Yes you are right but l can see this happening on domestics especially. The days of niche/smaller regional carriers operating multiple daily are diminishing and unfortunately will become unsustainable at some point in the near future, mainly borne out of course from reduced business travel.

Having moved West, SOU is now technically my closest airport but the M4 and LHR still get my business, it's a London mindset coupled to a much larger set of options. The catchment area is therefore slightly overstated, to what extent will become apparent as easyJet operations mature.

This will continue to be a challenge for the airport going forward until a reasonable portfolio of routes becomes available and awareness grows.

Even within the local area around SOU awareness of routes is still very patchy. I live around seven miles from the airport and my next door neighbours were planning a ski trip. Until I mentioned it, they were completely unaware that it was possible to fly direct to Geneva with EZY from Southampton.

As soon as I mentioned it they were on the case and booked the same day.

Early days admittedly but the start of BA to Bergerac for the corresponding weekend next May is not bookable via the app. One wonders if they will be back for another summer season?

Eastern have cancelled the Paris flight again. Absolutely ridiculous excuse for a business.

Blue Islands also regularly cancelling flights lately. I would be surprised if the SOU routes are not their most popular so why they are cancelling flights from there and still flying to the likes of East Midlands, Exeter and Dublin is beyond me.

I cannot recall seeing any of the Easy flights cancelled from SOU. Bring them on I say. There was a time when regional airlines went the extra mile to keep your business but can’t say that anymore.

I'm wondering if there were any bookings on the flight in the first place... (in either direction)

Eastern was scheduled to operate but cancelled due to crew sickness (cabin crew, I believe). Blue Islands cancelled one as Swissport have taken an ATR72 out of action in Jersey. Not a lot you can do about that, especially when they’re the only handling agent.

Can we hope for some good news for SOU?, what with EZY choosing SEN to base aircraft over Southampton ,Eastern continuing down a disaster path to Paris, positive news is needed,but where will it come from?

Thanks for confirming. Whilst these things are unfortunate and not their fault it does seem to be stuck record certainly with Eastern. They have an ATR doing the Newquay route and 3 Embraers with KLM. That in theory leaves 3 other ATRs and an Embraer spare to cover the Paris route. Football season is over so less charters. It’s just not a good look especially when there is a code share.

When it comes to Blue Islands, them and Aurigny appear to be two peas in a pod with their poor decision making with expanding their operations. Common sense dictates that to expand you probably need to be adding an additional aircraft, certainly not expanding whilst there is industry wide shortages on labour and parts leading to a lack off availability even for the existing fleet. I see Aurigny are now hinting at scaling back their ops. Personally I feel all the new routes should have been shelved before they launched. Better to annoy a few people on those speculative routes then lose goodwill with long standing customers on their main routes.

Eastern has three ATRs on the ground today and still cancelling flights. That’s an organisational issue and not bad luck.

On the others, I don’t think Blue Islands has launched anything new? The odd flight to IOM took place last year and all that’s happened is that it’s going to LUX instead of IOM some weeks, unless I missed something. Aurigny has gone for LCY, STN, LPL, CDG and EDI so schedule has grown in quite a big way.

And I would doubt that any of them are cramming the punters in.

Might be more to come yet but the GLA service appears to remain at x2 weekly between November - April 2025, before resuming a daily service from next May.

Belfast also seems to reduced to x4 per week for last few weeks of October before going to x3 between November and resuming x5 per week from next April.

You would hope more will be added for GLA as that’s quite some reduction from x 4 daily with LM to x 2 weekly and what many on here were fearing. BFS not so critical as you still have EI x 2 daily to BHD. Next summers easyjet sun schedule seems to mirror this years at present.

​​​​​​If Pax numbers are good on the GLA route then surely 2x weekly seems very light, especially now Loganair have discontinued there service?

Agreed and think we will see more capacity added as this route is not seasonal in pax traffic and has been performing well by all accounts

remember it is total weekly seats rather than frequency… eg an A319/20 vs E145

still leaves a huge reduction of 1902 seats weekly!

EZY will be cautious. If they go to 3x weekly and carry 50% more pax as a result, great. But if the overall yield only increases by 20% they may consider that extra flight pointless. They have the figures and time will tell.

And will drop the route if it can make more money elsewhere

I know that it’s still early days, but it’s beginning to look like EZY are quite happy to make a bit of money on the side by operating a few flights from SOU when they feel nothing more lucrative is available.

One would like to say time to pin some hopes on someone else, but there simply aren’t too many options are there?

Ryanair are big ‘no-no’ with their lumbering 738s, as are Tui and Jet2 - and anyway they’ve all signed-up with chaps down the road.

I had hoped that BA City Flyer would have made a real go of it, but they appear to be losing interest.

The few remaining regionals seem to be getting more and more shambolic. The airport needs a based known name and some exciting new destinations to add a bit of fizz, the choice of routes is getting a bit tedious to say the least.

Southampton, a fabulous little airport, all dressed-up and nowhere to go!