Route Development & Rumours

[Poshgirl]

I think BHX were lucky and not ahead of the game, but only their management know the answer. Jet2 wanted to expand and saw the potential. An airline is foolish if extensive homework isn't done. Yes, they may have also tapped into the void to be left by Monarch.

Hopefully Jet2 hasn't made the mistake of expanding too quickly. Will be interesting to see what comes out of the TUI reorganisation. A company cannot rely on its past reputation. There are many of us who can remember the days of Britannia, an airline that rightly earned its reputation for good service. The latest generation may only be interested in getting from A to B the cheapest way possible. I was part of a TUI consumer group who gave opinions on routes, inflight service, accommodation standards, etc. It was around the time the "smile" was introduced.

As I've mentioned before, BHX resisted Ryanair for a while citing Birmingham did not want low cost carriers. The wish to remain "exclusive" may have contributed to slow growth. There's obviously been a change of mindset.

 

[JENNYJET]

I always fear rapid expansion without a substantial foundation to support such an enterprise. Jet2 worries me because another airline grew into a dominant position and thanks to questionable backers, collapsed. That said, British Airways came and departed with it's insubstantial backing and needing to merge with Spanish government etc.

BA is no longer, in my opinion, the Flag carrier of the United Kingdom but a choice amongst many.

A certain member insists that there is a 0% chance of a return to BHX of British Airways, I consider that to be a defeatist position but I hold onto a hope that it is possible. The new offering suggested could be an outlet in the regions outside of London.

Let it be known that I wish it before I leave this existence.

 

[Poshgirl]

I also hope Jet2 won't go the same way.

The focus at BA changed, wanting to be a global player. Some say "trying to punch way above their weight". The merger with American proved the way they saw the future. BA Regional succeeded for a while, under the leadership of one of their senior captains.

BA is only interested in London. Poor management by Mr Walsh and Mr Cruz ensured its "fast ride to the bottom". The Business Traveller forum has plenty on the subject. No wish/desire to actively compete with the Middle East Three, relying instead on past glory. Even with the different attitude of the new management team, I still don't think BHX is on their radar. CityFlyer started some leisure flights; whether they will return is anyone's guess when there's established competition.

Hope I'm proved wrong....

 

[IanFarquharson]

I also hope Jet2 won't go the same way.

The focus at BA changed, wanting to be a global player. Some say "trying to punch way above their weight". The merger with American proved the way they saw the future. BA Regional succeeded for a while, under the leadership of one of their senior captains.

BA is only interested in London. Poor management by Mr Walsh and Mr Cruz ensured its "fast ride to the bottom". The Business Traveller forum has plenty on the subject. No wish/desire to actively compete with the Middle East Three, relying instead on past glory. Even with the different attitude of the new management team, I still don't think BHX is on their radar. CityFlyer started some leisure flights; whether they will return is anyone's guess when there's established competition.

Hope I'm proved wrong....

Jet2 were / are financially sound so if S22 ends up as a 'normal' year they should be fine.

You summed it up BA mainline are only interested in London, if they were to go into the regions it would be Manchester, sorry no chance of Birmingham.
I am not defeatist just realistic, no one more than me wants Birmingham to be successful it has always punched below its wait with massive passenger leakage but our location gives customers so much choice within an hour or so drive.

 

[Ryan Kirkpatrick]

I just hope the BA low cost subsidiary will be confitdent enough to expand outside of London Gatwick to Birmingham & Manchester. Maybe serving routes to Europe like Berlin, Stockholm, Rige & Madrid along with other holiday routes to Barcelona, Corfu, Malaga, Alicante, Mallorca & Gibraltar (I don't mind Eastern but it still an airline stuck in the 1990s). As long as I get some Avios & Tier points to get to Sliver I'd be happy.

 

[JENNYJET]

A straightforward question, is the presence of Ryanair and Easy jet amongst others preventing the legacy flag carriers engaging with BHX?

I was pondering the loss of Iceland and Primera with United et al, why and whatnot bothers me somewhat no links ex BHX to North America. The why's and wherefores escape me but I remain curious. I suspect a disengaged boardroom, reactive at best and never proactive.

Would I be alone in inviting Mr. Kehoe back to the fold?

 

[Coathanger16]

You mention Icelandair and United as flag carriers that BHX has lost.

May I point out the number of legacy/flag carriers we do have (or at least just prior to Covid):

Aer Lingus
Air France
Air India
Austrian Airlines
Brussels Airlines
Emirates
KLM
Lufthansa
PIA
Qatar Airways
SAS
Swiss International Air Lines
Turkish Airlines

Bar Heathrow, Manchester and maybe Edinburgh, I'm not sure there's many airports in the UK with that number of legacy/flag carriers.

Being pedantic, we do still have a link to North America with TUI to Orlando (Sanford/Melbourne). If by North America you mean New York, Chicago, Toronto, etc, the only airports left with direct flights to North America are LHR, LGW, MAN, EDI & GLA.

