I’m afraid to Americans there is only London.... followed a long way behind by Edinburgh & Liverpool ....
even Stratford chester York etc is a place to visit via London. I remember talking to AA crew who said the ratio of AA23 was not more than 25% US pax. I also remember Chicago to BHX was at one time top 10 AA international most profitable routes & even talk was Miami & DFW were going to happen ..... but 911 was start of the end
 
As someone who doesn’t have an aviation background (I’m a marketing person) could anyone quickly brief me on how likely demand is actually calculated and how that varies based on price & the product being offered? It baffles me that wizz can launch a viable Abu Dhabi route from Athens & some Greek islands but the likes of Birmingham Airport (with the highest GDP outside of London & a vast catchment from Lemington Spa, to Leicester, Shrewsbury & Wales) can’t justify a daily New York flight, Orlando or Toronto connection. I just don’t buy this low yield catchment argument. If there was a decent disruptive player in the market who actually turned the current strategy and promoted how good the connections are to Birmingham Airport; as long as the price and product itself was good I think it could be hugely successful. So frustrating to see the potential loss of Qatar too! I think BHX needs a really good marketing strategy that promotes it as a gateway to the country because that just obviously isn’t cutting through with airlines or the public perception of the airport. I somehow remember a ‘London Birmingham Airport’ tag being mooted in the papers some years back... maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea?
Who knows, Aer Lingus might have been that disruptor at BHX, apparently other airports besides MAN were in the running at some point, the 321LR was the perfect size but clearly the gap left by Thomas Cook at MAN was too big an opportunity for them to miss.

We’ll have to wait for more long haul airlines to get 321LR. Wizz and EI wouldn’t be doing what they are doing without it and the American airlines which don’t have it are retreating to all but a few European routes.
 
Thanks for the info guys.. Aer lingus would have been the perfect opportunity for Birmingham, I’m just curious to know how far the airport will go to get a deal. I did read JetBlue would consider ‘seasonal flights to smaller cities in Europe’ after it had established London but there should be a daily connection year round in my opinion..

I just hope Birmingham is ready when an opportunity does present itself & they make sure a deal gets over the line instead of other airports being more successful.
 
The catchment for Birmingham is as far as Staffordshire and Stoke On Trent as well Birmingham Airport if loosing Qatar will upset the entire Pakistani and Indian Community who travel cheap airline to Central Asia - I am hoping Gulf Air or another airline enters the market to be in the cheaper low cost airline and compete with Emirates who are expensive airline. Sad Days - and even 2022 Common Wealth games we need Qatar.

We also need USA flights sad they left we need them back Birmingham Airport Management we are airport for East / West Midlands we need more airlines flights destinations - I am trying my best to encourage them to come to Birmingham International Airport UK -
WE LOVE YOU BHX 2021. -
If BHX don't expand now EMA could take over why on earth did Coventry Airport Close Down they could do it better. Hopefully Birmingham International Airport BHX - Bring Qatar - American Airlines- United and Air Transit back we need USA and CANADA - for 2022 Common Wealth Games - it must be done don't put us to shame on that BIG DAY EVENTS we will all CRY - so sad days - we are all on BHX side.:)
 
I am sure we will see Qatar back at BHX before too long. They only withdrew because of the Covid Pandemic. Once that is under control they will be back. Agreed USA needs addressing. I'm certain the right airline with the right aircraft to maintain a regular year round service would find enough customers in the West Midlands wider area. New York and Chicago found success for many years in the past. Once confidence returns after Covid we might feasibly get something back to the USA.
 
If BHX don't expand now EMA could take over why on earth did Coventry Airport Close Down they could do it better. Hopefully Birmingham International Airport BHX -

Kjay don't quite see what Coventry airport has to do with Birmingham not having transatlantic flights? Coventry has never been equipped for most commercial air travel, ie no terminal, small runway. And I wouldn't ever expect East Midlands to have direct scheduled flights to the USA above Birmingham, if the American's don't know where Birmingham is, they certainly won't know where East Midlands is!!

We need to face facts, because of the pandemic, its been reported that air travel may not get back to 2019 levels until 2026!! We need to be patient, Heathrow/Gatwick/Manchester/Edinburgh will always be above Birmingham in the pecking order to get transatlantic flights. Birmingham needs to fight over the next few years to keep its current airlines/routes, and expand the European routes first. Then, and only then may more long haul flights be achievable.

Whilst we all applaud your efforts in contacting airlines Kjay, and trying to put Birmingham on the map, no airline is going to start flying from BHX just because you have sent them an email! Months/years go into airline planning for new routes, ie. cost, route demand, airport handling, airport slots, aircraft availability, load factor to make a profit, freight, plus hundreds of other considerations!

