CAA Provisional Statistics Update

[Stagman]

So I take it that this will be
Aircraft Movements, Terminal Passgengers, Destination data released first

Data publication dates | Civil Aviation Authority

Upcoming dates for the publication of statistics on the UK aviation market

www.caa.co.uk

 

[Seasider]

Let's hope that the 15th becomes the new "norm".

Am I correct in thinking that, until about 2 years ago, the reports used to be published on, or around, 15th?

I'll need to look at my old records.

They used to be published 12 - 15th of the following month ie November on December 12 -15th

 

[Scottie Dog]

Well here we are on the 16th January and, wait for it, the CAA has produced the November tables.

Interestingly there is difference between the passenger totals from Table 9, which shows 181,705 passengers, and the combined totals from Tables 12.1 (International) and Table 2, which gives 188,148 - I've gone with the latter.

View attachment 27480

View attachment 27481

 

[Finger66]

Make pretty damn fine reading

 

[LBAYORKIE]

Warsaw is interesting. Ryanair are up 22% o Modlin despite Wizz carrying roughly the same number of passengers to Chopin.

 

[YorkshireLad]

My thoughts on November statistics

This month had immense growth from Eastern Europe with several routes breaking personal records from LBA and some new routes as well. Spain had its usual strong traffic with 4 out of 5 of the top routes being to Spain. Bucharest averaged a Load Factor of 80.1% which is promising for the routes future.

Routes that did not perform as well were the some city break routes offered by Jet2. The seasonal flights and Barcelona had fairly strong traffic, but Prague didn't even achieve a 70% load factor (granted, it was 69.4%, but not dead encouraging) and Rome barely achieving 70%. The 2 after season return flights to Larnaca, even when taking into account that 1 flight was essentially a positioning sector did not perform great.

There are routes that particularly concern me with the load factors and they are as follows:
1. Belfast Intl (66.7%) even on an A319 the loads weren't particularly strong though the fact that the route was only 2X weekly won't have helped. It didn't stop EZY putting on more flights though so they obviously see it as ok.
2. Wroclaw (65.3%) the load factors on this route are quite frankly below expectations. An A321 was clearly too big of an aircraft for Wizz to fly this route on for this quiet of a month. Hopefully it was just the November dip but not looking dead promising at this time.
3. Cluj Napoca (59.9%) well this is completely abysmal. I thought the route would do quite well for November however this was clearly not the case. What must be remembered, however, is that most family visits probably don't happen in November and I'm not confident in it's tourism numbers from LBA (for now).

What must be remembered for all routes is that this is a quiet month and loads will hopefully improve

 

[LBAYORKIE]

My thoughts on November statistics

This month had immense growth from Eastern Europe with several routes breaking personal records from LBA and some new routes as well. Spain had its usual strong traffic with 4 out of 5 of the top routes being to Spain. Bucharest averaged a Load Factor of 80.1% which is promising for the routes future.

Routes that did not perform as well were the some city break routes offered by Jet2. The seasonal flights and Barcelona had fairly strong traffic, but Prague didn't even achieve a 70% load factor (granted, it was 69.4%, but not dead encouraging) and Rome barely achieving 70%. The 2 after season return flights to Larnaca, even when taking into account that 1 flight was essentially a positioning sector did not perform great.

There are routes that particularly concern me with the load factors and they are as follows:
1. Belfast Intl (66.7%) even on an A319 the loads weren't particularly strong though the fact that the route was only 2X weekly won't have helped. It didn't stop EZY putting on more flights though so they obviously see it as ok.
2. Wroclaw (65.3%) the load factors on this route are quite frankly below expectations. An A321 was clearly too big of an aircraft for Wizz to fly this route on for this quiet of a month. Hopefully it was just the November dip but not looking dead promising at this time.
3. Cluj Napoca (59.9%) well this is completely abysmal. I thought the route would do quite well for November however this was clearly not the case. What must be remembered, however, is that most family visits probably don't happen in November and I'm not confident in it's tourism numbers from LBA (for now).