BRS, NCL, STN, LTN have all lost there's as well and two of those are London airports and a third serves a more affluent area of the country than BHX does.

Seems everyone holds the New York route with such high prestige - its great if you want to go to New York, but if say you want to go to Los Angeles, will you fly with that airline via New York, with the choice of just 1 flight and maybe a 6 hour or longer layover, or travel to Heathrow where there are several flights each day?

By all means I would welcome the return of the route to New York, however it is not the hallmark of whether the airport is successful.

Just because a route remains unserved doesn't mean the airport management is doing nothing. BHX will be competing against not only other airports in the UK, but across Europe, North America and parts of South America and Africa. If you have a spare aircraft, and you already serve Heathrow and Manchester, there are far more profitable routes to serve than BHX.

 

[Poshgirl]

Primera went bust before flights started. United took over Continental and took an axe to their flights. Who knows with Icelandair. With the lack of official statement, we can only guess it just wasn't paying. My niece's school trip to Iceland (delayed due to Covid) would have started at MAN. A former colleague had a holiday home in Orlando. He chose Icelandair from MAN one year for a number of reasons. He'd never been there (even for a stopover), the fares cheaper than the usual carriers. Obviously, these two instances don't fill an aircraft!

The power of advertising is important. I know it's a free country but why did BHX allow MAN to advertise in the Midlands? (tongue firmly in cheek!). As discussed in another thread, there needs to be some education amongst the BHX Marketing Team. Curry is not the "food of the Midlands", it's the Balti which originates in Kashmir. I still believe that Birmingham, not just the airport, does not sell itself as strongly as other cities. Unlike London, some of the sights are not easily accessible or well-known.

Another former colleague spotted Virgin Atlantic staff at BHX one Sunday afternoon when he was going to Tenerife. Knowing my interest in aviation, he was very excited at the prospect of VS starting services. The deflation instant when I advised they were part of the "Flying Without Fear" team, who had a course on that day.

 

[KJAY 786]

The new drop off and collect charges £5.00 at Heathrow to start October 2021 and Manchester already started should advertise airlines to look at Birmingham closer detail the airport parking is local to Terminals and Birmingham could winning situation but the airport marketing team need to win and arise with the situation to attract more airlines - overall they must think we can do it.

 

[rollo]

The new drop off and collect charges £5.00 at Heathrow to start October 2021 and Manchester already started should advertise airlines to look at Birmingham closer detail the airport parking is local to Terminals and Birmingham could winning situation but the airport marketing team need to win and arise with the situation to attract more airlines - overall they must think we can do it.

More likely BHX will institute a similar cost, personally I normally drop off or collect friends/relatives at Birmingham International its just a two minute hop on the monorail into the terminal and it's free.

Don't tell anyone !!!

Poshgirl, just a little detail on Primera they did actually start flights to Newark chartering a 757 from National which was a bag of nails causing no end of delays maybe managed up to ten trips before the house of cards collapsed.

 

[Matty_85]

You mention Icelandair and United as flag carriers that BHX has lost.

May I point out the number of legacy/flag carriers we do have (or at least just prior to Covid):

Aer Lingus
Air France
Air India
Austrian Airlines
Brussels Airlines
Emirates
KLM
Lufthansa
PIA
Qatar Airways
SAS
Swiss International Air Lines
Turkish Airlines

Bar Heathrow, Manchester and maybe Edinburgh, I'm not sure there's many airports in the UK with that number of legacy/flag carriers.

Being pedantic, we do still have a link to North America with TUI to Orlando (Sanford/Melbourne). If by North America you mean New York, Chicago, Toronto, etc, the only airports left with direct flights to North America are LHR, LGW, MAN, EDI & GLA.

BRS, NCL, STN, LTN have all lost there's as well and two of those are London airports and a third serves a more affluent area of the country than BHX does.

Seems everyone holds the New York route with such high prestige - its great if you want to go to New York, but if say you want to go to Los Angeles, will you fly with that airline via New York, with the choice of just 1 flight and maybe a 6 hour or longer layover, or travel to Heathrow where there are several flights each day?

By all means I would welcome the return of the route to New York, however it is not the hallmark of whether the airport is successful.

Just because a route remains unserved doesn't mean the airport management is doing nothing. BHX will be competing against not only other airports in the UK, but across Europe, North America and parts of South America and Africa. If you have a spare aircraft, and you already serve Heathrow and Manchester, there are far more profitable routes to serve than BHX.

