Originally Posted by ATNotts (Post 11446627)

Absolutely, but the target audience for PRG/BHX is the UK short break market to Czechia rather than vice versa. Sadly, Birmingham isn't a big city-break destination for a number of factors including poor promotion by those who promote England abroad who sit in London, live close to London and believe the only draw for inbound European tourists is, yes you've guessed it, London!

Manchester, thanks to having two really successful football teams that always play on the European stage, and places like Liverpool with a high profile footie team plus their musical heritage and a fantastic waterfront to boot are far bigger draws on inbound tourism, but again thanks to their own efforts rather than "Visit England" or whatever the quango is called this week. (Non) events like the Commonwealth Games have really done little to raise the city's profile across Europe. It always staggered me when I worked a lot in Germany that my colleagues would often express their desire to visit England, but then immediately said "London" as though anywhere North or indeed west didn't exist, or at least had little to attract them to visit. When they did venture north to the East Midlands they were amazed by what we had to offer in the "frozen north"!

There's a job to be done in raising Birmingham and environs as a leisure destination which is going to be important as business travel declines and inbound tourism will be required if the airport is to retain the number of non bucket-and-spade destinations that it enjoys currently, let alone build additional ones.

Originally Posted by Mooncrest (Post 11446674)

Does Stratford on Avon not still have any touristy pull, given it is the birth town of William Shakespeare?

Originally Posted by chinapattern (Post 11447095)

TUI’s short haul based 787 (TUID) is heading off to AMS this morning, seemingly replaced with an Air Tanker A330 which has already positioned in from BZZ and a 789 (TUIO) which is coming up from LGW later. A long haul 787 positions out to BRS as usual for a few days.

Originally Posted by chinapattern (Post 11447373)

New route to Tirana, x2 weekly from 21 December 2023. Nice to see Wizz adding a new route.

Originally Posted by ib26uk (Post 11447510)

Oltonpete, Regarding easyJet, do you know any of the based plane routes?

Originally Posted by Flightrider (Post 11447538)

I'm not sure if you've seen the winter schedule for BHX-GLA but it's an absolute joke. First flight on Mondays arrives BHX at 1445 and there's only one flight a day midweek. Last departure on Friday is 1505 ex BHX. There's only one day (Wednesday) when there's actually an early morning flight - but there isn't an evening one! Fares to GLA are also way above equivalent days on BHX-EDI even though EDI has more flights and better schedules.

I've never subscribed to this school of thought that airlines sometimes do strange things to kill routes off - if you wanted it dead, you'd just pull it - but it's most evidently about to fall off the bottom of the easyJet list of priorities given this woeful offering for this winter.

Originally Posted by ATNotts (Post 11447809)

With regard to the GLA/BHX frequency it would seem that the route doesn't generate sufficient revenue for EasyJet to justify a higher frequency.

Sure, business travel is depressed since the pandemic and the realisation that quite a lot of business can be done via Teams, Zoom etc but if there really is demand for a business friendly service now must surely be the time for Mr. Hinckles to weigh in with a twice daily morning and evening Monday to Friday service to hoover it up. If they don't then I would suggest it kind of proves there isn't demand for business services to Glasgow anymore, which frankly I would find slightly surprising, if not at the frequency offered by FlyBe Mk.1.