TUI..but slightly off topic..flying to and from Cancun soon…anyone able to tell me if you have to pay arrival/departure taxes still at Cancun ?

No all of that now taken in the ticket. The old days of needing hard cash to pay at check-in thankfully now gone.

Might make sense to the bean counters!

You have to still pay a visitors tax prior to leaving the state of Quintana Roo. This is done via a website and is linked to your passport so they know when you arrive at the airport if you have paid or not.

If you don't pay it prior to departure you have to do it at the airport which I wouldn't recommend as the WiFi is terrible! You also can't pay it in cash as it can only be paid online.

Tourist Tax website

Thanks
Steven

I do wonder what the plan for next Summer is. I don't know the 767 routes but in recent years they had them both going MAN - PMI on the same day. That's equivalent to 4 737s. I guess the plan it to charter more old, tatty aircraft from third parties and not bother expanding their own fleet

Many thanks for replies on the Mexico tax!

Or potentially buy seats on other airlines like they have been doing on EZY out of certain airports

4x 737’s worth is a lot of seats to source on other carriers.
Interesting to know what their fleet thoughts are. Suppose their 737 max10’s should have been here by now. The usual of balancing cliff edge drops in dark winter months versus peaks mid summer. Maybe they could get in on Air Tanker action.
People keep paying despite ‘tatty’ 3rd party carriers so they’ll just keeping doing it…

I suppose there is an element of 'you get what you pay for' and seem to recall reading pretty positive comments about the likes of Plus Ultra and Wamos. I guess that the bean counters know the price of everything and the quality of nothing.

Pretty common these days.

What percentage of flying is done on 'tatty' third party aircraft - for example, the only sub the four a/c base at Newcastle has seen was Titan.

Does make me wonder why they still have a 789 sitting on the desert in US doing nothing, perhaps Boeing are still making compensation payments year round. If the Max10 is delayed beyond S24 they are going to have serious capacity issues once again.
Hopefully they are working on plan B already to get extra S24 capacity with a reliable leased in product.

A small percentage of course, but aggrieved passengers taking to social media can make that small percentage a nasty headache.

If you are a quality business you don't contract necessarily the cheapest suppliers as a good reputation is hard won and easily lost. To use another well worn addige its not making a mistake, but how you recover that counts.

TUI have rejected the B789 G-TUIP, beleive they have said they don't have demand for another widebody aircraft, so it won't happen, i'm sure they will be taking delivery of more 737 max 8's over the next 10 months, and maybe more second hand 738s? And they will be using leased in A320s again next summer from the likes of SmartLynx and Avion Express.

Maybe they could lease in 4 747’s from Global Airlines😀

Have they official rejected it and said they don’t want it?

I thought they were in desperate need of long haul aircraft. Not only have you had the complete axing of regional long-haul from next year (which I assumed was due to aircraft shortages) but the axing of several long haul routes:

AUA
LIR (now seasonal and I thought there was a MAN - LIR at one point too)
SJD
AUA
PQC
POP
CCC
MRU
MLE for a bit of an older one that was still post First Choice merger


And that’s recent TUI UK destinations. If you look at long haul from 15 years ago it’s worse.

Whilst some of its will be lack of bums on seat, I assumed a large part was due to aircraft shortages.

As people not privy to the inside details, we are not going to know for certain. But my take is that 'demand' has fallen which is why fewer aircraft are needed and routes have been chopped.

Demand has fallen for all the publicly obvious reasons; high fuel prices, cost of living, people who can afford a holiday going for cheaper, shorter, European breaks. The relative cost of the £ v other currencies hasn't helped either. That is not to say demand isn't there, but not enough demand to fill the routes and make a good profit (I assume). All the while European holidays are still holding up and in fact are still enjoying a post-covid boom, but it wouldn't take much of a leap of thought to think that with high interest rates out there and disposable income being constantly squeezed, that we may see a slowing of demand for European travel in 2024, 2025 and 2026.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was some scaling back of "timetables" v what is on sale today for 2024 once we get past Christmas (across all operators) as people become nervous about booking holidays as their fixed rate mortgages come to an end. Hope I'm wrong....

I would say that is a given. The bad old days of IT consolidations are likely just around the corner, even for quasi scheduled operators such as Jet2 and Easyjet.

There isn't a perennial fruiting magic money tree and difficult budgeting decisions are going to be coming down the tracks particularly for younger families with big mortgages.

Ahh the squeeze on the middle class is coming courtesy of the traitors in government, the PM who should be arrested for treason for working for Klaus and the WEF, and the incompetent and useless Bank of England governor. I hope that the industry is right in what it's saying in terms of people are booking much earlier and spreading the payments out.

Maybe they've decided that it makes sense to leave the flying to scheduled airlines which are large enough to have frames kept as hot spares (as I believe both Jet2 and Easyjet do) or are part of alliances with large fleets around the world. Stick to providing accommodation packages in tied hotels, and cruises.

You have AUA down twice.
TUI (the holiday operator) is the caller for what flying TUI Airways does and always has been. The tour operator has indicated that after Covid, the appetite for longhaul has decreased substantially so that's why the 787s are doing quite a bit of shorthaul.
So TUI the tour operator, has put AUA onto British Airways (via ANU) The airline only went there once a week anyway.
LIR sales just declined too much for the ,again, once a week flight.
The Airline left MLE years ago as the prices charged for the airport/islands was just too expensive, and MLE attracted Chinese/Korean and Russian tourists.
The Tour Operator tehn went to MRU after leaving MLE but the flights have not returned since Covid.
No idea why PQC hasn't restarted but agian, Covid had a huge impact on Vietnam tourist numbers.
POP use to remain a MAN departure but all Dom Rep flights are now to PUJ (Various factors incl RIU hotels/government subsidies etc).
SJD went for a 6 month season but sales for the UK were just not enough, though the US tourists love the place!

At the end of the day, its the customers who decide what TUI the tour operator offers, which is the ony dictate for what TUI Airwyas does. So if longhaul destinations are seemed as too expensive in today's Cost of Living crisis, then that's why TUI Airways does less and less. And that's possibly why TUIP was never taken over....

Covid has had a huge affect on a lot of the Longhaul destinations and I'm sure that one day, demand will come back