Aegean Airlines

[Karl C]

Is this throughout the Winter?.
These are similar timings to their first season at BHX which were not popular with passengers at the time.

These flights will connect better with flights to the Greek islands and also the ferries to the islands from Rafina and Piraeus.

 

[Timberwolf]

Aegean Airlines are changing the scheduled arrivals and departure times:

Athens 9.35pm -11.25pm Birmingham (Wednesday and Saturday)
Birmingham 12.25am -6.15am(Thursday and Sunday)

Still 2 weekly flights

It was all going so well with decent timings this summer..now..

Just dreadful timings do well to survive a full season 🙈🙈

 

[gulftraveller]

Traditionally, those have been the timings of flights to Athens. It allows transfers to ferries at Piraeus, and the first wave of island flights. It was Britannia and Dan Air which operated most flights to Athens (excluding LHR) In the 1980s/90s. They were never daytime flights, much to the annoyance of those of us who lived there.

 

[Timberwolf]

Traditionally, those have been the timings of flights to Athens. It allows transfers to ferries at Piraeus, and the first wave of island flights. It was Britannia and Dan Air which operated most flights to Athens (excluding LHR) In the 1980s/90s. They were never daytime flights, much to the annoyance of those of us who lived there.

The last time Aegean operated the route to BHX before this year,the timings were similar late. They pulled the service with speculation it was the poor timings which hit demand.

I believe their flts from MAN, and London next summer on their Athens service are once again daytime flts, unless they have very recently been changed ?

 

[mullion]

Manchester flight has been daytime for a couple of years now and comes in mid morning

 

[Scania1800]

Aegean has removed its BHX-ATH tickets from sales - credits to Sean from Twitter

 

[nwoody2001]

Indeed.... all reference to both BHX-ATH and LGW-ATH has disappeared without trace on their website and with immediate effect. To keep BRS/NCL but drop BHX/LGW seems an interesting choice if this terns into reality...

Thankfully BHX-ATH is still serviced and now year round with Jet2. Also, with EZY serving ATH-LGW/MAN/EDI/BRS, defo one for them to look at....

 

[Brum X]

However these are not routes BHX should be losing if indeed it has ?. No wonder people have no idea that airlines operate certain routes as they keep flip flopping.

One year they run and then the following year they don't, it's the inconsistency which is half the problem sometimes.

Aegean - Athens

Iberia - Madrid

TAP - Lisbon

Finnair - Helsinki

An airport serving Britain's 2nd city should be big enough to support all these airlines, regardless of other airports in the north or south.

;-(

 

[Seasider]

However these are not routes BHX should be losing if indeed it has ?. No wonder people have no idea that airlines operate certain routes as they keep flip flopping.

One year they run and then the following year they don't, it's the inconsistency which is half the problem sometimes.

Aegean - Athens

Iberia - Madrid

TAP - Lisbon

Finnair - Helsinki

An airport serving Britain's 2nd city should be big enough to support all these airlines, regardless of other airports in the north or south.

;-(

The airlines do not seem to agree with your comment.

 

[Brum X]

The airlines do not seem to agree with your comment.

And that's bad news imho ;-(

 

[Jerry]

However these are not routes BHX should be losing if indeed it has ?. No wonder people have no idea that airlines operate certain routes as they keep flip flopping.

One year they run and then the following year they don't, it's the inconsistency which is half the problem sometimes.

Aegean - Athens

Iberia - Madrid

TAP - Lisbon

Finnair - Helsinki

An airport serving Britain's 2nd city should be big enough to support all these airlines, regardless of other airports in the north or south.

;-(

The problem is that nearly all those airlines are hub airlines and will always require a certain amount of onward traffic which may well be taken up by airports to the north and south.
Airlines like Aegean and Finnair will be looking for onward traffic going east and BHX is served by 5 hub airlines doing that KLM, Lufthansa, Turkish, Emirates and Qatar. Madrid and Lisbon onward to South America and Africa but Heathrow is just down the road for many of those destinations.

 

[Scania1800]

However these are not routes BHX should be losing if indeed it has ?. No wonder people have no idea that airlines operate certain routes as they keep flip flopping.

One year they run and then the following year they don't, it's the inconsistency which is half the problem sometimes.

Aegean - Athens

Iberia - Madrid

TAP - Lisbon

Finnair - Helsinki

An airport serving Britain's 2nd city should be big enough to support all these airlines, regardless of other airports in the north or south.

;-(

But your able to go up or down the road to get those airlines regardless of Birmingham being the 2nd largest city

 

[mullion]

The airports to the south west and north are much higher value with both growing at a high rate even the town I live in has just started spending a billion pounds on the infrastructure and is now part of the highest value outside London, my friend has just sold his house for a million and i would not even describe it as high value property nice but not wonderful.

