Good news

[Irish Flyer]

I am just looking at the latest figures for the budget airlines and they give interesting reading. They show EasyJet recording an increase of 39% in passenger numbers in March from this time last year and Go recording a massive jump of 81.5% from the numbers they flew this time twelve months ago.

This also comes on top of Ryanair reporting record passenger numbers for the month. Load factors for all three airlines are up also.

I guess this gives us wannabes a little hope and shows the steady recovery is continuing. Lets hope the transatlantic figures will show the same encouraging results. :)

[scroggs]

These figures are indeed good news, and symbolic of the enduring appeal and strength of air travel. However, don't expect any similar numbers from the long-haul sector! Don't forget that the low-cost short-haul business is relatively new, and has much room for expansion both in its own right and at the expense of the full-service operators. The long-haul business is mature, and somewhat slower-responding. It had its low-cost revolution twenty years ago in the wake of Laker, and, at least in economy, offers seat-mile fare levels below even those of the short-haul low-cost sector.

For the UK long-haul airlines, the overall traffic levels are broadly comparable to this time last year. However, the high-yield premium traffic is still well down, and thus profitability is marginal at best. This is where we need improvements before any serious replacement of lost capacity begins. It's quite possible that there will be a large scale and permanent drift away from these high-cost fares, and that airlines will need to reconfigure their cabins to reflect the new demands - increasing costs just when revenue is down!

Anyway, as you say - good news. Let's hope it continues.

PS Slightly off-topic, but tonight's Watchdog (UK BBC TV) carried an item about low-cost carriers' fares. They tried various airlines for a return fare from London to each of three destinations (Dublin, Paris, Rome - I think) for a flight out on 26th April. The average was about £140, or not much less than a Virgin or BA return to the East Coast of the USA! Not only that but, on at least one route, Air France was the cheapest! Perhaps it's no surprise that these 'low-cost' airlines are doing well!

[Wee Weasley Welshman]

Wise words from Scroggsy. It is indeed amazing the rate at which the low costs are expanding. But its not a simplistic development by any means.

The low costs grow whislt some of the established carriers shrink capacity therefore to some extent pax are just being stolen from one airline to another. At the same time a low cost carrier will require a pilot to fly 900hrs a year instead of perhaps 650 in BA. Net result the same pax are being flown by fewer pilots working longer hours...

On the other hand the low costs are definitely growing new markets. I spent the weekend in Prague as it happens. You walk into Prague departures and look at the screen and see 744 Go seats a available that day (every day) from Prague to the UK. (East Mids, Bristol, Stansted). BMIBaby are also just starting a more or less daily service making a total of about a thousand seats a day from the UK to Prague on the scheduled low cost model. Thats NOT satisfying existing demand at a lower cost. That IS putting cheap flights to Prague in peoples faces and leading them to just go where they would not have considered before.

Such new growth is of course great news as it means the EU is becoming more like the US in terms of a hop-on-a-flight and just go culture.

On balance the low cost phenomenon is merely a replication of what happened in the US and this is a broadly Very Good Thing for aviation. However, you need perspective. Go might grow by 80-odd percent in a year. But that is more than wiped out by BA shrinking by 8 percent in the same year...

Things will recover. I am sure in the boom years of the mid - late 2000's BA Virgin BMI and the rest will be posting telephone digit profits in their flashy A380's. Their model will then be the darling of the industry once more. Its all swings and roundabouts in the end.

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