Yes, but only if you can crew it as a 4-sector day. It doesn't work for Med orginating flights.

Depends what it's combined with. As above AMS-SEN-ALC-SEN-AMS is an existing one and in summer they'll do FAO-SEN-AMS-SEN-FAO. It's only the equivalent crew hours of doing say the UK to the Canaries and back really.

So operationally it's more than feasible to do at SOU by doing more med routes between the domestic sectors but the question is whether EZY see a better yield opportunity operating med routes from SOU or utilising those aircraft back in their home bases back in say BFS or GLA.

Thanks for clarifying the Easyjet W flying patterns.

Duty periods are also limited by the number of sectors flown.

Indeed when i was Crew with Loganair at NWI we had a 6 sector day starting at 9am report, and then 20:00 finish doing NWI-EDI-SVG-EDI-NWI-MAN-NWI. Long old day with not much room for delays otherwise hours quickly became an issue. If there were just 2 sectors in that time period then delays and duty period wouldn't be such an issue.

Just to add to the EZY discussion, from what I've seen at BHX, domestic routes (especially if from another base) come secondary to that bases other operations and are fitted in without much care for frequency and timings.

It is very interesting to see that many thought that with the new EZY base, domestics from BHX would become BHX based aircraft but they (mostly) haven't with the same odd frequencies and timings

Not sure of current W ops but in the past they operated BFS-BHX-AMS-BHX-CFU-BHX-BFS for a season and I'm not aware of any regular disruption to punctuality whilst it operated so this could be a way for SOU to gain more Med frequency or a new route from EZY in 2025 - if the numbers work. Ideally it will of course benefit SOU for it to become an actual EZY base.....that took nearly 20 years at BHX!

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​​​​​​​That didn't surprise me personally on the basis BHX is initially at least only 3 aircraft. They'd almost have to keep those domestics away based to deliver an increase in volumes, which would be the fundamental reason for investing in a new base. I imagine currently there's not much room to add additional based aircraft to BHX but longer term that might change and inevitably more of those domestics may become BHX based over time.

Unless you are doing W's with short flight times operating with the same crew, you could, when on 3 or 4 sectors soon run out of FTL hours once you cop a delay,
which at places like Palma or Corfu in the summer you are always at risk of.

If IIRC, you Roster a Crew to report before 0600 your available FTL hours then become very limited when operating a 3, or even a 4 sector day.
I know the FTL Regs and Rules have changed a fair bit since my day but it's still limiting.
You had much more leeway with a Crew reporting after 0600.

At Monarch we had an 0655 departing from LGW to Mykonos, thus the crew report was before 0600.
At that time the runway was too short on the Island for flying non-stop back to LGW so a fuel stop was made at Athens making this a 3 sector day.
On many occasions due to ATC and/or other operational delays down route, the Crew would have to agree to go into 'Discretion'.
Once a twice that did not happen and the Flight had to stay at JMK or ATH, the Passengers had to go to a hotel, whilst the Crew took minimum rest.

At BMA the Crews would be rostered for 3 x MME-LHR DC-9 round trips and still be ''in hours'' (6 sectors)
The Crew reported at 0630 and were off duty back at base (MME) at 1530.
BD331/332 Hot breakfast, BD333/334 Light meal, and BD335/336 Hot lunch.
Hard work, and the 331 and 332 were always full (up to 92 Pax).

Total posts on this thread here are running at twice the daily passenger average. While it shown passion for SOU I am underwhelmed at Southampton’s passengers numbers that are still less than a third of 2017 numbers.

Domestic traffic is a shadow of its pre covid level, look whats happened in Germany, just 50% recovery and no Flybe to blame. https://airserviceone.com/german-dom...-has-monopoly/

The south coast will build back on the back of high rail fares and both crowded and unreliable trains. It will rely on leisure travel. The domestic business travel uptake has all but collapsed relative to pre pandemic.

international travel is the way ahead.

FF

I completely agree about business travel from SOU. Before COVID and the demise of FlyBe I frequently flew from Southampton to Newcastle, Düsseldorf, Amsterdam, Manchester and Dublin.

In the new on-line ‘Teams’ world, I haven’t made a business flight for over four years and neither have most of my clients and colleagues.

The future has to be a steady build-up of popular lower-cost leisure routes, including some of the existing domestic destinations together with a sprinkling of Continental city-break and holiday destinations, but obviously at a reduced frequency on larger aircraft. Such a mix, plus three or four times daily KLM to Amsterdam and a frequent Channel Islands service is what Southampton needs to build towards, hopefully with two or three based aircraft eventually.

Southend have announced extra flights to Palma from Easy up to 8 weekly,,surely there must be a demand for more then 2x Palma from SOU?

remember BA are also doing x 2 weekly with TUI (Tue/Sat) and a weekly flight only on Sun. More concerned that AGP/ ALC are only one weekly

The vast majority of easyJet aircraft W patterns are driven for utilisation. So you have the likes of FAO-SEN-AMS-SEN-FAO where the Faro based aircraft doesn’t have time for two full round trips from base but does have time to fit in a quick Amsterdam and back. They used to do something very similar on TLS-BRS with an EJU aircraft and more. It looks to be about balancing short and long sectors in the aircraft working day.

There is very little of this at the UK bases as those already have a mix of short and long rotations at the bases, without needing to export aircraft elsewhere to get it.

Another fabulous service Eastern is providing on ORY today. Due out at 0630, only for an aircraft to position in from HUM at midday for a 1240 departure. What a complete sh1t show this airline is!

Are there any whispers of new routes at the airport? All gone very quiet

Standby for another 20 posts of second guessing and wish listing.

I think that's all that it will be. There are two problems that still exist after the runway extension ,the climb out restrictions on RW20 ( Marhill Copse) which stops 738 Sun route operations,and the restrictive open hours for basing a/c i.e. Easy. These are significant restrictions that the airport needs to address,until they are ,there is not going to be a lot of extra destinations being added. The breakeven pax figures of 1.2 mill is still away off.
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All this was known before the extension was started.

Marlhill copse will most likely be rectified at some point via government/CAA intervention but the opening hours will be a difficult one to justify when a Section106 has only just been re-written