What idiot has messed about with the LCY website flight timetable pages yet again.

Used to be a useful enquiry page that showed straightforwardly in one or two clicks the complete timetable to the various destinations for the week. Now it has been rewritten I think twice this year, and each time made less useful and more tedious to work through. Do they give out the design of the web pages to the local secondary school third year "B stream" as an IT project ?

What can be difficult that, when you click on Timetables, it shows you the Timetable. Not some hack (even that badly done) of a booking engine desperate to get you to book for a given flight as soon as you indicate what you want to look at.. Everything now done in huge font = less info on the screen.

Lithuanian Govt wants a route to London City and seems prepared to pay for it
https://www.ch-aviation.com/portal/n...ops-via-tender

I note that LCY-DUS operates just twice daily on fridays, with the Eastern E70 used on the route departing DUS at 0900 am instead of 0645 and no afternoon flight. Has it always been like that and is the Eastern E70 deployed on another route on Friday mornings - or does it just sit idle on the ground at LCY for 5 1/2 hours? ?

I am aware of the fact that Friday is the slowest weekday at LCY, but given Flybe's full schedule on the route on Fridays the schedule looks not very competitive. The later morning departure is of little use for day travel inbound from DUS and useless for any DUS bound business travel from LCY (first departure at 1440).

The article strongly hints at LOT and its new E90 operation built up for LCY ops. Wasn't there some discussion that the E90 cannot operate to destinations further away than WAW and BUD without taking a hit load-wise? VNO would be the same distance as AGP and GRX - are these operated by BACF with the E70 or can the E90 take a full load out of LCY to destinations 1000+ miles away?(although, thinking about it, the Greek destinations served by BACF are much further away - maybe the low capacity of BACF E90s helps here?)

There are few business meetings on Fridays. The afternoon flight suits people returning home for the weekend. It's the same from EDI. There are only two early flights to LCY on Fridays, instead of three, which releases one a/c for the flight to Palma.

To put it like Donald Trump - what I really meant to say was that Friday is the slowest day as far as the traditional business routes (like DUS) are concerned, hence the expansion of BACF into all those leisure routes on fridays (and saturdays and sundays).

Economics of use of the Eastern E70 may be different, by the way, depending on the lease arrangement between BACF and Eastern.

Cityjet will now operate the LCY-DUB route for Aer Lingus from 28th Oct.

https://www.aerlingus.com/travel-inf...-city-airport/

BA adding four E190s and launching Rome plus more routes: British Airways - MORE ROUTES AND MORE AIRCRAFT FOR LONDON CITY

Skywork has gone bust, so arrividerci to the Berne route.

Source (in German): https://www.bernerzeitung.ch/region/...story/25828087

Skywork has gone bust, so arrividerci to the Berne route. Official information on he Swiss' CAA website.

Source (in German): https://www.bernerzeitung.ch/region/...story/25828087

With Skywork gone and VLM Airlines apparently on life support, I am wondering what the future holds for those two, longstanding routes to BRN and ANR. They are rather thin with 50.000 or less annual pax. For BACF, they would be odd destinations as the airports have no IAG presence at all, so I was wondering if BE could be tempted to give them a go. Alternatively, I coul see them moving up the road to SEN to be served by Stobart. The existing ANR-service could be ramped up, although BRN is more tricky with the destination being a bit too far away for an ATR and too small a market for an E95

BA could surely use the smaller Embraer, this route could be quite niche for them...

I am wondering if BA ever looked at BSL which probably would mean more business pax than BRN (some large corporations based there). If I am not mistaken, BRN is more admin which usually means less air travel.

Well, that was quick. VLM has gone bust and after BRN with ARN yet another destination lost.

While neither VLM nor SkyWork were particularly large carriers at City, it's not a good thing for the airport or passengers if the remaining airlines increase their dominance. Few eggs in one basket, etc...

Just to correct, maybe not this year but in the early 2000s VLM were the largest carrier at LCY, operating to a whole span of places. They had about 8 a day to Manchester alone.

Shame. Their Fokker 50s coming in and out were the last connection with the old Dermot Desmond days of LCY expansion.

They were good times. 12 flights a day to AMS and that was when VLM had 18 Fokker 50s. They also drafted in 2 Fokker 50s from Denim Air to operate some flights, it was that busy.

Might we have to conclude that just because the route has almost always existed doesn't mean it necessarily should? It doesn't seem to have brought, in recent years, happiness to those who have operated it. Further, flying those sorts of distances to that sort of size of airport in those sorts of sizes of planes is now almost extinct.

Not sure if it was LCY-ANR that doomed VLM 2.0. My guess is that they wasted their limited resources on routes like MUC-MBX and ANR-ABZ, although Stobart's competition on ANR-SEN certainly did not help. ANR-LCY probably works with a cheap 50 seater, but the problem is of course to generate econoies of scale from that basis. So a larger outfit like Flybe would be a better choice instead of a local mini-airline.

