ENGLAND BIRMINGHAM, enough of London everything or we might see London Doncaster next!
Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature currently requires accessing the site using the built-in Safari browser.
I agree but from a marketing point of view that just doesn’t cut throughENGLAND BIRMINGHAM, enough of London everything or we might see London Doncaster next!
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.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?
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 -
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%.We need to face facts, because of the pandemic, its been reported that air travel may not get back to 2019 levels until 2026!!
...demand is actually calculated....
Thanks Ray that’s really interesting!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.
So basically BHX has no reliable way of gathering data on leakage to other airports?
...(unless Birmingham airport is willing to mitigate that risk financially). So how do we overcome this? Surely something has to change?
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.
Subscribe to help support your favourite forum and in return we'll remove all our advertisements. Your contribution will help to pay for things like site maintenance, domain name renewals and annual server charges.
We get it, advertisements are annoying!
Sure, ad-blocking software does a great job at blocking ads, but it also blocks useful features of our website. For the best site experience please disable your AdBlocker.