well, that did not last very long. im not surprised. does anyone know the reason for pulling out crew and aircraft? was it to save money, or did the directors actually realise that they should have not put them in malaga in the first place?

But Wirral the flights were only planned to Newquay for a short period in the first place. Not sure how the load factors were but Monarch did a bl**dy good job of promoting them locally.

Monarch to stop Newquay to Malaga
 

If you go to the news page on Monarch's web site, the flights to Malaga will stop at the end of april due to the local £5 levy on passengers.

Not much of a surprise there - has been part of the Blackpool flight recently. The £5 levy has been put on to improve facilities - but what is the use in that when airlines are pulling out ala Monarch/Ryanair/Air Wales

if you ask me, i reckon its a route that couldn't really work in the first place - a £5 departure levy (although ridiculous) is certainly not going to affect a route that is profitable. It would reduce costs by 0.34% if it was reduced to zero.

But, it is reason enough I suppose for an airline to withdraw from an airport that gives it narrow margins at the best of times so guess the management should bow down and scrap the charge.

No suprise here as said :}

There is a BBC news report about this in which they say that passengers don't mind paying the £5 to secure the airports future:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/4732994.stm

The additional fees/charges/taxes for a departure with Monarch from Newquay over and above the actual fare, are almost £20, so this would become £25 for each passenger with the 'Save Newquay airport' fee.

I wonder what the loads over this winter have been on the route?

Why couldn't they just admit that the passenger numbers didn't meet their expectations? So what happens to the AGP-based aircraft?

I might be wrong but i think the aircraft will be used on the new BHX-spain routes.

The aircraft that was AGP based hasn't been based in AGP for a while now. It now is Blackpool based and operates daily blackpool to Malaga. Some days the flights are direct and are W patterns through Aberdeen, other days it operates through Newquay to Malaga. The new BHX based aircraft has yet to join the company but will be an A321 arriving soon.

Hope that doesn't BLK's service to Malaga is for the chop.

Does anyone know what the pax loads are like on this service? I asumed the flight was going via Newquay because of poor BLK pax loads. I did notice ZB flew out and back again to Venice the other week - wonder what that was about?

FYI - The new Monarch a/c to be based at BHX is an ex BD 321 due in the spring.

All sounds a bit fishy to me!

Only last week, Monarch were quoted as saying the route had been a success, with heavy hints that it would be continued beyond the initial trial:

(Western Morning News, 14/2/06)
Leah Rosewell, of Monarch, said: "The route has met all of our targets and expectations and has been a success. We are now reviewing the route to see if should be a part of our summer schedule. No decision has been made as yet, but we are expecting one to be made within the next few weeks."

Sounds to me like they're using the £5 fee as a handy excuse for a commercial decision driven by aircraft deployment or whatever, much as Ryanair used the fee as a handy excuse for dropping one daily frequency NQYSTN during the Winter where their load factors have been pretty average at best.

CAA stats for Nov show 2018 pax used the NQY-AGP route that month and 1469 in Dec. Jan figures not yet published.

If there were three rotations per week as stated in the BBC report (say 24 sectors per month) this would give an average load of less than seventy in Dec and less than ninety in Nov.

Blackpool-Malaga showed 5332 pax in Nov and 4474 in Dec.

Thanks for that MV... flew the usual from BRS to BRU the other day and FULL both ways, SN reduced fares!

I just spent twenty minutes typing a reply to this thread then lost it all .gggrrrrr

We can all talk about Ryanair cutting a rotation, Monarch withdrawing, Air Wales starting a route that doesn't stand a cat in hells chance and then all of them blaming it on the £5 levy but that is re-arranging the deckchairs on the titanic, the facts are these.

Newquay Airport is a regional airport at the far end of the country where the cost of living is high and the wages low. There are probably a greater proportion of locals here that haver never left the county let alone the country than anywhere else in the UK. The catchment area is small and just up the road is Exeter with its low cost carriers and range of services.

The airport will never sustain anything other than a handful of flights and until the council act on introducing other activities to fund the place the bucket will continue to leak until all the water eventually runs out!

Now about turning down basing the EFA at Newquay because of the noise......

It has been a known fact at Monarch for months that Newquay was finished in the spring and no summer flights.
I read, not sure if it was on the web site, that all the summer flights were loaded on the system for the summer, months ago and no listing for Newquay.
Blackpool gets reduced also for the summer, only four flights a week.
Some of next winters flights have been loaded as well, l think only Gatwick and BHX so far.

Groundhog - fair enough, but what about Air Southwest? They seem to be able to make a go of NQY, with routes to LGW,MAN,LBA,BRS,DUB,CWL.

Out of the blue - that is the handful of flights to which I refer, London of course has always been a strong route long before Air Southwest and I have long wondered why no one flew to Cardiff ( someone did many years ago I believe)..

Credit to WOW for expanding as much as possible it but my point is this alone will never keep the airport afloat financially and few other routes spring to mind that may be viable.

I have spoken with CCC a couple of times and put forward suggestions that might create revenue and employment at Newquay but so far all I get is "That's a good idea" and then nothing happens!

Monarch Takeover
 

Does anyone have any info on what I am hearing from a member of staff who works for ASTREUS?

A friend is trying to tell me that Astreus will be bought out by MONARCH!

Any news or confirmations, thankyou.:ok:

For anyone at Monarch responsible for writing out cheques - it's spelt Astraeus!