Most valuable route in the UK

[Flightmapping]

We occassionally get posts about the busiest routes, in which Dublin, Amsterdam and Paris usually come out tops. Has any survey / report ever been done on the most valuable?

I would guess New York would score pretty high, but then again competition often keeps fares sub £200 at busy times. LA might not quite have the frequency, but would it score on higher fares?

I don't know if most profitable would reveal another set of figures all together, but would be interested to know the most valuable. Presumably the most profitable per passenger would be places like Riyadh, where there are now cheap tourists to bring prices down?

[charterguy]

Most valuable route 'in the UK' (i.e. domestic) has got to be HUY-ABZ operated by Air Kilroe. Oil related traffic, hence the ridiculously high fares. Guess they need the high fares on that route to subsidise the rest of their route network ?

[GoEDI]

EDI-LON has to be pretty high, after all it is the busiest UK domestic route.

[Flightmapping]

Sorry, I forgot we're a pedantic bunch on this forum! I meant most valuable route from the UK, including domestic routes & Ireland. I'm sure the oil routes do provide good yields, but their volume is very low. I know someone at BA who described BHX to AMS as not worth doing because of the low yields, yet UK as a whole to AMS has to be one of the highest volume routes of all? I guess Easy having so many feeds in there keeps prices down, as RYR presumably do to Dublin, so maybe Paris has better overall yields within Europe? But would it be fair to assume LON to NYC has the highest turnover of all routes from the UK, if not globally? I know something like 40% of all transatlantic traffic goes through the UK, and I would presume about 70% of that would go through London?

[BlueEagle]

There was a time when LHR-FRAvv and LHR-CDGvv were the most expensive in terms of cost per mile, may not be the case now that locos are in the market.

[The SSK]

You can see passenger numbers route-by-route in the CAA statistics downloadable from www.caa.co.uk > economic > UK airport statistics.

If you really, really wanted to you could multiply by distance and make an assumption about yields from available data - AEA for example.

As regards BHX-AMS (2003 pax 405,796 = 556 a day each way), BA's lack of interest is almost certainly that they don't see the point in feeding a competitor's hub. All around Europe over the last few years flag carriers have abandoned service from provincial cities in their home market to other people's hubs.

[aeulad]

All flights between Humberside and Aberdeen are operated by Eastern Airways, not Air Kilroe, using a HUY based J41 and the ABZ based J32.

The fares charged on most of Eastern's routes are high because they cater for the niche business market. The flights have high yields, but the onboard service is far superior to most UK airlines, for example, who else has a stand alone champagne service:ok:

Regards

Mike

[colegate]

The most profitable route ever in the whole history of aviation was LON-Lagos for BCAL. The breakeven load factor was around 6%. In the year after the first 747 was introduced on the route (1982-3) BCAL made a net profit on this route of £32 million after all conceivable costs had been thrown at it. That equates to over £6700 per flying hour net profit. That profit was derived after all operating charges, the full cost of the aircraft, a thorough overdosing of overheads and all liabilities such as tax. Beat that if you can!

[AndyDRHuddleston]

aeulad,

I think that you'll find that Air Kilroe is Eastern Airways!!

ADRH

[Thunderball 2]

Colegate,

LGW-LOS was certainly a valuable performer, but with respect I don't think even that route would have broken even at 6%! No idea what the config was on the B747s, but the DC10s were at 265. 6% of that would be about 16 pax at a yield averaged across the three classes...meaning that each passenger would have to cover the cost of almost one hours flying!

But was it the most overbooked? I believe the '10s were often overbooked by 100.

Of course it was also the route that became famous for "white goods" at check-in.

[Flightrider]

ADRH, that's not strictly true. Air Kilroe and Eastern Airways are two separate companies; albeit both owned by Eastern Airways UK and indistinguishable from an operational point of view, they are still separate entities.

[colegate]

Thunderball 2. What I should have written was that the breakeven load factor was based on an average load of cargo and mail. The cargo holds were always full southbound. Yes, the aircraft was usually heavily overbooked. White goods certainly had a habit of finding their wat to the departure gate, so did car tyres, outboard motors, cases of bicycle wheels etc. It was always fun and it mad oddles of money as well.

[The SSK]

According to some figures I have for a few years around 1980, the breakeven on BCal's West African network was about 40% and the operating ratio (revenue over expenditure) was between 130 and 140 - to die for.

[Big Tudor]

Surely some of the most valuable routes are the Highlands & Islands ones operated by LoganAir. I believe that they are heavily subsidised by the H&I Development Board, meaning LoganAir are guaranteed a certain return irrespective of the payload. Don't even need to advertise themselves.

[Simon Lumley]

Not too long ago in a report on the 'Mail on Sunday' British Airways reported that its busiest global route is the London Heathrow-Edinburgh one.