British Airways

[KARFA]

You can also use Avios to upgrade - something like 3,500 per sector and you get Lounge and on board drinks / snacks etc which isn't a bad conversion rate compared with the buy on board prices!

Yes so as long as you are not in the lowest selling classes of Q/O/G you can upgrade with avios and it would cost you 3750 avios for an off-peak date or 4500 for a peak date plus the extra £13 for APD.

Also regardless of what economy selling class you are booked in you may get offered a promotional upgrade price through manage my booking on ba.com - LBA route is typically £59 upgrade price.

Interestingly BA had a number of cancellations today and we weren't one of them!

 

[AirBingley]

Again BA have suffered a number of weather related cancellations and delays at Heathrow but have left our schedule in tact so far.

 

[oldendays]

These last two posts suggest an encouraging change of attitude from British Airways. I hope it lasts a long time.

 

[AirBingley]

These last two posts suggest an encouraging change of attitude from British Airways. I hope it lasts a long time.

I wonder if its also load related as there have been a fair few reports of pretty full flights!

 

[Tarn Spotter]

I wonder if its also load related as there have been a fair few reports of pretty full flights!

I hope LBA traffic high enough to make any LBA cancellations a last resort and there are airports not as important trade wise as LBA, who can take the hit first.

 

[Aviador]

This afternoons BA flight was full.

 

[KARFA]

This afternoons BA flight was full.

Similarly the morning southbound today was pretty full - I didn’t manage to spot a number but there weren’t too many empty seats.

 

[Finger66]

With what appears to be regularly good loads let's hope the very proactive Mr Laws can convince them to have a night stopper for that early morning southbound and late northbound the route needs

 

[Seasider]

I wouldn't be surprised if BA regard these as "transfer" flights where they get a good yield. Early morning/late evening flights would mainly be "point to point" so a much smaller yield. Just another view.

 

[KARFA]

With what appears to be regularly good loads let's hope the very proactive Mr Laws can convince them to have a night stopper for that early morning southbound and late northbound the route needs

Let's not get too excited yet. The route has a long way to go to become established based on current numbers. The overall load figure is dragged down by the late southbound which is often somewhere around 50% full. This isn't specific to the LBA route - I have been on the last southbound from MAN before and it is similarly lightly loaded - but compared to MAN it represents 1 out of 6 flights a day rather than 1 out of 16.

Despite August being a very good month for passenger numbers and being the second busiest month ever on the route the load factor was probably around 65% (23408 seats available, 15198 sold). Obviously that doesn't tell us what the yield is and we won't know that since it is commercially sensitive, however there are few routes that are profitably sustained these days at 65% load.

The good thing is that passengers numbers keep growing and it looks at the moment like numbers will be up around 5% this year over 2016 so it is heading in the right direction.

 

[KARFA]

I wouldn't be surprised if BA regard these as "transfer" flights where they get a good yield. Early morning/late evening flights would mainly be "point to point" so a much smaller yield. Just another view.

Out of all BA domestic routes apparently LBA has the highest proportion of connecting passengers and the lowest proportion of point to point. Some of that is simply because the other Leeds-London point to point options are very competitive on cost and timing (obviously for a route like EDI the plane is much faster than the train overall), some of it is because there is no early southbound and late northbound so day trips are a bit tricky, and some of it is because the transport links to LBA are frankly quite poor.

In terms of apportioning profit for a LBA-LHR-XXX fare that really is a bit unknown. Depending what portion of a through fare you put to the domestic flight really determines how nominally profitable it may appear. Out of interest if booking a onward connection in economy from LHR there is a economy add-on fare for the domestic routes which is very cheap in terms of base fare. For the OADDV2RO fare the domestic flight is £5 + taxes and fee which really does make it very competitive on cost compared to some of the direct options. I have to go to AMS for work a few times a year and I have sometimes booked the BA option taking advantage of the add-on fare instead of Jet2 or KLM from LBA since BA was actually cheaper.

 

[Finger66]

In general, other than in Premium Cabins, the yield for the domestic legs of any connections is relatively low and is exactly the reason why more point to point traffic via an early southbound and late northbound needs to be generated. The domestic legs then get all the yield as there is no onward connection. There would still be connecting traffic using these services to top up the point to point and onward connections would also be greatly increased by a night stopper. Admittedly so would operating costs. But a night stopper would show committment to the route and increase traffic still further, whether connecting or point to point

 

[KARFA]

In general, other than in Premium Cabins, the yield for the domestic legs of any connections is relatively low and is exactly the reason why more point to point traffic via an early southbound and late northbound needs to be generated. The domestic legs then get all the yield as there is no onward connection. There would still be connecting traffic using these services to top up the point to point and onward connections would also be greatly increased by a night stopper. Admittedly so would operating costs. But a night stopper would show committment to the route and increase traffic still further, whether connecting or point to point

I think that trying to push the route on point to point over connecting traffic is a really not a good idea for all the reasons I mentioned. Anyone not living to the north side of Leeds is going to find it difficult to justify the trek to LBA over getting the train instead. The location of the airport and competition from the train mean you are fighting a very difficult battle. The more important issue of having a night stopper and therefore a very early southbound would be that you open up connection possibilities for all the morning long haul departures from LHR which are simply not available atm. The earliest departure you could currently connect on to at LHR would be around midday from T5 and more like 12.30pm if connecting to a T2/3/4 flight which misses out quite a lot. I am daft enough to fly down on the night before and incur the extra cost of staying in a hotel near LHR partly because I want to help support the route, but most people are not going to do that.

