I'm surprised at finance having been significant to the route; the experience at London City was long that, while Edinburgh in particular, and later Glasgow, were good destinations driven by the banking world, Belfast was a basketcase with a succession of failures. The original pre-purple Flybe (might have still been British European) had a shot, initially with a 146, dropped down to the small Dash 8-300, then given up. Scot Airways later had a go with the even smaller Dornier 328, that didn't last either. I went in all of these and load factors over 50% were unusual. BA CityFlyer finally came along with a stronger offering, their frequent flyer base, corporate accounts at least from the London end, and I suspect some diversion from BA Heathrow flights, which finally seems to have cracked it. In the ROI Dublin always appears the centre of the finance industry, so Belfast to Cork does seem off the finance track.

Hi WHBM.
I think you misunderstand. I'm not suggesting that the route was impacted by these industries specifically. I'm talking about one of the greatest banking crises of any developing, which happened in the Republic of Ireland. The country was plunged the country into a crisis that rippled through the whole economy and companies scaled back on travel. It was very acute. The North and UK didn't have a crisis on that scale in relative terms.

Nope. WHBM understood you perfectly well.

It looks like Loganair has responded, with fares from BHD to INV *including * 23kgs luggage, seat selection, etc at £45, and BHD ABZ at £52. Fares drop to these levels on 24 August...

The difference from their Fly fare to the FlyFlex fare quoted above is £5 (£15 on other routes like BHD DND)

EIR putting more rotations in from winter on BHX,MAN, EDI and LBA that I can see.

I don't actually remember two airlines going head to head successfully at BHD
Logan and Manx did a few but they were "Airlines of Britain" group so not a true head to head
BA and BMI for a while.
Time will tell but the ones with the spare aircraft if something goes wrong will have the advantage.

EasyJet have on sale LPL for summer from BHD. Flights start 1st July. Appear daily except Wednesday

Interesting to see the RAF in today doing a few circuits with the M400
The CITY WATCH Group must be bashing out the emails this afternoon

Are they still active? I thought they had disbanded after losing a court case a while ago and getting stung with a large legal bill.

Nah!
They seemed to disappear at the same time the former MD at "the perfectly good airport up the road" left
They went or said they were going to the human rights court claiming government oppression. But they are still about. A few changes of leadership and splinter groups.
Their third in command who often knocked on my door telling me the planes would be flying under the electricity pyloris and had health problems because of the planes has passed away and there seemed to be no replacement.
Also the rise of FR24 shot a hole in their arguments about aircraft going to Aldergrove avoided highly populated areas.

Considerable Aer Lingus Commuter disorganisation on Tuesday May 10, the based ATR did the first two rotations, then went tech about 1300 at Belfast. Remaining rotations of the day, to Leeds and then Manchester, were just progressively delayed, a substitute ATR was ferried up from Dublin around 1900, but then just ran languidly with one hour-plus turnrounds at each point for some reason, until it arrived back just from the Leeds at 2330. Quite apparent it couldn't do the Manchester rotation as well, but pax from there were just progressively given invented new departure times until at around 2130 it was cancelled, especially annoying as it was after the 2020 Easyjet departure to BFS International.

....and meanwhile Flybe ops seem to be going fairly well (hopefully not the kiss of death!) since the the 4th aircraft came into service last week.

Fares on BHD-BHX (and vice versa) seem fairly high with a few sectors showing sold out over the coming days/weeks, so despite direct competition it looks like this route (at least) is doing ok.

City Airport Parking
 

Short version is flight cancelled with airline A, new booking with Airline B but with earlier departure on the same date. Parking non change and non refundable! Manage my booking doesn't give me the option to cancel or amend parking. I tried to make new booking but it wouldn't allow as car reg the same as booking held in the system for original parking. Sent airport a message but no reply as yet. Anyone in the know? What do I do next?

Give them a ring. Worked for me, albiet at a different airport. Need to speak to a person with access to make the change. Otherwise computer will say no

New easyJet route from BHD to BRS
 

easyJet will start operating 3x weekly flights to BRS from BHD starting 7th September.
The flights will operate We, Fr, Su and will run alongside 22x weekly departures from BFS to BRS

Whilst continuing to operate from their large base in BFS, easyJet restarted operations from BHD last year to LGW and this year to LPL.

