View Full Version : fly-be cut backs
fly-be today announced that from the 30 March it will be suspending its 3 direct Belfast City - London City flights, and also reducing its Gatwick service from 7 flights per day to 4 due to a reduction in buisness paxs and the low cost competition, funny I thought fly-be was a low cost airline.
Two new services will be introduced Belfast City - Southampton, and from May a Saturday only service to Blackpool.
I have priced a single flight to Blackpool 19 july £137.50:eek: seems a little dear, with easyjet operating from Liverpool.
BELHold
5th Mar 2003, 20:43
Understand that a few new European routes including AGP were announced today by JY out of SOU.
Disappointed (but not surprised) to see LCY-BHD go, as I have taken it a few times this last year, and while very convenient for me, there were rarely more than a handful aboard.
One strange feature of the current timetable is the Flybe (is this their actual name now, or are they still British European?) schedule the two daily flights in parallel with LCY-IOM-BHD flights. I had to stop my secretary and travel agent more than once from booking me on the latter. I wonder how many other bookings the direct service inadvertently lost.
Wycombe
6th Mar 2003, 12:10
BELhold,
By the end of the year, BEE plan to have these routes out of SOU:
GCI (existing), JER, BHD, DUB, BGY, GVA, AGP, MJV, BCN, NCE and TLS - I think that's all of them.
JER, GVA, BGY and DUB start at the end of this month, op. by mix of Q400 and 146 AFAIK.
glynn-kayes
6th Mar 2003, 12:49
flybe have operated a belfast-blackpool service for a number of years now so not really new eh'''also heard yesterday bacx is waving bye bye to bhd from jun30th
no, no, no
6th Mar 2003, 13:35
I can see why BA would be put off MANBHD now that bmi is dropping its baby on to the route, but it isn't BA's usual style to pull off when competition surfaces.
Plus they announced their expansion plans for MAN not too long ago with PSA, VIE, BLQ and increased freq to FCO, HAJ etc, so for them to retract MAN flying now would also be strange. The MANBHD route won't just be on one aircraft either so if they do pull those services, other flights will probably have to be pulled too!
flybe haven't given easy much competition either. With bmi pulling off LHRBFS, there could have been a chance that easy would have taken a chunk of their traffic rather than pull from flybe.....
Saw that easy did crap in their first couple of weeks though on LGWBFS with loads around 30%!!!!!! Isn't the saying, start as you mean to go on........... ;)
glynn-kayes
6th Mar 2003, 13:44
ezy only had 1 rotatation per day for the first couple of weeks and it was early morning however last friday night both later flights were 90% full, with 48000seats sold so far as reported,as for the bacx rumour,it came from a ba sales person
I was at a talk given by Albert Harrison MD of BFS, he said that easyjets advance sales figures on the Gatwick service (30,000) was one of the best easy had ever experienced.
Angus Meecoat
6th Mar 2003, 17:40
One would expect loads of 90% on LGW/BFS when selling tickets at £3.50 return, does not sound like a good start to me. 48000 tickets sold or more like given away and over what period, 3 months,6 months????
Avro Arrow
7th Mar 2003, 14:21
So let's think about this for a nanosecond....
BACX pullout of BHD, BE downsize at BHD, EZY sell cheap tickets to LGW what does this tell us?
Der....the business models are changing and the markets are shifting. Low cost is what short haul pax seem to want.
£3.50 to LGW - don't look a gift horse in the mouth!
It's probably because the economics of flying a 737 vs a BACX J41/ATP/146 (infact anything) are close but in each case you get a load more capacity for your money on the seven three.
Ryanair are running network cost average of 5 US cents (3p) a seat kilometre, EZY/GO around 7 cents (4.5p) while the flags inc. BA start at about 11 cents (7p). This info was before the recent oil price hike - however...
So watch out for more retrenchment. If BE got a new deal with Shorts at BHD it wasn't on higher charges was it? They must be nearly as low as BMI who will be feeling the effect of new jet traffic into LGW and continuing traffic into LTN and STN. Just how Heathlow (sic) can they go?
richardhall99
7th Mar 2003, 14:40
Flybe are enteringa few timing into the BHD-LBA route
A 146 will operate a new midday flight between the two cities, obviously this is the aircraft the operated the midday BHD-NCL service in the summer which now no longer operates