Keep up the good work Kjay, and enjoy what you are doing, but realistically don't expect any new major routes/airlines this year, its going to be another tough 2021 for aviation and BHX!
 
We need to face facts, because of the pandemic, its been reported that air travel may not get back to 2019 levels until 2026!!
Following the major recession of the later 'noughties' this century even the better-performing airports such as BHX, MAN and LHR took several years to get back to their pre-recession annual passenger number levels, and that only involved passenger total falls of 5-20%.

Some airports - Newcastle, Liverpool, East Midlands and Cardiff for instance - hadn't regained their pre-recession annual passenger totals a decade later, albeit many saw their passenger numbers drop by far more than 5-20%.

Cardiff, for example, handled 2.1 million passengers in 2007 but five years later this had dropped by 50% to just above one million a year and at the end of 2019, pre-pandemic, the airport was still under 1.7 mppa. In Cardiff's case there were other reasons on top of the recession effects but it does show that the industry can take a time to bounce back from serious setbacks, and I don't suppose there has been a more serious setback than this pandemic since World War 2.

Probably, as in the case with the recession, airports won't all recover at the same pace.
 
Something to bear in mind about the recovery of aviation is how long the decline was.

During the recession from 2008 onwards, many airports passenger levels declined for 2 or 3 years before recovery started, before then taking a number of years to recover. The decline in passenger levels from Covid "should" hopefully only last for a year - as the vaccine program ramps up, we should start to see the industry switch from decline to growth from early summer.

As @TheLocalYokel says different airports will recover at different times:

Luton saw just over 50% of 2019 passenger levels over the summer when restrictions were eased so I expect passenger levels there to recover by summer 2022.

BHX, having lost TCX and Flybe in the 6 months prior to Covid, and without any major expansion of other based airlines or a new base from a new airline, will likely take longer to recover.

At this stage, not losing any more routes/airlines is priority number 1.
 
...demand is actually calculated....

Part of it is called (or used to be) passenger flow data.

If someone heading to Hong Kong for example travels BHX-XXX-HKG it's registered in the system as a journey from Birmingham to Hong Kong, get enough people connecting to a particular destination and you have some hard evidence to present to airlines for a direct flight. If that same person decides to make a surface journey to London for a direct flight it means BHX doesn't get to capture that data. It's one of the reasons why connections are pushed so much.
 
Part of it is called (or used to be) passenger flow data.

If someone heading to Hong Kong for example travels BHX-XXX-HKG it's registered in the system as a journey from Birmingham to Hong Kong, get enough people connecting to a particular destination and you have some hard evidence to present to airlines for a direct flight. If that same person decides to make a surface journey to London for a direct flight it means BHX doesn't get to capture that data. It's one of the reasons why connections are pushed so much.
Thanks Ray that’s really interesting!
So basically BHX has no reliable way of gathering data on leakage to other airports? To encourage an airline without proven demand to serve a route directly wouldn’t be an attractive proposition for an airline whilst also running the risk of diluting the demand of other bases (unless Birmingham airport is willing to mitigate that risk financially). So how do we overcome this? Surely something has to change?

I do wonder why wizz air wasn’t given an offer by BHX that they couldn’t refuse and challenge easyJet at Luton to the south, Bristol to the south west & easyJet at Manchester to the north. They could have effectively diluted demand at 3 easyJet bases from one large base at the centre in Birmingham by winning back leakage & winning more market share from the home counties, East Midlands & Wales if the price was right.

I know that ship has sailed but let’s hope Birmingham gets similar opportunities to build a much broader route network. This isn’t just about the prestige of having direct routes, I think it’s really important for an ambitious city to have a better connected airport that allows businesses to trade easily in the city and showcase itself on departure boards around the world. Plus there’s the local impact of a thriving airport creating jobs and driving economic recovery
 
Do not sales points have identifiable terminals? A travel agent in Sheldon sells a ticket to JFK ex LHR and the purchaser resides one mile from an airport, do airlines receive this intelligence?
 
I’d imagine most airline tickets are purchased online now so unless all the airlines and third party websites released that data I can’t see how you would get hold of it. Also it begs the question whether it’s even in the interest of an airline or third party site to share that information with third parties
 
So basically BHX has no reliable way of gathering data on leakage to other airports?

There are surveys done from time to time (the last one by the CAA was pretty interesting) and I guess you could also analyse postcodes supplied at the time of booking. I'm sure that the route development people have their own ways of collating data.

If X number of people each year with a Midlands postcode use LHR to get to a particular destination does that tell an airline 'wow, the demand is huge from that area we need to be there' or 'wow, even with an airport on their doorstep all these people are still willing to come to us'?

If you have the same number of people choosing to use a connection does it then show that airline that people want to use their local airport and are willing to make a stop en route rather than a surface journey to London and if they want that market they need to come and get it?

