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.