Bristol: EasyJet Route News & Base Updates

[TheLocalYokel]

FR24 showing current ETA 39 minutes behind schedule (1804 hours).

 

[Jerry]

FR24 showing current ETA 39 minutes behind schedule (1804 hours).

Yep not too bad. The delay was due to removing passengers on the outbound flight. Great flight with Easyjet again. Just waiting for luggage now!

 

[kraktoa]

It's mid August and only the East European destinations are showing loads above 120. Most Spanish routes with EZY and FR are showing between 70 and 100 pax. Unless the data was wrong one PMI flight at mid day today on low cost airline was nil pax.

Only 3 weeks to school reopening and this summer has been terribly below par.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

It's mid August and only the East European destinations are showing loads above 120. Most Spanish routes with EZY and FR are showing between 70 and 100 pax. Unless the data was wrong one PMI flight at mid day today on low cost airline was nil pax.

Only 3 weeks to school reopening and this summer has been terribly below par.

It's certainly not the summer the airlines had been hoping for earlier this year.

Scotland and Belfast have also been doing reasonably well load-wise if the seat selectors are any sort of a guide.

Tomorrow for example currently the two Edinburgh northbound flights are showing nearly 160 seats taken on each flight. Belfast is 157 and 160 on its two outbound flights and Glasgow (perhaps surprisingly with three flights bearing in mind that EDI has only two tomorrow) showing 100, 147 and 129 seats taken. On some days when EDI has had four flights I've counted in excess of 600 seats taken on the northbound flights. Inverness northbound tomorrow is currently 136 seats taken. From memory all the aircraft are A320s.

From reading comments elsewhere it seems that the poor loads are not just specific to BRS. I've seen LGW with loads not much above 50 with easyJet.

As you point out, with the end of the school holidays looming there isn't likely to be much scope for improvement, at least on the sun routes.

As with most airports August is BRS's busiest month. In August 2019 the airport handled over a million passengers. This year there have been broadly around half the number of flights across all airlines normally operated in August. If the average load factor is 50% on top of that (that might be optimistic) it would suggest that August this year would see around 250,000 passengers which to put into some perspective is under half the total passenger numbers BRS handled in January 2019 (January being the airport's quietest month re passenger numbers)

 

[Jerry]

A lot of the restrictions are putting people off, many would've booked months in advance so may well have chosen to stay in the UK rather than deal with testing and the potential of quarantine etc hence why domestic flight loads are good and foreign ones aren't. I know i personally choose to change from a holiday to Alicante in the beginning of September to one in northern Wales because of those reasons.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

A lot of the restrictions are putting people off, many would've booked months in advance so may well have chosen to stay in the UK rather than deal with testing and the potential of quarantine etc hence why domestic flight loads are good and foreign ones aren't. I know i personally choose to change from a holiday to Alicante in the beginning of September to one in northern Wales because of those reasons.

I agree. I would not want to go abroad at the moment because of the uncertainty of such things as the status of the destination country possibly changing whilst I was there.

As kraktoa points out, most of the central and eastern European routes have been enjoying much higher load factors than the sun routes but most of these are operated by Ryanair at BRS. easyJet hasn't restarted its Krakow route whereas Ryanair has been operating its Krakow (and most of its other former Soviet Bloc routes) for some time with generally good loads, very good at times (into the 90s% and occasionally sold out).

 

[Jerry]

I agree. I would not want to go abroad at the moment because of the uncertainty of such things as the status of the destination country possibly changing whilst I was there.

As kraktoa points out, most of the central and eastern European routes have been enjoying much higher load factors than the sun routes but most of these are operated by Ryanair at BRS. easyJet hasn't restarted its Krakow route whereas Ryanair has been operating its Krakow (and most of its other former Soviet Bloc routes) for some time with generally good loads, very good at times (into the 90s% and occasionally sold out).

I'd expect that the Eastern Europe routes have a lot of VFR traffic from people living and working in the UK rather than Brits going on holiday like the Spanish routes would be.

 

[kraktoa]

I expect the ski flight season won't happen again this winter. That's 2 years cancelled.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

I'd expect that the Eastern Europe routes have a lot of VFR traffic from people living and working in the UK rather than Brits going on holiday like the Spanish routes would be.

Yes, they do. Usually they have monthly load factors well into the 90s%. Just a bit surprised that easyJet hasn't restarted Krakow as Ryanair did. The only other airline to Eastern Europe is Wizz Air to Katowice that restarted at the beginning of this month. I think they use A321s so the load factor might not be as good even if the loads themselves approach those of Ryanair - if they do.

The current situation must still be a big worry to airlines. No-one can even guess what next summer will be like. A year ago it seemed that this summer would be considerably better than it's turned out to be.

 

[CM.]

I expect the ski flight season won't happen again this winter. That's 2 years cancelled.