Actually yes we should be aspiring to have our own global gateway (once again) to the west and that means regaining popular destinations like New York. Connectivity is everything in a globalised world and no I don’t want to spend my time travelling the M6 to go to Heathrow when I have a perfectly under-utilised airport on my doorstep. I often get told at work International companies will look at the connectivity of a city before locating a business not just for business but also cultural reasons. A well connected city will draw in more culture, more diversity & also raise the aspirations of local citizens as people have the world at their doorstep. Local populations will be more inclined to travel to destinations that are available on their doorstep too. I also find it really odd that we have successfully supported a double daily NY flight in the past (with the likes of BA, UA, AA) & Chicago flights yet now the narrative now is the region can’t support it. Monarch must have identified the potential when they were planning to launch double daily to JFK. Why on earth do we have to resign ourselves to this idea that economically or socially we just can’t have this service because BHX are struggling to entice the right airline. This is an airline and airport issue, don’t blame the region!

We’ve successfully done it before & I know it might be a much tougher market but by god have some ambition people!

 

[Coathanger16]

Actually yes we should be aspiring to have our own global gateway (once again) to the west and that means regaining popular destinations like New York. Connectivity is everything in a globalised world and no I don’t want to spend my time travelling the M6 to go to Heathrow when I have a perfectly under-utilised airport on my doorstep. I often get told at work International companies will look at the connectivity of a city before locating a business not just for business but also cultural reasons. A well connected city will draw in more culture, more diversity & also raise the aspirations of local citizens as people have the world at their doorstep. Local populations will be more inclined to travel to destinations that are available on their doorstep too. I also find it really odd that we have successfully supported a double daily NY flight in the past (with the likes of BA, UA, AA) & Chicago flights yet now the narrative now is the region can’t support it. Monarch must have identified the potential when they were planning to launch double daily to JFK. Why on earth do we have to resign ourselves to this idea that economically or socially we just can’t have this service because BHX are struggling to entice the right airline. This is an airline and airport issue, don’t blame the region!

We’ve successfully done it before & I know it might be a much tougher market but by god have some ambition people!

By all means we should strive to regain routes to N. America, all I'm saying is the lack of such routes doesn't make the airport a failure. I doubt anyone on here would say that Luton & Stansted are both failures, and yet BHX has more legacy/national airlines and more long haul routes than either airport.

Between 2000 and 2019, the number of passengers between the UK and Newark and Sanford dropped by 14% and 80% respectively.

Of the 6 UK airports that had flights to Newark in 2000, just 3 now do (Heathrow, Manchester & Glasgow). Besides Birmingham, routes from Gatwick and Stansted have also been lost. In that time Edinburgh gained a scheduled service.

Of the 9 UK airports that had flights to Sanford in 2000, 3 no longer are served (Luton, Belfast Int. & Cardiff), 5 have seen their passenger levels drop (including Birmingham), and just 1 has seen their passenger levels increase (East Midlands). Of the airports that saw a decline in passengers on this route, Birmingham saw the smallest drop of 66% vs drops at Gatwick and Manchester of 88%. In 2000 BHX was the 4th largest market between the UK and Sanford. By 2019 they had moved up a place to 3rd (only behind Gatwick and Manchester).

In 2000, Birmingham had a service to Chicago that carried 144,000 passengers. Since then Birmingham has lost that route, as has Manchester, and passenger levels on the Heathrow route have fallen by 15%.

None of this is me saying that BHX can't sustain routes to N. America, just that it is a difficult market, especially for regional airports.

As I have said before on this forum, I do believe there is a chance BHX could regain some routes to N. America, however the only way it would be a profitable operation is if it were operated by something like an A321LR/XLR. Whilst its true that JetBlue now have this aircraft, they have only just launched their first TATL route to one European city - there are many more that will be above Birmingham in the pecking order, not because BHX is a failure and the management aren't doing their jobs, but because there are many markets in Europe that are larger than Birmingham is. JetBlue do like to disrupt established markets, so I could see them fitting into BHX but not for at least 5 years. By then American Airlines and United Airlines will both also have A321XLRs.

 

[IanFarquharson]

Glasgow has now lost United too and they dropped Manchester,

Only Heathrow now.

 

[Ryan Kirkpatrick]

UA only have LHR & EDI but EDI & Glasgow now have WestJet to Toronto via Halifax starting May 2022. Could we see WestJet or maybe Air Transat return?

 

[IanFarquharson]

The Scottish market to Canada has always been strong (as was BHX for decades)

BHX will be talking to both carriers, if they come / return to BHX is anyone's guess.

Air Transat pulling out was partly due to crew issues and having to shuttle crew from MAN / LGW

A few years without a service again has seen our catchment travel to other UK departure points.

 

[Poshgirl]

Air Transat are supposed to be returning.

Failure of merger with Air Canada has also contributed to the delay. AC paid them a sizeable amount of compensation for pulling out, so perhaps it will be spent wisely!

 

[Brum X]

BHX ?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1447516583522414593

 

[Jerry]

BHX ?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1447516583522414593

BHX i'd have thought would be in with a good chance.

 

[Brum X]

Karl may even have a new airline to travel with to Turkey so fingers crossed.

 

[Brum X]

My money is on London Stansted, Edinburgh and Birmingham ?