What must be remembered for all routes is that this is a quiet month and loads will hopefully improve

I'm concerned particularly about Cluj and Wroclaw. It would be good to compare load factors with pre Covid DSA. I'm assuming that at the low fares Wizz offer they have to be almost full on every sector to make an acceptable return. Let's hope if these destinations don't recover Wizz will deploy the aircraft on other routes out of Leeds.

 

[YorkshireLad]

I'm concerned particularly about Cluj and Wroclaw. It would be good to compare load factors with pre Covid DSA. I'm assuming that at the low fares Wizz offer they have to be almost full on every sector to make an acceptable return. Let's hope if these destinations don't recover Wizz will deploy the aircraft on other routes out of Leeds.

I've looked. They're not that far down from pre pandemic DSA. Cluj was down about 250 pax compared to Nov 2019. Wroclaw combined was down about 1K. I guess they're using bigger aircraft now

 

[LBAYORKIE]

I've looked. They're not that far down from pre pandemic DSA. Cluj was down about 250 pax compared to Nov 2019. Wroclaw combined was down about 1K. I guess they're using bigger aircraft now

That's reassuring. I suppose that it will take another month for us to be able to draw any meaningful conclusions about Wizz's load factors.

 

[White Heather]

As these flights were for November, it's a reasonable assumption that the majority of bookings were made for a DSA flight. When they were shifted to LBA, some pax may well have cancelled as invited to by Wizz. Some however may then have booked because they were switching to LBA, but in the case of Wroclaw, maybe not so many as anyone booking in advance wanting to fly from LBA will probably already have booked with Ryanair. So the November Wizz pax numbers are quite possibly reflecting DSA bookings more than LBA.

What really counts is future bookings. Will Wizz bookings increase from LBA over the levels at DSA, decrease, or remain broadly similar? That's what will determine the success of their LBA operation, and of course there's the question of how they impact on Ryanair.

Overall, the figures are very encouraging, particularly bearing in mind we had quite a few flights cancelled due to the impact of fog diversions - with resultant lost passengers - not with Wizz, but Ryanair, KLM and Emerald were all affected..

 

[Sherburnflyer92]

I'm impressed with the Riga % change. Wizz didn't start Riga so that's Ryanair alone? Did they increase frequency for Winter or is it just a increase in demand. A whoping 169% change in demand.

 

[LBAYORKIE]

As these flights were for November, it's a reasonable assumption that the majority of bookings were made for a DSA flight. When they were shifted to LBA, some pax may well have cancelled as invited to by Wizz. Some however may then have booked because they were switching to LBA, but in the case of Wroclaw, maybe not so many as anyone booking in advance wanting to fly from LBA will probably already have booked with Ryanair. So the November Wizz pax numbers are quite possibly reflecting DSA bookings more than LBA.

What really counts is future bookings. Will Wizz bookings increase from LBA over the levels at DSA, decrease, or remain broadly similar? That's what will determine the success of their LBA operation, and of course there's the question of how they impact on Ryanair.

Overall, the figures are very encouraging, particularly bearing in mind we had quite a few flights cancelled due to the impact of fog diversions - with resultant lost passengers - not with Wizz, but Ryanair, KLM and Emerald were all affected..

You have to assume that for the economics to work Leeds will have to higher load factors to compensate for there being no subsidy in place.

 

[White Heather]

I'm impressed with the Riga % change. Wizz didn't start Riga so that's Ryanair alone? Did they increase frequency for Winter or is it just a increase in demand. A whoping 169% change in demand.

In November 2021, Riga was just restarting after being suspended during the pandemic. Passenger figures on the route would have taken some time to build back up. It's an all year round route now and after a year to build up demand again, it's no surprise really that there's a huge increase compared to November 2021.

 

[Sherburnflyer92]

In November 2021, Riga was just restarting after being suspended during the pandemic. Passenger figures on the route would have taken some time to build back up. It's an all year round route now and after a year to build up demand again, it's no surprise really that there's a huge increase compared to November 2021.

Ahhh well if we are only comparing to Nov 21' then no real surprise. I guess the real comparison would be to 2019 - I'll do some digging.