The problem is really the vicinity of Brussels. Nothing more telling than the answer I received upon checking out of a hotel in Antwerp when I asked for directions to public transport to the airport - and the lady started explaining how to catch the train to Brussels Airport.... I guess Antwerp to some extent has to sell itself as "Flanders City Airport" with regard to Brussels Airport.

A lot of the London Antwerp (and vv) market is related to the diamond trade and it should be possible to sustain a service to LCY with the right equipment. The oil business is also relevant on this route.

Perhaps an opportunity for Sun Air. They fly BLL and they operated HAM and BRE for a short while. They have the right plane for the route.

Bear in mind that a substantial chunk of the traffic (especially of the higher-yielding traffic) originates in Antwerp and therefore expects a morning departure. The core of the VLM schedule is a morning and evening rotation facilitating day trips:
ANR 0700 - 0710 LCY
LCY 0740 - 0940 ANR
ANR 1750 - 1800 LCY
LCY 1830 - 2030 ANR

This requires an ANR-based aircraft to work - if the first departure from ANR is only (for example) at 0930, it will be too late for a good chunk of the prospective passengers. Similarly, for an LCY-based aircraft, a departure from LCY at say 1700 would mean a departure from ANR at about 1930, so again you'd have lost a fair share of the UK business day-trippers to BRU or the Eurostar.

Someone like flyBE could always operate the route with an LCY-based aircraft, but it'll be on a compromised schedule and is unlikely to be sustainable. A carrier like Sun-Air could theoretically operate the route from the ANR end, but if it's not sustainable with a fully-depreciated F50 flown by the Antwerp hometown carrier, why would it work with a more expensive aircraft? I don't think the benefits of the BA code would overcome the adverse economics, especially given LCY's charging structure which penalises smaller aircraft by setting a minimum PLS charge level equivalent to 45 passengers, irrespective of aircraft size. (See LCY Fees and Charges).

I have to sadly agree with 01475:

Absolutely, an early morning flight ANR to LCY is quite essential to make this work. I was surprised to read that flyBEis doing well with their flights to SEN that only leave Antwerp at 2 pm, but it's pretty clear they don't (need to) carry many business passengers. Which means the company best suited to pick up this route is locally based. Not VLM or any of its new incarnations, but someone really new. But then you won't run an entire airline on one route and in all of 25 years we have just about established trough lots and lots of trial and error that you can only count on LCY and ZRH to work when it comes to high yielding destinations.

While I don't think it's going to happen, flyBE (or actually Stobart) does overnight a plane at GRQ (Groningen) and offers quite an attractive 'business' schedule for there with early morning and late evening rotations.

It would be a good plan to nightstop on ATR in Antwerp, but depends on the yet to be announced schedules for 2019.

The Flybe/Stobart SEN-ANR route currently carries 1,500 pax per month at a load factor of around 60%. Maybe they will be happy just to pick up a little of the ex-VLM traffic which might turn the current frequencies into a nicely profitable route. That's always assuming the route will in fact operate after the end of March 2019.

Actually, I just remembered that back in 2014 when Stobart first started flying to ANR, they DID night stop there and did a double daily. The first ANR-SEN flight of the day left at 0715, the last flight of the day arrived ANR at 2025.

Any idea how these aircraft will be sourced ? Nordic capital maybe ?

Might they be coming from AA? They're only 11 years old and being removed from the fleet imminently

I think Flybe would be happy to move the Southend-Antwerp route to LCY, now the competitor has gone.

It has long had a smallish but substantial business travel demand from the diamond trade, which in Europe is centred in the two cities. Sometimes I suspect what is in one or two of the briefcases is worth more than the airframe (no putdown on the good old F.50s ! ).

Is it Flybe's to move? As a Stobart flight, isn't it down to them?

Adria has confirmed that it is looking at two of Skywork's former routes from BRN, one of them LCY. They are about to start their new Saab 2000 operation woth six aircraft and should have plenty of capacity left as only 2 or 3 aircraft appear to be scheduled so far. It should be noted, however, that they will begin to serve SEN from PAD soon, so SEN-BRN would be another logical choice.

The same (Austrian) source also reports that BACF is looking at VIE as part of their 2019 expansion.

True. I doubt if Stobart are that stupid to set up routes into LCY their main competitor London airport.

Trivia: Antwerp has had a London link for almost 60 years. It began in the early 1960s with Channel Airways to SEN, a couple of years later Sabena started LHR (a route that still existed at least in the late 1980s - not sure when it ended). In the 1970s, BIA served LGW, later followed by BCal Commuter, Air Europe Express, TIA/Airlines 1992, Air Exel and Euroworld/Cityflyer. LGW ended in 1998 as a result of increasing competition from VLM that had started LCY as its first route in 1993.

No, but Flybe might start LCY-ANR in their own right as they started LCY-RNS in competition with SEN-RNS a year or two back in the peak summer months.