EDIT: just to add the comparison in terms of distance to London is MAN, but MAN has good transport links with the M60, M56, M62, and M6 all close, a train line with regular services to the city centre and other places, and a tram line. All of this makes the MAN route more viable as a competitor against the train on point to point traffic.

Also I think you are deluded if you think BA will add cost to this route when we haven't even got to regularly sustaining 70% loads yet. The extra crewing required and costs of hotels would be very significant. Bear in mind if you only have three rotations a day the late northbound crew couldn't operate the early southbound so potentially you would have to have two lots of crew overnight in Leeds. No airline is that crazy, and BA is certainly very commercially astute if nothing else.

If the loads get regularly to the 80%+ level they may well think about it - however you immediately run in to the other obvious problem that there are no spare early morning arrival slots anyway. If LBA is to get an early morning arrival slot in to LHR then something else need to be moved so LBA has to prove a case to show it would be more profitable then whatever is being moved out. At 60-65% loads which is what we have had through 2017 so far it simply isn't there yet.

 

[Finger66]

No one is deluded or even suggesting this is a done deal. I was merely pointing out two things. Firstly the proactive ness of our new owners and I am sure a BA night stopper is on their radar, just as NCL has one! Secondly an early southbound, yes subject to slot availability, would operate full or vey close to it most days thus helping drive the LF upwards still further. If the last southbound was also brought forward to around 1800 this would also probably increase the LF on that service. Ideal approx southbound timings should be 0700, 1000 and 1800. Northbound good at approx 0830, 1600 and 2000 all slot availability restricted of course. Yes I know it's probably an ideal world here but if it happened it would show BA's committment to the route and hopefully reduce the schedule reductions we see from time to time. Remember when BA returned a few years ago they started four a day, yes that didn't last too long, using a mix of 320s and 319s so something must have told them what the market is. Their current LF is impressive on a less than ideal schedule. I am also aware of how shifting BA's stance on something is like shifting a very very large rock, but this sometimes works against them. Speculate to accumulate on this one me thinks

 

[White Heather]

I think it likely that BA would only consider the opening of an LBA base and the costs/risk that brings, if LBA were prepared to at least share the cost of doing so - a joint venture. I doubt Bridgepoint were up for that as the costs would be considerable. Maybe ASP will take a different view and recognise that a BA base will result in a higher proportion of well loaded flights which in turn will result in a higher average load factor. It is an investment for the future if BA commit to the route for the longer term. At least we have it and its 5 years now. Not bad for what many claimed to be a Slot Sitter which would be gone in 12 months.

 

[White Heather]

I think it likely that BA would only consider the opening of an LBA base and the costs/risk that brings, if LBA were prepared to at least share the cost of doing so - a joint venture. I doubt Bridgepoint were up for that as the costs would be considerable. Maybe ASP will take a different view and recognise that a BA base will result in a higher proportion of well loaded flights which in turn will result in a higher average load factor. It is an investment for the future if BA commit to the route for the longer term. At least we have it and its 5 years now. Not bad for what many claimed to be a Slot Sitter which would be gone in 12 months.

 

[Aviador]

Mrs Aviador has posted her British Airways flight review LBA-LHR-LBA in the passenger forum: http://www.forums4airports.com/threads/4362/#post-120971

 

[tleeds]

BA Manager of NCL and LBA BA operations has before said that a night stop would add addition costs to the route of around £500k.
This takes into consideration crewing overnight for hotel, food and transport during the night stop, aircraft parking, handling costs, slot changes etc...

It is an ambition and also hopeful it will one day become a replica of the BMI schedule

 

[Sherburnflyer92]

Let's take a 143 seater A319 on 3 rotations a day all year round which equates to 312,312 a year.

It would add £1.60 per passenger cost to operating that flight. Which when you put it like that doesn't seem that much does it?

 

[tleeds]

If it was a night stopper it would potentially be a 4 day operation similar to what KLM used to have. Although it could remain a 3 per day.

It’s £1.60 pp which BA are not willing to spend unfortunately. That is on the assumption of which it is full which is isn’t a lot of the time.

From working on BA LHR figures almost daily it does look as though:

BA1340 Averages 100+
BA1341 Averages 100+
BA1342 Averages around 80
BA1343 Averages 75
BA1344 Averages 95
BA1345 Averages 45

That’s off the top of my head without having the breakdown of the LBA chart in front of me.

Obviously on a two day operation when the Saturday 1343 leaves a little later the loads are slightly higher. The same goes for the other 2/3 days during the week when it’s a two day op.