I wonder if part of the reason for a drop in business passengers is more simply down to Loganair’s yield strategy stifling demand?

A day return tomorrow (first out, last back) on Southampton to Glasgow is currently priced at £442! 😳. How much of this is about passengers not being there, and how much is it about it simply not being affordable for those that would otherwise use the service? ….

What was actually said last Monday was that Loganair don’t see the same volume of business travel returning, and for easyJet, its proportion of business travel was the same today as in late 2019, albeit its passenger numbers overall were down. So by implication, easyJet is carrying less business travellers but that sector for them is no more or less hard hit by the pandemic. The comment from Loganair was a direct response to a direct question from Simon Calder - or at least, that’s the way I saw it. I’m surprised some of the other comments weren’t reported though !

Aren’t any last minute bookings expensive though ? They often were on old Flybe. And BA tomorrow has a couple of LHR-GLA departures on sale at £325 one way which makes SOU look like a bargain. Depending on which flights you choose, you can end up paying a lot on pretty much any UK domestic route - train or air! - if you book late.

JobsaGoodun

Here we go again - how else are you going to do a day return to Southampton and how much will it cost?

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with what Loganair are charging but if you chase yield you’ll undoubtedly see reduced demand.

At £450rtn the price may be simply be too steep, driving historic SOU users to LHR or LGW for a better price.

... and if you exclusively chase load factor you'll likely see bankruptcy. Yield has to be carefully managed and knowing your market is one of the most useful tools in the box.

The point I was making was that if you go to LHR (which is the option for most SOU travellers) then the fares are probably just as high if not higher. Seven day pricing is probably a more realistic yardstick anyway as that’s more the typical booking lead time for business travel rather than booked on a Sunday for a Monday.

Expressflight

Agreed entirely. One wonders how flybe will succeed in stimulating the markets it enters to find the sweet spot between yield and volume.

Just to add one point - as Loganair were not flying those routes in 2019 then it’s unlikely they could say that they are seeing reduced demand for business travel on them today?

oapilot

Not to piss on your chips old chap, but aircraftcompare lists the ATR72-600’s fuel economy at 0.333 kilometers per liter, while the Q400 covers 0.391 kilometers per litre. I'm sure other favourable/conflicting sources are out there.

Very close, but the ATR isn't the eco-champion you claim.

Plus the Q400 carries more pax and cargo, is faster and as a result of this, quicker flights and turnarounds lead to being able to squeeze in extra sectors over a day.

It's beginning to sound like a Q400vATR / Flybe v Loganscare bum fight in here.

I don't know how reactive their yield management is but easyJet's early morning flight from Gatwick is sold out tomorrow. You can get £228 rtn from LHR, but how much would a taxi or train and time cost if you're in the Southampton region?

RogueOne

You could have at least said Flymaybe, ultimately thats what's going to happen, Flybe with its Q400 vs the ATR and Loganair / Aurigny / Blue Islands. Dont forget MX costs are vastly reduced on the ATR compared to other fleets, hence LMs change to the type (among other reasons to). The Q400 is a very 'green' aircraft compared to jets etc, but the ATR is green compared to the Q400 and is the accounts friend to.

RogueOne

these figures are just wrong. The atr 72 600 burns about 30% less block fuel than the dash 8 400 and, as another poster has pointed out, the mx cost for the dash is significantly higher than the atr

I go back to what I said a week or two ago. The minutiae of whether a Q400 depending on sector length and whether it’s full or not has a fuel burn which may or may not be fractionally different from an ATR72 on a similar leg if it is full or not full is irrelevant. You have a portion of the market being conditioned to think any flying is bad and these arguments won’t change that. For the rest, I doubt an argument about fractions of fuel burn would sway them either way. It’s a futile argument on both sides and I hope not indicative of the way things go as the industry as a whole will lose if airlines start fighting each other on this green battleground.

Exactly. Until those making that argument decide to live off-grid drinking their own recycled piss and not tweeting it from a smartphone whilst protesting in designer clothes made in a sweatshop - the argument is invalid in my opinion.

RogueOne You are not a line engineer are you?
 

The second paragraph of your post would suggest that you really believe that someone in Flybe 2 will comb the records and choose which Q400 the company will accept and which they will reject on lease. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but this is fantasy.
Broadly speaking, the Q400 in Flybe 1 service suffered tech delays for two reasons. 1. Too few spares or engineers. 2. Chronic problems with air frame and prop de ice systems or rear baggage bay door seal and pressure bung causing pressurisation defects (there were many others). Flybe 2 will have all the same issues (and more) but without the benefit of the experienced guys they dumped when the company went t*ts up first time around.

Most of the people on this thread who sound less than enthusiastic are not just doom mongers, they are people who saw it all go horribly wrong first time around and would love to be wrong this time but, realistically, feel that they are looking at a slow motion car crash.

I was a certifying line engineer with Flybe for nearly 7 years. I saw it for myself. Too many good people suffered unnecessarily, it is hard to watch it all happen again.