 

[nwoody2001]

However these are not routes BHX should be losing if indeed it has ?. No wonder people have no idea that airlines operate certain routes as they keep flip flopping.

One year they run and then the following year they don't, it's the inconsistency which is half the problem sometimes.

Aegean - Athens

Iberia - Madrid

TAP - Lisbon

Finnair - Helsinki

An airport serving Britain's 2nd city should be big enough to support all these airlines, regardless of other airports in the north or south.

;-(

We do.....

Aer Lingus (DUB)
Air France (CDG)
Air India (DEL)
Brussels Airlines (BRU)
Emirates (DXB)
KLM (AMS)
Lufthansa (FRA/MUC)
Qatar (DOH)
Saudia (JED)
Scandinavian (CPH)
Swiss (ZRH)
Turkish (IST)

For an airport that handled 11.5m pax last year, I think the amount of national/hub airlines that operate and sustain year round at BHX is pretty damn impressive. There are airports of equivalent size in the UK and Europe that would kill to have such airlines serving them year round alongside a robust number of competing Low-Cost bases.

Yes BHX is far from perfect, and i would love it if Aegean would have stayed, but i love the way that when an airline pulled out of BHX, people are so eager to blame BHX and jump on the "its our catchments that's the issue". Sometimes that is the case, but just as many times its not. Take Aegean as an example. To remove BHX/LGW services will immediate effect screams more to do with the airline than BHX... even when RYR drop a route, they at least give notice and let the route run to the end of a season.

Its a great shame that Aegean have not been able to make BHX-ATH work for them, but lord, do we have to re-run the same conversation everytime. The airline industry is a fickle business - this will happen again in the future, but then we other airlines will join.

 

[Brum X]

We do.....

Aer Lingus (DUB)
Air France (CDG)
Air India (DEL)
Brussels Airlines (BRU)
Emirates (DXB)
KLM (AMS)
Lufthansa (FRA/MUC)
Qatar (DOH)
Saudia (JED)
Scandinavian (CPH)
Swiss (ZRH)
Turkish (IST)

For an airport that handled 11.5m pax last year, I think the amount of national/hub airlines that operate and sustain year round at BHX is pretty damn impressive. There are airports of equivalent size in the UK and Europe that would kill to have such airlines serving them year round alongside a robust number of competing Low-Cost bases.

Yes BHX is far from perfect, and i would love it if Aegean would have stayed, but i love the way that when an airline pulled out of BHX, people are so eager to blame BHX and jump on the "its our catchments that's the issue". Sometimes that is the case, but just as many times its not. Take Aegean as an example. To remove BHX/LGW services will immediate effect screams more to do with the airline than BHX... even when RYR drop a route, they at least give notice and let the route run to the end of a season.

Its a great shame that Aegean have not been able to make BHX-ATH work for them, but lord, do we have to re-run the same conversation everytime. The airline industry is a fickle business - this will happen again in the future, but then we other airlines will join.

Sorry I thought this was a forum to talk about these things ? Lol

I wasn't talking about airlines that are successfull at BHX, my frustration is with Athens, where it comes and goes, and yes I know we have Jet2, however they won't offer the island connections so people in the region are left going to other airports aka leakage. This is my frustration and nothing else.

 

[HPsauce]

I have to say Aegean's withdrawal is very disappointing. Just when it seemed they were actually stepping up BHX operations. Admittedly the summer period is going to provide the bulk of their custom, with connections to the smaller islands. However, i know several people that used their service in recent years, and are not happy to travel north or south before starting their Greek holidays.
Perhaps one for Sky Express to try.

 

[Birmingham Aviation]

I’m going to be honest here.Im stunned that Aegean has dropped sales.Greek city,Massive greek football connection and massive tourism place aswell.
Maybe Ryanair could put there nose where it belongs and potentially get a few weekly flights going.

 

[route66]

Would this be all about poor forward sales?

 

[Scania1800]

I’m going to be honest here.Im stunned that Aegean has dropped sales.Greek city,Massive greek football connection and massive tourism place aswell.
Maybe Ryanair could put there nose where it belongs and potentially get a few weekly flights going.

why would Ryanair operate this route if Aegean pulled out for low demand?

 

[mullion]

The market to athens from BHX is very low, Nov 3760 none in Dec and Jan ,LGW has 4 airlines
with Aegean the smallest behind Easy, Wizz and Sky Express with 32000 and MAN 11000
between 3 airlines giving an average of almost 180 per flight in December , now I know Jan is a bad month which traditionally Aegean very rarely used to operate but this year 2 a week going to 3 in late Feb.
I very much doubt that the pax are holiday makers in winter months as weather is pretty awful..
That hopefully gives a bit of an insight