra. It was a disastrous spiral.”
In 2009 MAG spent almost £50 million on the new terminal, as well as an improved runway, radar, navigation and road access(really?). Passenger numbers peaked at just over a million in 2007 and stood at 667,981 last year.
Mr Bath said he felt “bitter” about the end of his father’s firm, just weeks after the new terminal was finished. He said MAG had handed Palmair’s flight data to Ryanair to demonstrate the viability of the airport, causing the aviation giant to put identical routes in place.
“In the winter that year, when Palmair normally operated four or five flights, Ryanair decided they weren’t going to do anything,” he said. “Bournemouth went down to two flights a week. It was a disaster, the place was a ghost town.”

You are....
 

Stephen Bath and I claim my £5.00 . None of that would ever happen even under new ownership. Palmair never going to do £30 flights to Spain which is what FR do well.

Palmair killed by Ryanair, may be true but I doubt it, Palmair was almost purely for package holidays, Ryanair is a seat only airline, it's like saying Amazon killed Woolworths. The reason is that both the latter were 'past their sell by date' economically and could no longer operate in the new business practices of the day.

TUI (Thomsons) who you also seem to want to get rid of operates almost identically to Palmair using their flights primarily for the package Holiday Market and they seem to do very well. Palmair was a niche market sold mainly through the Bath Travel (now Hays) retail outlets.

I don't think that getting rid of the hand that feeds you is a good idea, especially when excessive cost of operating from BOH seems to be a major factor in it's stalled growth.

Kick Ryanair out of BOU :D like to see some one try that! Ryanair leave and that will be the final nail in the coffin for the airport

Thin..
 

The newspaper article is basically a bitter angry rant by someone who's family business did not evolve but stood still. Ryanair & TUI statistics speak for themselves - the days of charging 150 one way for every seat on an aging aircraft are well and truly over. Who knows what the Rigby plan is, it's onna be a tough 2-5 years ahead - my hope is get together with both those two and secure what he has, one thing is for sure his executive airline is likely to figure. Lots of wealth in catchment. Talk from angry old people and drop off fees isn't really relevant to anyone who uses the airport now regularly - of which I am pleased to say I am one who think it's a fantastic operation all round and actually I appreciate Ryanair!

If Mr Rigby does buy the airport I doubt his plans will be limited to having a couple of 737's running to sun spots - that isn't going to make much.

Is that the same Mr Bath and family that held Hurn airport to ransom over parking and handling fees for years and also refused to have any other brochures in there travel offices like " Thomson , Intasun and Horizon " to name but a few if they sold holidays from Bournemouth

Thomson would have come in a long time before that if Bath travel had sold there holidays as well

Bath travel was a unique company to the local area but ultimately failed because they never went forward in to the big new world of the internet .
Bit like " Pan Am " and " TWA " they never invested in the future , there offices were tired and old and everything was good old fashioned telephone and paper work .
Nothing wrong in that as the old dears loved it , the personal touch but like everyone else has touched on , Ryanair and Easy Jet were waiting in the wings and the rest is history