That's exactly it. It's called due diligence. :E

Sorry for your trouble with Flybe v1. I hope that doesn't colour your opinion of this brand new and unrelated company - that happens to share the same name, and is yet to operate.

But Flybe 2 don't have free choice of the pevious fleet, and 134brat is saying the issues are chronic and not to specific aircraft in the fleet.

and I wish people would make their mind uo...

brand new and unrelated, but shares the same name

pure and undiluted irony

RogueOne

They themselves, zombie-flybe that is, are all over Linkedin talking about the much loved brand returning to the skies. So not only are they seeing it as a return, a relaunch of the old, they're even using the same logo, branding, market positioning, R/T callsign as the original as well as many of the pilots AND the very same aircraft they used to fly!
Aside from all of those related things, it's wholly unrelated 😉
This walks like a duck and quacks.

but not the list of people they owe money to.

Indeed, did I mention pensions?
You can't polish a turd, a turd is still a turd no matter what shade of purple it is....

I suspect the reality at least for the first year or so is that yield will go out the window and Flybe will use the only tool they have, which is price.

So the real question will be how much debt Cyrus are prepared to run up in the hope that they can get a monopoly on routes and recover the yield. This at least will give them a chance of flogging it for a profit.

The second question is how much debt their competitors are willing to run up to stop them.

As has been said before, the problem with high frequency 70-80 seater Ops is at some point the LoCos get interested.

Rogue One, no problem old chap, it’s all smoke and mirrors anyway, both fuel burn and number of sectors you can wring out of an airframe in a day. Depends on a million and one factors.

Speaking about my local airport (BHX) which appears to be the epicentre of this out of the ashes airline, we have a good mix of operators on the former BE domestic routes who, despite Covid, all seem to be holding their own.

I really don't want to see EasyJet, Aurigny etc up sticks with BHX then reliant and all eggs in one commercially unproven Flybe 2 basket for them to go tits up again and take us back to having no domestic flights.

Perhaps they can co-exist on EDI and GLA with EasyJet but not on INV, JER etc.

BHX needs to be careful. Remember Primera anyone?

I do love the way people think that Primeria came in at the cost of United and American. Both United and American cancelled their routes long before Primeria was even announced meaning it was impossible for Primaria to impact on United and American loads/yields. Primera was a opportunist/panicked response to United and American pulling their routes, they were NOT THE REASON United and American pulled their routes.

I also find this concern of "i hope one airlines doesn't push the other" to be counter intuitive.

Historically BHX has been defined as 1 airline serving 1 route (with the exception of holiday route). As such, 1 airline will only serve the existing market, They wont want to over supply that market and will manage that market to maximise yield - providing 80% capacity according to demand, the epitome of a monopoly. The airline benefits, pax pay higher prices, the market never really grows as pax willing to pay the price do, and others go elsewhere.

If BHX wants to grow however, we have to encourage competition in order to grow markets. The airlines often suffer in the first instance as prices become comitative, but what that does do is grow markets and grow demand over time. Yes their is a risk that the incumbent airlines yields decrease initially, but as a rule of thumb, airlines don't tend to want to hand their competition their profit just because their is completion on a route.

There is always a risk putting all eggs in 1 basket, as well as competiton. but if BHX is serious about growing and increasing market share, risks need to be taken.

You have a point, but on most routes competition would probably kill the route, especially if two carriers made the decision to pull their routes as unprofitable at he same time. The debacle of UA and AA both serving the New York area, and back in the day when Wardair and Air Canada both served Toronto (those were the days!!!) when AC saw off Wardair and promptly closed the route down themselves.

BHX got their fingers very badly burned when British Airways pulled out of BHX, having been supported, at morally for decades and that certainly supports your argument for competition.

In reality it's probably a no win situation for airports of BHX size and smaller. The principal London airports and Manchester probably don't suffer the same dilemmas.

Unbelievable
 

It beggars belief that anyone starting a new airline would choose the name Flybe! The brand is poisonous to potential passengers, airports and advertisers. Who in their right mind would book a seat on an airline called Flybe when hundreds of passengers in the past lost money from an airline called Flybe. I know that the legal ownership will be different but surely it's common sense that the tarnished image of the name FLybe will stick for quite a while.
A most bizarre decision - alongside the simple fact that there are no obvious routes waiting for a new airline.

Didn't they used to be Flybe?

Do you not think the new owners have done some research into the image of the brand? If they haven't then they have been commercially foolish.

In the real world the travelling public are probably rather less negative than you believe.

Worrying about the tarnished image of the brand I think over estimates the discernment and memory of the travelling public. If the new Flybe goes from where they are, to where they want to go, at a price that's competitive with any alternative way of travelling, then most people will still book.

The high profile collapse in the media was probably one of the best things that happened to the brand profile (I'm talking about the brand profile here - I'm obviously not glad Flybe collapsed). Any ex flybe employee outside EXT can tell you stories of how dismally invisible the brand was prior to the collapse.
Mine: I had permission to do occasional days work in my pre flying job. One day working with a young lady she asks if I just do that job on an ad-hoc basis, I say yes but its not my main job.
Her; Oh what do you do.
Me; Im a pilot.
Her; Oh wow, who do you fly for?
Me; Flybe
A look of bank incomprehension crossed her face before she said; Oh I don't think Ive heard of them. This conversation took place in the Somerset town of Street - not exactly a million miles from Exeter.