EDIT -

2018 - 3,178
2019 - 2,834
2022 - 3,090.

So we are shy of 2018 levels of that route but beating 2019. Isn't 2019 the year Ryanair sort of reconsolidated, removed an aircraft for winter, cut frequencies etc at LBA?

 

[YorkshireLad]

Ahhh well if we are only comparing to Nov 21' then no real surprise. I guess the real comparison would be to 2019 - I'll do some digging.

EDIT -

2018 - 3,178
2019 - 2,834
2022 - 3,090.

So we are shy of 2018 levels of that route but beating 2019. Isn't 2019 the year Ryanair sort of reconsolidated, removed an aircraft for winter, cut frequencies etc at LBA?

There may have been slight variations on the amount of flights in a month. For example, 2 weekly flights often translate to either 16 or 18 flights (there and back) which presents a difference of nearly 400 pax capacity

 

[lbaspotter]

The airport has this morning on social media been celebrating its 3 millionth passenger to pass through the terminal since April last year.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1616012774970097664

 

[IanFarquharson]

December 2022

HEATHROW	5,950,200​		up		90.6​	%
GATWICK	2,593,235​		up		150.1​	%
STANSTED	1,852,146​		up		105.3​	%
MANCHESTER	1,728,481​		up		90.5​	%
LUTON	1,086,141​		up		82.4​	%
EDINBURGH	895,789​		up		104.9​	%
BIRMINGHAM	698,784​		up		105.1​	%
BRISTOL	513,877​		up		89.1​	%
GLASGOW	427,858​		up		53.7​	%
BELFAST INT	312,912​		up		9.2​	%
LIVERPOOL	252,884​		up		75.7​	%
NEWCASTLE	252,620​		up		88.0​	%
LONDON CITY	251,458​		up		186.8​	%
LEEDS BRADFORD	188,706​		up		152.6​	%
BELFAST CITY	165,298​		up		75.5​	%
ABERDEEN	158,127​		up		41.3​	%
EAST MIDLANDS	153,922​		up		101.6​	%
JERSEY	92,342​		up		23.5​	%
SOUTHAMPTON	54,120​		up		74.9​	%
GUERNSEY	50,251​		up		47.0​	%
INVERNESS	49,826​		up		27.2​	%
ISLE OF MAN	49,492​		up		40.3​	%
CARDIFF WALES	38,402​		up		148.0​	%
BOURNEMOUTH	37,013​		up		90.6​	%
EXETER	23,442​		up		55.3​	%
NORWICH	20,950​		up		71.3​	%
SUMBURGH	16,671​		down	-6.2​	%
PRESTWICK	16,446​		up		138.4​	%
NEWQUAY	16,405​		up		240.0​	%
CITY OF DERRY	12,896​		up		13.7​	%
TEESSIDE	10,992​		up		89.6​	%
KIRKWALL	9,137​		up		8.6​	%
HUMBERSIDE	8,960​		up		98.6​	%
STORNOWAY	7,739​		up		12.3​	%
ALDERNEY	3,412​		up		19.1​	%
DUNDEE	2,961​		up		30.7​	%

 

[AirBingley]

Impressive LBA increase!

 

[752]

wow 30000 above EMA, great result. LPL seems to be a stronger performer in winter!

 

[IanFarquharson]

2022 Totals

% is compared to 2019 annual totals i.e. pre-pandemic

Heathrow – 61,611,838 down 23.8%

Gatwick – 32,835,381 down 23.0%

Manchester – 23,364,471 down 12.2%

Stansted – 23,290,097 down 17.2%

Luton – 13,325,052 down 26.9%

Edinburgh – 11,250,211 down 23.7%

Birmingham – 9,597,462 down 24.1%

Bristol – 7,948,941 down 11.3%

Glasgow – 6,517,585 down 26.3%

Belfast Int – 4,818,214 down 23.3%

Liverpool – 3,490,844 down 30.2%

Leeds – 3,288,635 down 17.6%

East Midlands – 3,186,367 down 31.8%