Barcelona? an odd route? Good grief - and here's me thinking it was good news :rolleyes:

CabinCrewe

Can you quantify why you think this is an odd route? Given most other UK airports have a direct link to BCN.

Barcelona is Spain's 2nd busiest airport handling (pre covid) 52 million passengers a year, which is more than Gatwick, Rome FCO or Moscow SVO. For context Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Paris CDG carried circa 70 million

It had seen rising passenger numbers of 2.6 million year on year.

CabinCrewe

BCN a route that was 3-4 weekly with EasyJet pre-COVID. Don’t think it’s an odd route, considering EZY has now ceased international operations from NCL.

I think it's a good route but Veuling does not have a good reputation.
Better than no-one, though.

One thing seems for sure in that NCL has always seemed reluctant to go hellbent for a big LCC to dominate the market. 15 regular operators is pretty good going even for pre-covid standards for an airport of NCL's size. I do think NCL has long been capable though of driving greater pax volumes with a big LCC. Wonder if it is a management approach or simply lack of interest with competition from MAN and EDI/GLA?

The EZY base was at one point,up to 7 based aircraft

Good news, and - sorry to join in with the pile in on CabinCrewe! - not a strange route at all. Not the expected operator, sure, but in the absence of any competition I don't see any reason this won't succeed, regardless of flight times. BCN's a big city break destination as well as a lot of other bobbins: second largest city in Spain; large business and industrial centre; cruise port...
Look at it from the other end as well: Spaniards like travelling to places these days. The Newcastlegatesheadalloneword people seem to think that Newcastle and Gateshead are world class tourist destinations. Hmm, not sure, but it all helps. The UK might even be more attractive to European folks as a Covid-safe destination in the near future but let's not count our chickens.

73k pax on NCL<>BCN in 2019 and 72k in 2018. Only ALC, PMI, AGP and IBZ had more passengers to/from Spain.

"I do think NCL has long been capable though of driving greater pax volumes with a big LCC"

Problem isn't the size of the operators it's the size of the home market. 2.66 million people on less than average income can only generate a limited number of trips per year

NCL does very well considering - far better than a lot of other UK regions

Agreed - look at a map. Outside of the Tyne/Wear and Teesside conurbations there is NCL's catchment area is sparce.

BCN was No.18 in the 2019 list of the top 20 busiest routes at NCL.......73k pax and rising.

SWBKCB

But it's close enough to drag in a lot of Scottish families when the English schools are still in session

And plenty go the other way when the Scottish schools are out.

Also Tui and in the past offered many more flights than from EDI

Asturias56

Absolutely. NCL definitely punches above its weight when you look at all the factors involved. I've mentioned on here before (or was it on a Newcastle United forum? :) ) about the strange expectations here in the North East. A couple of years ago there was someone on here saying that it was poor how NCL had 'only' one flight a day to Dubai, and that it landed at an inconvenient time!
But I'd better not start a discussion about North East mentality. Or Newcastle United.

I was brought up not to mock the afflicted............................. :E

Don't start - the comment which started the discussion about whether NCL 'punched its weight' or not was made by somebody from Essex.... :ok:

Nobody in here in the loop with easyJet and whether they plan to operate some of the based routes that were pulled from other bases?

These routes are still in the destination drop downs on the easyJet app but obviously no dates available. Wishful thinking maybe 🤔.

easyjet did say that all routes would still operate but from there other bases

Delete the word “all”