BHX and long haul airlines

[14362341]

hi.
:confused:Just wanted to enquire from the more knowlegeable flock on these forums why BHX has no long haul airlines travelling direct to Southern Africa. It seems all long haul airlines using BHX to South Africa go via another airport. Or is it just BHX is not attractive to long haul airlines as compared to LGW or LHR.

[GayFriendly]

I would very much doubt there are enough people wanting to fly direct to South Africa from BHX (SAA couldn't make it work from MAN back in the day) and even if there were they wouldn't be able to go non stop as the runway is too short (at the moment ;) )



Or is it just BHX is not attractive to long haul airlines as compared to LGW
or LHR


Doesn't look like it......never has been, probably never will be!

[Tableview]

BHX is in my view an under-utilized and attractive airport. It has a huge catchment area with excellent transport links and does not suffer from the same runway and (road) traffic congestion as the London area airports. If the HS2 white elephant included BHX airport this could be a winning formula.

Somewhere, I have some stats as to how many people live within 'x' miles of BHX compared to LHR - stats which need to be considered with caution as 10 million 'Midlanders' may not produce the same potential yield on the routes as 10 million 'South Easters'. If I can find this later I'll post a bit more.

One has to assume that the airlines have done their research on this and concluded that longhaul routes out of BHX wouldn't be profitable, but I wonder if there isn't a political agenda to keep traffic routed through LHR/LGW.

http://www.pprune.org/airlines-airports-routes/480323-birmingham-airport-runway-extension-contractors-announced.html

[racedo]

Doesn't this belong under BHX Airport thread ?

[The SSK]

Well...

South Africa is linked directly to nine European airports. Eight of them are ranked in the top 15 in Europe, by passenger boardings. The ninth (Lisbon) is ranked 29th.

Birmingham is at number 48.

You have a little while to wait yet, there are others ahead of you in the queue.

[nigel osborne]

You have to remember that even at LHR SAA dropped the 747-400 as just too big for the route.

Manchester used to have SAA too, before they pulled out ,and even they have no direct scheduled link to South Africa.

Also South Africa is an incredibly expensive place to fly and visit. We planned to go this year but it was 4 times the price of 2 weeks in The Maldives :eek: so a no brainer for us.

Nigel

[BHX5DME]

The facilities at BHX are now second to none but I agree the airport is under utilised.

I think BHX will come good in the future with the runway extension now going ahead and its close proximity to London.

The South East is congested, the Government wont consider a 3rd runway at LHR.

BHX is the natural alternative.

I can see BHX 'taking off' in the next 5-10 years.

[LGS6753]

BHX will always struggle to attract much long-haul. The current crop of a few charters, Emirates and others who carry Asians to and from India/Pakistan, and a couple of flights across the pond is about all that should be expected.
Britain is just too London-centric for much else to happen. My feeling is that the runway extension won't pay for itself for many years.

[Tableview]

SAA dropped the 747 as it was uneconomical to operate on all their routes, even LOS which attracts a lot of premium traffic. LHR is a lossmaking route overall due to large numbers of tickets given as 'favours' to the well-connected and the high cost of the operation. All political.

[Aero Mad]

large numbers of tickets given as 'favours' to the well-connected

Are there really enough to make the route unprofitable?

[Tableview]

1) If the high revenue seats are filled with passengers on free tickets this reduces the yield from paying passengers.

2) Some of the senior appointments at the London office are 'political' appointments, therefore expensive and unproductive.

1+2= a route which is less profitbale than it would be if run on a purely commercial basis.

[jabird]

South Africa is linked directly to nine European airports. Eight of them are ranked in the top 15 in Europe, by passenger boardings. The ninth (Lisbon) is ranked 29th.

Birmingham is at number 48.

You have a little while to wait yet, there are others ahead of you in the queue.

That isn't always a way of predicting directly which routes will work. Airports are there to serve the passengers who want to go through them, not just to operate routes for the sake of it. The UK and the Netherlands have the strongest historical links with RSA. Therefore it would be reasonable to ask why routes there, and to Jo'burg in particular are not operated from other UK airports.

However, the answer, as with most potential LH routes from Brum lies with looking at MAN first. Remember Globespan having a go at this too?

As Nigel says, the sheer distance alone makes RSA extremely expensive to get to, and that is before you add in the politics and the relative lack of competition. The Maldives is cheaper partly because it can be served in a relatively straight line via the Gulf - going that way to JNB or CPT is quite a dog leg.

So yes, the extension should (will?) put RSA within reach of BHX, but I still don't think that would make a route viable.

[jabird]

Also, Nationwide, who operated a couple of times each week JNB-LGW also went in 2008.

[Tableview]

The demise of Nationwide was not directly related to the London route, which I recall someone telling me was profitable. I flew it a couple of times, good service quality and the flights I took were almost full, although that per se is of course no indicator of profitability.

(Off topic .... the SA domestic market is overtraded and a bloodbath!)

[nigel osborne]

LGS.

It is impossible to predict what will happen in the future, to say BHX will not get many more long haul than it already has is very premature.

Once its built its there for ever and in 5, 10 or more years it could easily have many more.

Will it ever pay for itself.. well look at Manchester, still trying to pay back money for their second runway, so who knows.

What I do know is that BHX has done everything they can to have the terminal and runway capacity, for when the economy does improve, the rest is down to passengers and the Govt.

Nigel

[chaps2011]

In the last 11 years therew have been many factors which have kicked
aviation in the head and given it a large headache
9/11, Iraq war, Afghan war, bank crisis, volcanoes, Egypt / Tunia and APD to name a few if these hadn`t happened where would we all be now what would passenger loads, be, but they have happened and therefore airport plans have
changed dramatically. Manchesters runway would by now be open from 06.00
till 21.00 daily as they were all in the plans and I`m sure BHX would already have it`s runway extension

Ian

[14362341]

Thank you all for your responses, am more knowledged because of you all.:)