Nearly a month and no news or rumours? :ugh:

Its a long proven fact its what the staff live for!!!

Come on HUY ....... do something newsworthy please..........IM :mad: BORED

The airport has started issuing press releases again :eek: and the annual trafvel show was yesterday

Just got to hope they can keep the existing, albeit smaller, number of charters. KLM still seem to be doing well as always.

I always wondered what happened to that promise to reaffirm KLM's commitment to HUY. Wernt they even looking at a CDG service a couple of times a day?

One of the local fanboys used to bang on about this a few years ago. I think in reality it was nothing more than the product of his own overactive imagination.

I can't, for the life of me, see why AF/KLM would dilute the load factors and earnings of a successful service by linking to another hub which they already control.

They did infact say they were 'looking into it' at a number of staff meetings at the airport some time ago. It was a capacity thing i think, rather than offering an extra daily service or two, try to an alternative destination and maximise the potential. As you say though, it could probably cannibalise the AMS route.

Correct me if wrong...but didn't Gill Airways do HUY-CDG for a while with an ATR for Air France? If that isn't just a figment of my imagination...does anyone have any load factor figures etc?

I have to say that I disagree. When Gill operated the Paris, they experienced good load factors on the Humberside route. Amsterdam does indeed rely on a considerable amount of connecting traffic, but there is undoubtedly room for an AF Paris aswell. DSA, EMA and LBA offer no full service Paris flights, HUY dould benefit from this.

Regards

Mike

Globetrotter,

You are quite right. I recall the flight was shared with MME.

This was, however, a) in pre AF/KLM days, and b) in better economic circumstances.

I don't know what the loads or yields were like, but Gill Air, of course, folded. And no one rushed in to fill the gap in the marketplace.

The world has moved on since then, and now that AF & KLM are one and the same organisation I can see no appetite on their part in 'robbing Peter to pay Paul'. They're probably quite happy with things as they are.

The loads wernt particularly amazing on the CDG Gill flights, ut they certainly attracted interest. Id have to say yields were supposidly quite high, if you look at the crudest evidence of good yields, most pax were the laptop brigade, the route had little effect on the KLM service (which at the time increased to 6xdaily) so there was demand. It lasted 18 months, i think initialy shared with MME, the MME leg was dropped and was solely HUY to CDG.

BE were at the time a big franchise operator for A/F but as far as i could see they didnt have the capacity employ routes from HUY. There is, afterall, always somewhere more significant...

Now that we have had the 'Holiday Show' there may be a Press release,with some good news.!!!

To be honest I was slightly concerned by how much KLM cut capacity over Christmas/New Year. Now I know demand falls off, even more so at the moment, and if the 4th daily was axed I wouldn't have been too worried. But some days there was only one flight. In previous years IIRC all that was cancelled was the Christmas Eve nightstopper, Christmas Day and 1st Boxing Day departure.

I would think the 4th daily needs to become 7 days a week, 50 weeks a year rather than the current one/off arrangement before any CDG service is looked at. Any CDG service would obviously lead to AMS capacity being cut, and frequency wise anything less than 3xDaily would seriously reduce the number of connecting opportunities.

I would love to see CDG but with the 4th AMS flight not operating all the time, and the current economic climate, I think its far better, short term at least, to focus on the AMS service and getting that 4th daily operating all year

Im not suggesting the CDG will ever happen... I dont think it will, best hope for expansion would be a based charter/lo-co sun routes when things get better...

I dont see why the KLM reduction is too concerning considering the economy, it must be abit thin for business pax a this time of year?

To me the concerning thing was that the reduction was so big (just one flight some days), and the fact the reduction is not normally so severe. The loads seem good generally going by the CAA stats so I wouldnt say its a major worry but I wouldn't call it just the normal seasonal reductions

Don't worry they did the same thing at Durham Tees over the Christmas period, bmi and Eastern also cut flights, Eastern cut from 4 to 2 a day most of the time, upto 3 after New Year until last week when they went back to 4.

Reason for KLM
 

How much of KLM's traffic do you experts think is actually generated by the obvious oil/petrochemical link? Or is it just a good alliance airport for West/South/East Yorkshire which DSA can't match at all (except via Belfast) and LBA struggles outside a London connection. I have a friend in Doncaster who flies KLM through HUY to China for no particular reason apart from its convenience. So I wondered if a hub connection through CDG rather than Amsterdam would make much difference.

I will try and find the written evidence that shows 97% of KL's pax are from well withing the HUY catchment... I dont understand how you can say LBA struggles outside a London connection?

I think the reasons should be clear why DSA cant match it by now :ugh:

Tony Lavan, the airport Managing Director, has given a very long interview to the Grimsby Telegraph. Not much new, but the key points are:

Growth not likely again until 2010
Further passenger figure falls expected
24 extra CHC Scotia helicopter flights a week have started recently
The airport, with partners, is looking to get the Icelandair flights that moved to East Midlands back, but they need a backload to Iceland
The airport hotel plan is being mentioned again
And maybe another maintenance hangar

I liked reading the article, was good to see that he doesnt mention the good old 'we are constantly in talks with...'

A fair and trustworthy and realistic yet optimistic view on the future. I like the mention that they need to advertise the KLM importance more, i totaly agree.

Pound notes?

National debt?