I'm sure certain posters will be pleased to see Loganair reducing flights to SOU from EDI, GLA and NCL this summer

I wonder if this is related to Loganair finding it difficult to retain crew. See the Loganair thread which suggests they are short of crew for S24. They are a great airline providing many with their first flying job, but this must make them susceptible to their flight crew receiving job offers from bigger airlines flying larger aircraft.

Already posted about that at the beginning of Feb, old news

Cancelled
 

The Fred Olsen line have cancelled my trip and the ship is sailing empty
This is due to a deep clean needed because of a gastro ENT. Bug

Never mind

They've offered me a free trip to Liverpool in April

Interview with AGS Airport's Retail Director

“We are rebuilding the passenger volumes and will see a shift in airline mix, delivering different passenger and infrastructure needs. We need to ensure we are catering to the unique demographics at the airport, where we are undertaking qualitative insights work to really understand the changing passenger needs.”

Unique demographics?

Sounds like he's swallowed "An idiots guide to Marketing"

All this corporate talk but what’s required are new routes. Airport needs to start finding some fresh destinations and not just regurgitating existing with incumbent airlines.

It seems clear that for the 2024 summer season it was hardly worth the cost, time and effort of building the runway extension. Very disappointing after all the expectations on this thread of a new beginning.

Really?
How can you say that, Pain in the R's...

We've got the 3 new summer leisure routes from Easyjet ALC PMI and FAO - maybe more to come...
The 186 seat Airbus A320 needs that 164m, so there is some comfort to take so far.

It's a start in a very difficult and economical climate, also with escalating travel issues possible to the Eastern Med destinations.
So to have an extra market for Spain and Portugal maybe fruitful.

New destinations are welcome but the frequency of them is underwhelming.

This really is the most negative thread on these forums! For some on here the operator can do no right. Southampton is a small regional airport that considering the economic situation
isn't doing too badly. You cannot just conjure up passengers and destinations and ignore economic reality. Hopefully some of you with all the 'right' answers will be applying for jobs on the airport management team!
As for the runway extension it is a long term investment. Of course on here it would have always been criticised for either going ahead or cancelling!

The runway extension wasn’t built with 2024 solely in mind and instead an investment for many years to come. I think it is fairly obvious that the way forward lies very favourably with easyJet and this summers med routes are hopefully a flavour of more to come with increased frequencies. If all goes well then we can be expect to see them adding additional routes hence forth. GLA/BFS has in the main operated well for them and loads have been strong, I only wish they would take on MAN also. It seems as though more investment at the airport is going in to make the customer experience even better and hopefully the new Ops Dir will hit the ground running. A lot to look forward to over the next few years and think we need to stay patient, it is a great little airport that I have no doubt will improve and grow once again!

I agree. And we all agree that we should expect frequencies to increase for S25. However, before I get accused of being negative again, a weekly service to some of these destinations is making only a very small increase to the most important figure - annual pax numbers.

I don't think it was overly unreasomable to hope it may have been a 3 times weekly service to some of the new summer destinations. Even Norwich airport managed it this year with a new operator and will probably see a larger increase to their annual pax figures as a result.

It seems that this 'lack of frequency' is an easyJet issue rather than a Southampton Airport issue. Yesterday easyJet announced a twice weekly Amsterdam to Newcastle service. Hardly the frequency you could expect on such a route and certainly something people would complain about if this was Amsterdam to Southampton.

Another point is that, with no base at Southampton, it will be more challenging to get space freed up on aircraft time elsewhere to fly into the airport - forward planning is the key here. 2025 will be the next opportunity and assuming easyJet is content with Southampton on 1) yield, 2) no cannibalisation from LGW and 3) a low enough airport fee then I can't see them not adding more leisure routes.

Agreed - fair point on the easyJet situation.

If S25 sees the likes of Faro, Palma, Alicante at a frequency of at least 3 x a week and Malaga is added with at least 3 x a week service, then the airport is looking easily at an extra 120k pax per annum and ever closer to that break even point.

Indeed, however new leisure routes into SOU added by Easyjet (Europe) are dependant on their Euro fleet based at say, AGP for the service to operate.

I'm not aware that Easyjet (UK) fly any 'W' patterns from say, their BRS or LGW bases...If they did, or they do, then the Crews could be taxied to/from SOU.
ie: to operate BRS-AGP-SOU-AGP-BRS
I've no idea if Easyjet do this anywhere at all.

Easy UK do seem to operate ‘W’ operations. Some of the ski flights into hurn are ‘W’ paterns lgw-geneva-hurn-geneva-lgw or as todays lunchtime into hurn which is Luton-Geneva-hurn-Geneva-luton

I'm sure they've done, and may still do, AMS-SEN-Spain/Portugal. So BFS/GLA-SOU-Spain and back (or something similar) could be possible

AMS-SEN-ALC-SEN-AMS

Plus CDG-SEN-GNB-SEN-CDG

So it’s definitely something EZY are willing to consider.