Local Airport Choice

[Maddog Red]

Is it me or are airlines forgetting one thing, since the rise and rise of low cost operators, people are beginning to see that they don’t have to travel to the far flung airports of the UK to get to where they really want to go to. So why are the low cost airlines not offering the same destinations from all of there different bases. Come on lets be serious why the hell do I really want to try and get down the M1 or A1 to an airport in the south when I could fly from my local airport, yes I know people go for cheap fares but I think people are beginning to get switched on with this now and want the same kind of flights from the rest of the UK that you can only get from STN and LTN. Look at the Midlands, lots of airports now, but majority of them go to the same destinations, if it works in LTN and STN I am willing to bet it can work else where. The consumer likes choice but also likes easy of travel, and that is from his or her own doorstep not just from the airport.

[LGS6753]

Just take a look at the catchment areas of the major airports. I don't know figures for all of them, but I'm sure they appear in the Government's consultation papers published last year.

Using two examples: Luton and Newcastle. Catchment of LTN is around 12+ million people living within a 1 hour drive. NCL's equivalent is 3 million. You can fill a daily Malaga from both, but a daily Bratislava from a small catchment area is more of a challenge.

Also, the big locos tend to want to operate daily flights, rather than 2/3 a week to a destination, because it encourages business travellers, it's easier to market, and it makes their planning easier.

Of course this doesn't explain why a remote field in rural Essex has attracted so much traffic......:yuk:

[Maddog Red]

See this is what gets me about England; everything is so London orientated, all the government can do is moan about too much car use and the over populated South East. Lets be serious who wants to live in an overpopulated environment anyway, but what is being done about spreading the jobs and the population over the rest of the UK, nothing. So more and more people will keep moving in and more and more people will have to travel to the area to fly to where they want go to. Causing more and more traffic on the roads. The government should be looking at what it can do to push the over populated areas to the other regions of the country. Which might in turn bring the pollution down due to less travel by cars. This just might cause the other areas to get a little more prospers and mean more use by aircraft from local airports, which might save the need to keep expanding the airports in the London area. Anyway just an idea, wont happen.

[Little Blue]

So where would you fancy flying to from EMA?
baby tried MUC and BGO for a while...I forgot
to make full use of my concessions, and didn't bother going .
Doh !

[Maddog Red]

Well I am sure the 5.7million people living within 1 hours drive of Nottingham EMA would benefit from more choice as well as 18.9million living within a 2 hour drive. I for one do not enjoy the M1 on a Friday afternoon/evening travelling to a far flung airport to go away for a weekend. Now lets be honest, bmi and more recently bmibaby have never given enough time to a route to grow and see its full potential, lets look at TFS and TFN for example out of LHR, lasted a season then disappeared if I remember rightly and I do believe the loads were not bad. bmi is a good brand and name and can go far in future if it plans ahead.

[egnxema]

It has been stated here on PPRuNe bmi/bmibaby can simply be described as reactive, an dnot pro-active.

Shame - because British Midland was a strong brand in the UK. But has been greatly diluted by the who bmi rebrand and baby route swapping excercise.

The soon Richard owns it the better!

[greciangod]

The problem with moving people from the southeast to other areas of the country, like here in the southwest, are all the nimbys. You get 'we moved here to get away from the city so we don't want anyone building near us' down here. We have also got more flights out of Exeter and the complaints have started to come in, not from people living next to the airport but living miles away.

[Maddog Red]

The problem with someone like Richard owning bmi is that he will move it lock stock and barrel to the South East, which is no good for the people of the East Midlands or its airport and again this would mean even more people having to go to the South East to run the bigger airline and I bet he wouldn't keep the bigger airline operating out of Nottingham EMA. So for the sake of jobs and the people, it will perhaps be best if Richard stays away.

[7006 fan]

Part of the 'Lon-centric' argument is the kuodos of the big LON. Train connections to London are generally good (ignoring delays) -I refer to the service in general, Midland Mainline, GNER, GWR (First) can get you to London very easily and then a short conection to your chosen airport by one of the express services. If memory serves me correctly it takes over an hour to get from Manchester Piccadilly to Liverpoool and so forth. the other was the Government White Paper 1997 _Prescott's 'New Deal for Transport', not a lot of good usually comes out of Mr Prescott's "waste paper ministry' but the 97 paper was, in my humble opinion, a very good piece of work. Encouragement for alternative means of transport, less roads more rail, guided buses, trams etc. also the White Paper recognised the strengths of Regional airports to provide spoke routes for hub airports. Fly from LBA to LHR to connect to Bankok for example, this creates inward investment and utilises local airports to support the big guys. ( Remember last year some guy had an idea of using local airports as inter-hub and spoke, the principle was good but I think the UK is too small for that sort of operation.) the real downer was the reversal of a lot of the '97 paper when then revised transport plan went bonkers for road building again and a concentration on the big guns as the real drivers of 'economic change'.
Personally (this is England only), I would like to see smallish fuel efficient (if there is such a thing) commuter aircraft of up to say 40 seats running spoke operations to the Big Three, MAN, LHR, LGW. Currently there are three operators that I know of doing MAN-LON (J2, VLM & BA) how many regionals have a London slot?
That being said, many regionals have European services to Hub airports offering onward connectivity so maybe all is fine in the woodshed?

Cheers
:ok:

[southender]

Saturday was the second week of Flybe's Southend-Jersey summer service and I counted 43 passengers inbound and 67 outbound on the Dash8-400.

Not bad numbers I would consider for the early season.

On the same day there was an exhibition in the terminal on the airport's expansion plans and the building was heaving - just like the former Southend glory days.

There appears to be considerable interest from the local public in flying from Southend and I would imagine the same could be said for most regional airports in the UK.

The trick must be to provide flights to desired destinations whilst making the services financially viable from a limited consumer base.

A problem for the economists to resolve.

I did notice that most of the Jersey passengers were middle aged or retired and perhaps the smaller regional airports should cater more for these age groups and leave the younger fitter types to battle their way through the Stansted and Luton type airports.

In South East Essex we have a huge base of retired people with money to spend which could provide Southend with a captive market.

Cheers

Southender

[surely not]

amongst all those retired people are those who used to work at Southend when it was a going concern and not a white elephant.

Until they can lengthen the runway it will remain a dusty relic with more memries than future