I wouldn’t write the Winter season off just yet. We have to wait and see as we get closer to the time. With Fully jabbed people able to go to amber places without quarantine it might be possible this year. Places like Switzerland, France Ect are amber and those are popular Winter destinations so as long as they don’t go red or many other European countries then it should be fine. Also depending on governments abroad letting us in.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

email message from BRS today:

We're delighted to be welcoming back easyJet flights to Berlin, Geneva, Paris CDG,Paris Orly, Prague, Toulouse and Bordeaux this month.

 

[Marko1]

Larnaca also being reintroduced for the winter season

 

[TheLocalYokel]

My wife and I used easyJet for the first time in a couple of years to fly to Glasgow for a holiday. We returned yesterday and had one or two adventures on the return trip including an aborted landing and go-around at BRS. I've submitted a review of the trip in the appropriate thread at the below link.

I was impressed by Bristol Airport's arrangements and, as usual, by easyJet as an airline. However, the airline's luggage handling arrangements at Glasgow Airport both on arrival and departure left much to be desired, primarily it seemed because of inadequate staffing levels.

Glasgow's security arrangements were poor compared with Bristol, again because of staffing levels and not the performance of those members of staff labouring under difficult circumstances.

📋 Trip Report: - easyJet BRS-GLA-BRS

Airline Review: easyJet BRS-GLA-BRS Introduction My wife and I have flown many times between England and Scotland, mainly from Bristol Airport with easyJet. Because of the pandemic we haven't flown anywhere since December 2019 when we travelled to Lanzarote with TUI from BRS. This trip was in...

forums4airports.com

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Re my previous post #2,055, I've corrected a typo in the original review that gave a completely false picture of BRS's sanitiser arrangements.

This section of my post read (incorrectly): BRS security was far more efficient than GLA's (I'm not speaking of the individuals who are at the mercy of their employer's staffing levels) and the former airport seemed to have many poor sanitisers placed around its terminal.

It should have read: BRS security was far more efficient than GLA's (I'm not speaking of the individuals who are at the mercy of their employer's staffing levels) and the former airport seemed to have many more sanitisers placed around its terminal.

My apologies for not checking the original properly at the time.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

All speculation at present but a link-up with Wizz Air is still being talked about, albeit it's reported that an approach last week from Wizz to take over easyJet was rejected, with easyJet instead opting to raise $1.7 billion from shareholders. easyJet is said to be a strategic target for Wizz.

With BRS one of easyJet's main bases and in normal circumstances responsible for around 60% of the airport's passenger numbers and airline movements, any alteration to easyJet's ownership, or indeed and probably more likely an absorption by Wizz, might have significant ramifications for the BRS operation.

Earlier this year a major aviation analytical website calculated that pre-pandemic BRS was one of easyJet's most profitable bases. Whether a Wizz takeover would perpetuate that situation, assuming it to be true, is obviously not known.

easyJet has been of immense value at BRS, not only as the bedrock of the operations, but in the wide variety of routes - over 80 - that it provides. These range from sun routes, summer and winter, ski destinations and many city and business routes often to European capital cities. Whether Wizz would replicate that type of network must also be uncertain. That of course is predicated on Wizz continuing to serve BRS if they bought easyJet. It seems highly unlikely that they would not but nothing in business is guaranteed.

 

[Poshgirl]

In the bigger picture, it appears Wizz wants to protect its market share from the likes of IAG (touted as a one time suitor), hence the "bid" for EZY. Far more likely than AF-KLM, though in aviation you just never know! (source: The Times)

Of course, Mr O'Leary has his take on the situation. Thought he'd been too quiet recently.....

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Two easyJet A321s at BRS today:

G-UZMB operated to Santorini at 0700 and return

G-UZME operated to Funchal at 0720 and return, and to Las Palmas at 1625 and return

Looking at FR24s recent history for these aircraft it seems they have both been operating out of BRS for at least the past week.

So BRS is back to what it was pre-pandemic in terms of based easyJet A321s.

Two Mondays ago our son and daughter-in-law flew to Kos in an A321 but the return today was an A320 which suggests that there has been some rearranging of aircraft types on some routes - no doubt previously scheduled changes. We flew back from GLA on Saturday and when we booked the flight some months ago the aircraft was meant to be an A319 but within a few weeks it was altered to an A320.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

easyJet booking engine showing six flights to Dalaman in October. Nothing to Bodrum or Antalya.

 

[Marko1]

there is a bodrum and Antalya on sale at the end of October for some reason - been there for weeks

 

[TheLocalYokel]

there is a bodrum and Antalya on sale at the end of October for some reason - been there for weeks

Makes little sense though because as things stand it's only possible to fly from either the UK to Turkey or from Turkey to the UK on that date. Any enthusiastic aviation follower couldn't even do a day trip because of the short turn around times.

It will be interesting to see if these services actually operate on the day in question. The seat selector shows a handful of seats occupied.