Since the collapse I've noticed that if I do mention Flybe a great deal more people seem to at least have heard the name. Its about brand recognition and as the old saying goes; "There's no such thing as bad publicity".

Just bad debts...

I am fully aware that UA and AA had pulled out of BHX before Primera started and that Primera did not force them off the NYC routes. I would however wager that they did see off FI to KEF, but that's another story we will never know and apologies, thread drift....the reason I mentioned Primera is that I hope for BHX's sake that this 'new' Flybe isn't a similar panicked blind faith response to regain lost routes and that they last a shade longer than Primera did.....in my opinion, for an airport the size of BHX they are a huge risk, however I get that if BHX turned them away there are other airports who would have welcomed them.

I am fully in support of competition and wish there were far more routes at BHX with 2 (or more) carriers, however as ATNotts says, BHX has a very poor record of sustaining (non-Med/sunshine routes excepted) routes where 2 carriers happily and profitably co-exist in the long term. I really hope the entry of Flybe 2 on domestic routes that have been picked up by others since Flybe 1 disappeared thrive as a result. However, I just don't see that many domestic or international route opportunities in the current climate from BHX flying Dash 8's that aren't already operated and/or can commercially support 2 carriers. Good luck Flybe 2, for BHX's sake lets hope they have deep pockets. To be fair, they probably got Floor 2 at Diamond House for a knock down rental seeing as it was already empty, so that's a start.

Do we know where Flybe will be flying to? What routes do they intend to operate or is this a well kept secret?

Always intrigued by the concept of airports turning airlines away - that line crops up regularly on multiple airport threads. Are they actually allowed to do that? I get that it’s most likely they don’t have to offer sweeteners tailored specifically to a particular airline, but closing the door altogether? (I’m assuming airport capacity isn’t particularly constrained).

Apologies, turned away wasn't the best choice of words!

I mean had BHX not been that interested or didn't negotiate a good deal then Flybe would have looked elsewhere for their first base. I doubt BHX or indeed any airport actually turn airlines away!

crewmeal

No confirmation yet. I'm not a PR expert whatsoever (and I don't mean for this to be a dig) but was a bit of an opportunity missed by announcing BHX as their base yet not also announcing some of the routes? Surely that would have been a way to get some extra money trickling in through the right way?

It was a fairly low key announcement of the BHX base, at least it wasn't that prominently covered in national media (a cynic might say, well it wasn't in London!). Presently the public are all consumed in that annual jamboree and spending spree that is Christmas, and add in the ongoing covid-19 situation they perhaps felt that their route announcement and opening of reservations might have been lost in the fog of health concerns and retail therapy.

Post New Year, when, covid permitting, there might be less going in the public consciousness and announcement of a regional airline opening new routes will cut through better. I'm sure they know exactly which routes they plan to operate and the start date but clearly unlike inside the walls of Downing Street, their premises are pretty leak proof.

FlyBe choose Assured Aviation as BHX handling agent
 

Flybe has appointed Assured Aviation Services as its ground handling partner at Birmingham Airport, creating more than 100 jobs.

As an airport services business, the Warwickshire-based company will provide full ground handling services for the airline including passenger, baggage, cargo and ramp handling and aircraft cleaning.

Part of the Assured Group, Assured Aviation Services currently operates from London Gatwick, Luton and Heathrow Airport.

The Flybe appointment will be the company’s first at Birmingham Airport.

Bill McPherson, head of airport and Cargo at Flybe, said: “We’re delighted to have appointed Assured Aviation Services as our full ground handing service partner following a competitive tender process. The team impressed us with their commitment to safety and their enthusiasm and demonstrated an understanding of Flybe’s vision and values. We look forward to working with them over the coming months as preparations ramp up towards our launch in early 2022.”

Andy Cruise, managing director at Assured Aviation Services, added: “We are proud to be working in partnership with Flybe at this very exciting time. We look forward to delivering a safe and punctual ground handling service at Birmingham Airport, providing all Flybe customers with an enhanced airport experience.”

The contract win follows the announcement that Birmingham Airport will be Flybe’s company headquarters and first crew base.

Assured won’t be opening a new base at BHX for just a couple of DASH, we know there’s going to be at least 12 and possibly 32 but I don’t know where they got that number. I think we can start to build the picture of how Flybe intend to operate now the news flow is starting.

Route wise, W pattern into LHR from EDI and ABZ must be on the cards given the slots, and hints have been dropped about INV and AMS on social media. Think BHD, GLA and the Chanel Islands are a given…..

CX is putting a shift in on the training flights so can’t be long now until they release more news.

SOU can be added to that I’m pretty sure!

Two long standing popular routes vacant from Liverpool are CDG and BER. Both were long served by Easyjet with good loads. Could be an opportunity for Flybe, although both are use to A320 capacity . Berlin might be a bit far on a Dash 8 perhaps .