Everything you need to know about Flybe
 

A very good summary of Flybe business, strategy and competition published today by CAPA

Flybe: a niche occupied by few other airlines, but still with a unit cost disadvantage | CAPA - Centre for Aviation

BE at NHT
 

Because of the proximity of LHR, the alignment of the rwy, and the presence of GA and the RAF, NHT commercial operations would be very limited, so there is no question of the trunk domestic routes shifting from LHR to NHT.

NHT would be available for thin domestic routes only, perhaps the ones that were formerly at LHR and the kind of routes that might be suitable for a BE-type operation.

Some investment at NHT would be necessary, such as a terminal, railway station(s), etc.. BE appear to believe that there is a business case for this.

Clearly there is no question of NHT being used as LHR’s third rwy, so this gives the impression that (a) BE would like to operate from an airport west of London (for good commercial reasons) and (b) BE would like to operate from LHR when/if conditions ever allow (again, for good commercial reasons).

Does anyone know how the JER/SOU/LBA/ABZ shuttle is performing

It has been continued for next summer at the same frequency, hopefully that is an indication it has met expectations so far, would be nice to find out from someone more knowledgeable than I am though!

Anyone know why the Inverness to Manchester has been cancelled again this weekend? Might it be that 2 flights within an hour is too many?

bb

Clearly using NHT is just a ruse to try and operate some juicy thin routes to London. Impact on slots re the Great God LHR means it won't happen.

Also shows they are trying to look at things away from LCY. Going that well is it !!!??

It is going well actually. Flybe are tied into LCY for 5 years so they're not moving anytime soon. They've been looking at NHT for quite sometime now and it's all about 3 words: expansion, expansion, expansion. Your rhetoric is factless.

That doesn't mean it's going well. It could just mean they're tied into a bad or worsening deal for 5 years.

Certainly the November LCY figures will make interesting reading. I've heard contradictory reports so what the truth is I've no idea nor do I wish to speculate.

No it doesn't, Spandex but yet again you hijack the Flybe thread and twist things. I said it's going well, then in a new sentence I said they're tied in for 5 years. I didn't say "it's going well because they're tired in for 5 years".

Look, I guess the point is there's alot of routes out of LCY that were launched very quickly. Not every route is going to be fantastic but my understanding is that at the moment they are happy with the way it has gone overall.

"Hijack the Flybe thread"! Oh Deano you're so dramatic.

If you want to disassociate the subject then start a new paragraph not a new sentence.

All will be revealed about Flybe's loads at London City on, or possibly shortly after, Tuesday. November might be lousy for leisure travel but given these are business centric routes I imagine we'll get a good idea of progress so far.

The only think more commercially risky than going head to head with the BA Exec club flying a better product at the same price out of East London would be using an old RAF base in West London with no decent transport links to compete with er.... Heathrow.

That's expansion, or more likely, implosion. Northolt as the next big thing is laughable given what's next door. I mean compare the lounge facilities!!!?

What's next door to Northolt is expensive, unwieldy, often unreliable, and for the best part not accessible by plane from the UK regions as a result of having no capacity.

If Heathrow got a new runway then competing against it would be madness, which means that until 2064 doing so could just work. Northolt's not a million miles from transport links.

Why not use LCY for point to point? English domestic to London is a very tricky market. LBA got LHR but it's tenuous even with connections, MAN lost LCY when the West coast mainline was fixed, MME is a joke, EXT is having a go with LCY (!), NQY needs taxpayer wonga to make a LGW link work and NCL already has a good LHR connection. BHX/EMA are too close to London, easyJet has INV and ABZ nicely covered from LGW/STN, ABZ also has a LHR link.

Please explain the gap in the market that you think is profitable from RAF Northolt. LPL-NHT perhaps? Seriously?

We need the existing airport infrastructure to work better, not add in even more borderline niche airfields which further fragment the market.

I'd say because domestic flights are the most price sensitive flights, given the competition with rail, coaches and cars. APD and LCY as the allegedly most expensive airport in Europe (which is also slot constrained) do not sound like a winning concept.

BHX
 

Deano777

Has the management communicated any reason for the change of heart at BHX?

As an example is it a case that the routes were:

a) Loss making
b) Aircraft required elsewhere to make more from the asset?
c) Both a & b.

Only out of interest really as Oslo and Hamburg have only operated one month, Cologne, Florence and Toulouse since summer 14.

Are they saying their pre route selection analysis was flawed or they all bombed after going live?

Hardly a great example of letting routes bed in and the fact loads on all except Cologne were pretty good which suggest the demand was there but perhaps maybe not at the required yield level - was anything tried to rectify that considering the short period of operation?

It seems a change of direction and I assume employees were given a full explanation?



Pete

Surprised to hear about poor loads on BHX - CGN: The route was operated with an E175 from time to time which suggested rather healthy loads. Maybe the reason was more that the route cannibalized the BHX-DUS route so the choice was maybe between axing a frequency at DUS or axing CGN altogether?

I still suspect that we haven't seen the full schedules for all bases releases as yet


cs