...(unless Birmingham airport is willing to mitigate that risk financially). So how do we overcome this? Surely something has to change?

Incentives seem to be the name of the game at the moment and I guess there are a number of different ways that new routes can be aided. Marketing support, waiving of fees and charges and minimum revenue guarantees are just some of them, I'm sure that there must be plenty more. The problem is it can become a race to the bottom and I think we've learnt over the years that BHX doesn't go there.

Part of me completely respects that and thinks good on them for standing their ground, another part of me thinks that this is the world we live in now and BHX needs to adapt or get left behind.
 
I remember a few years ago seeing a list of destinations with largest number of connections & at the time Gothenburg & Graz had very high numbers, BMi did try these destinations for a short while
 
I can remember many years ago, 1970's i think?, when High Streets were full of Travel Agents, some in-house and some independent. I carried out a little personal 'test' to see whether a theory of mine may have been true.
I asked for information on flights to Brussels from Birmingham, knowing full well that British Midland operated direct flights twice daily. I was told by the agent that i could fly with British Airways (BEA) to Heathrow and change to a flight to Brussels with BEA or Sabena!!. No mention whatsoever of the direct BMA flights!!. I think this was typical of the time and although flights are booked very differently now through online, it highlights the problems provincial airports faced building route networks.
While direct long distance routes are on our wish list, we must ensure we maintain and build on our links to major hubs, i.e. Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam Brussels and hopefully Lisbon. All this of course when normality returns!.
 
There are surveys done from time to time (the last one by the CAA was pretty interesting) and I guess you could also analyse postcodes supplied at the time of booking. I'm sure that the route development people have their own ways of collating data.

If X number of people each year with a Midlands postcode use LHR to get to a particular destination does that tell an airline 'wow, the demand is huge from that area we need to be there' or 'wow, even with an airport on their doorstep all these people are still willing to come to us'?

If you have the same number of people choosing to use a connection does it then show that airline that people want to use their local airport and are willing to make a stop en route rather than a surface journey to London and if they want that market they need to come and get it?



Incentives seem to be the name of the game at the moment and I guess there are a number of different ways that new routes can be aided. Marketing support, waiving of fees and charges and minimum revenue guarantees are just some of them, I'm sure that there must be plenty more. The problem is it can become a race to the bottom and I think we've learnt over the years that BHX doesn't go there.

Part of me completely respects that and thinks good on them for standing their ground, another part of me thinks that this is the world we live in now and BHX needs to adapt or get left behind.

An herein lies the catch22 in my eyes.

Look at emirates as a fine example. Emirates first launched LHR and then launched MAN before launching BHX. Emirates is an airline that well look to see where their passenger live and actively launches new routes to a) mark their territory and b) capitalise their catchment. I would argue that it was only through the success of the DXB routes at both LHR and MAN that Emirates had enough data to say "wow, 22% of our pax from LHR/MAN come from the Birmingham region, lets explore launching flights from there?!?"

Consequently, many of us hate it when LHR/MAN are picked over BHX, and complain why is BHX overlooked. But in a world where airlines will have more catchment data than local airports would, we sometimes need those routes out of LHR/MAN to succeed for the airlines to see theres an opportunity out of BHX.

BHX has no way of knowing accurately how many people fly from the midlands to HKG. BHX do know how many people fly BHX-XXX-HKG but will never know how many people travel from the midlands to use MAN-HKG, LHR-HKG or who self connect through AMS, BRU, CDG to HKG. The people that will know that information however is Cathey Pacific who know where all their passengers live and come from! Consequently, instead of wishing MAN routes are failures, we almost need them to be the opposite because if a route is a success from MAN/LHR and they pick BHX to be their next route, it is likely based on data and not as much as a risk!

We may not like it, but the reality is that LHR/MAN and to a degree EDI (although that serves a totally different market) will always be picked before BHX, but what we need is:

a) to build a robust European network for BHX to increase Pax levels and data for the airport
b) focus on growth at short/medium haul hubs (ranging from AMS/CDG as well as IST/DXB/DOH) to give BHX the long-haul data the airport needs to attract airlines (this is where the MAN-LHR is a great asset as MAN has the data for all their LHR connections, one of the biggest/busiest hub airports in the world) and;
c) hope key long-haul routes are a success from MAN and reach a critical mass to expand...

Just my thoughts....
 
BHX is a regional with global ambitions, this is the narrative we are fed by the airport that regularly loses routes to even the mundane destinations. Imagine the excitement over Easyjet opening a domestic service whilst up the M6, they regularly celebrate a new long haul service. The current ownership and their directors appear to living comfort over expansion, safe with their dividend but Covid should be making them fall out of bed at night in a muck sweat over having to pay off more ground staff for the lack of carriers appreciating BHX as a well situated alternative to London or Manchester.

That is off my chest also!
 

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