During the first week of September, easyJet will operate the following flights from BHD:
LGW - 14x weekly
LPL - 7x weekly
BRS - 3x weekly

During the first week of September, easyJet will also operate the following domestic flights from BFS:
LGW - 39x weekly
GLA - 33x weekly
LPL - 30x weekly
MAN - 30x weekly
LTN - 28x weekly
EDI - 26x weekly
BRS - 22x weekly
BHX - 22x weekly
STN - 20x weekly
NCL - 14x weekly
IOM - 2x weekly
JER - 2x weekly
LBA - 2x weekly

So flights from the UK to the UK? :ok:

Looks like the border isn't in the Irish Sea, but at 30,000ft above the Irish Sea.

And just to be pedantic, whilst Belfast is the Capital of one of the 4 nations making up the UK, two of the destinations listed, JER and IOM, are not in the UK at all!

Me

Obviously very clearly getting in before BE or EIR do because they've had zero interest in BHD-BRS or LPL previously.

So based on the logic that easyJet seem to be following they've been proactive at filling the gaps in the network at BHD before Flybe or Aer Lingus do. My guess would be that LGW came on the back of a good subsidy in the rebuild during covid and did well so they carried it on. With Liverpool and Bristol to follow, that night suggest that the next logical route would be Luton, and at a daily frequency during the day it could compliment LGW very well catering for the more leisure orientated traveller.

Would they dip their toe in the water of mainland Europe? Or is all of this a concerted effort to gain concessions at BFS?

Would they be able to, performance-wise? Genuine question, I'm not sure how performance limited they would be on a hot calm day, but the current A320 flights only go as far as London.

BHD - PMI
 

Hi all,

I went to PMI from BHD last Saturday and I have to say it was a fantastic experience and 1000 times better than using BFS. I really wish it had the capacity to accommodate more european flights as it’s a great little airport.

The airport is clean, fast and convenient for people living in Belfast and the lounge is fantastic for the price you pay per head. If more people had the experience of going through BHD it would appeal a whole lot more.

A limited amount of european flights would work really well, as I do think too many would probably make it lose the appeal of a quick and convenient airport. I wonder if there are any airlines that are tinkering with the idea of adding more European destinations. They always seem to fail when attempted and I don’t see why ☹️

I returned from PMI through BFS and it was a depressing experience. I would pay extra to fly through BHD and I am sure a lot of passengers concur with that view.

Thats Eastern gone from those routes I would imagine.

Belfast Telegraph reporting at its finest...

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....fe4df9b70d.jpg

Flybe
 

Flybe reducing schedule for summer

Flybe suspends three Belfast City Airport routes over summer - BBC News

Shame the State broadcaster couldn't manage to use photos of the present incarnation of Flybe in their online report!

KLM looks to have slashed the AMS flights down to 4x weekly for Sep/Oct. days of operation all over the place.

It appears Flybe has also dropped Manchester and further reduction in frequency to Glasgow and Leeds.
Does this mean they are struggling to compete with Aer Lingus or is the demand still not there ?

No. It means they haven't got the aircraft they thought they were going to have.

Why not cut it when they cut the other services then?

That brings the total number of routes cancelled from BHD to 4. Newcastle, Aberdeen, Inverness and now Manchester? Are they moving their concentration away from Belfast ?

I thought BE had enough money in the bank to run near empty aircraft for nearly two years...according to what they told everyone at BHD prior to launch. How come BE can't get planes or parts and Emerald apperar to be getting aircraft like they are picking up shopping in tescos.

Looks very much as though going for the cheap option in the Dash 8 was a poor decision that is now costing them money.

Because they thought they had an aircraft coming on 25Jul that has been delayed by the lessors

They aren't cancelled but postponed until they get the aircraft delivered. There's a difference.....

Not so much the choice of aircraft, more the choice of leasing companies

Q400 absolutely guzzles fuel vs the ATR. In the current environment, that’s bound to be hurting. When fuel is cheap, the savings on lower lease rates on thirstier frames often exceed the cost of the excess fuel burn. Quite the opposite when fuel is expensive.

Same leasing company as Emerald are using, Nordic Aviation Capital.

Keep in mind who owns Emerald, a very well known and respected aviation professional, who also owns two large MROs, they're in a different league to Flybe and have a lot more weight behind them.

Flybe should have gone for the ATR but De Haviland may well have offered some perks to taking the Dash that on paper made it the sensible choice even though Flybe would have had everything needed to operate the ATR from its previous flirt with the type in the north of Europe.