Bristol: Airport Route Development & Rumours

[Foxlimayankee]

Do people genuinely believe that an Airline that has never flown from BRS, has no link to BRS and say they will not be flying from BRS would then have BRS load on their website in error?!
Sounds to me like the eagle eyed spotters have discovered some kind of systems loading before any official announcement has been authorised to be made!

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Do people genuinely believe that an Airline that has never flown from BRS, has no link to BRS and say they will not be flying from BRS would then have BRS load on their website in error?!
Sounds to me like the eagle eyed spotters have discovered some kind of systems loading before any official announcement has been authorised to be made!

That might be so but the fact remains that yesterday Blue Air announced on their Twitter page that they would be launching seven new routes which would be announced on their FB page today. Lo and behold, when today arrives there are only six new routes shown on the FB page.

Accompanying the announcement of the six new routes was one announcing increased frequency on a further route. Perhaps someone became confused and counted that as a new route.

Blue Air made this comment to an enquirer on FB today: this route (OTP-BRS) is not part of our flight schedule but keep following us, we might surprise you!

Whatever the outcome it's still an interesting lesson on how airlines and communications technology still don't always operate in sync, but of course a human has to load the stuff in the first place.

 

[Ray Finkle]

As well as Amadeus the route is now bookable on Opodo from June 15th. I'm really struggling to see how all of this could have been done in error?

Blue Air made this comment to an enquirer on FB today: this route (OTP-BRS) is not part of our flight schedule but keep following us, we might surprise you!

I'm always quite wary of comments on social media. Quite often they are handled by a third party company with not much more information available than the general public.

Incidentally on FB they are now trying to backtrack their '7' new routes by saying that the increased OTP-LCA schedule is 'practically a new route'. It sounds to me like a poor cover up for someone jumping the gun on the announcement.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

It was shown as from 15 June when in the Blue Air schedules section this morning. 15 June is a Thursday though and the flights were shown to be operating Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

I take the point about social media comments (sometimes airline and airport social media representatives don't know themselves) especially if their first language is not English when an unintended nuance can sometimes come across - not that I'm an avid reader of social media sites except for specific reasons. The wording though (....keep following us, we might surprise you!) could be taken to mean that something is in the wind and that the booking engine loading was premature.

I still wish it was Larnaca though.

 

[Ray Finkle]

I still wish it was Larnaca though.

Bucharest is their main hub so I guess it makes sense to 'test the waters' there first. I'd say that Larnaca wouldn't be too far behind, if not this winter then it must be a strong contender for S18? If there is sufficient demand to Romania there are also other potential markets to tap into such as Cluj, Iasi or even Bacau.

It was shown as from 15 June when in the Blue Air schedules section this morning. 15 June is a Thursday though and the flights were shown to be operating Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

My apologies it is the 16th, I've been using that many dates today they've all merged into one

Hopefully the link below will work.

https://www.opodo.co.uk/#/results/t...alse;airlinescodes=false;internalSearch=false

 

[Jerry]

I had a look on Skyscanner and only Ryanair comes up as direct flights to OTP.

 

[Ray Finkle]

Blue Air now seems to have disappeared from Amadeus, only Ryanair is showing direct.

How very odd?

 

[Marko1]

I guess it was some form of mistake or we were all dreaming. Never mind at least we have bases from europes two largest low cost carriers. Let's see what scraps they will feed us. It looks like the summer schedule is more or less settled with the weird reductions from easyJet and modest increases from Ryanair. Onwards and upwards

 

[TheLocalYokel]

I guess it was some form of mistake or we were all dreaming. Never mind at least we have bases from europes two largest low cost carriers. Let's see what scraps they will feed us. It looks like the summer schedule is more or less settled with the weird reductions from easyJet and modest increases from Ryanair. Onwards and upwards

I'm not bothered about the loss of Bucharest for its own sake - if it is lost - because I'm not sure that Ryanair and Blue Air would do that well competing in a new market. Non-sun routes that Ryanair/easyJet/Wizz Air compete on were started by one of the airlines before one of the others joined in on what were already mature and successful routes.

That said, I tend to agree with Foxlimayankee that the release might have been premature although I know that some years ago (I think summer 2012) Ryanair was going to add a sixth aircraft to the BRS base. New routes, timings and flight numbers were in Ryanair's system (I was able to get a look and I remember that Biarritz, Murcia, Rhodes and Zadar were amongst the new routes - new to FR from BRS that is, although Zadar will now start this summer) but in the end were never made public and never operated. It might be that a similar thing is happening with Blue Air, and either a 'button' was pressed inadvertently and prematurely putting the details in the public eye, or the button was pressed inadvertently before the airline has made up its mind whether to operate the route.

It would obviously be a positive move to have Blue Air, not least because it would be a new scheduled airline and could well lead to further routes. My concern would be (and will remain if OTP is announced officially) that a struggle against Ryanair on a developing route might put off the airline from further routes which in fact might have been better bets in the first place.

 

[Marko1]

In fairness Ryanair has been on this route since last December so that blue air would have known what they were up against. However it could have been a precursor for a launch of flights to larnaca and perhaps to cluj and iasi . Personally with the exception of charters the south east Europe area is served patchy at best. Regular schedules to the likes of Athens Rhodes kos larnaca are badly needed in my opinion. There are more schedules to Croatia than there is to Greece. Perhaps it's time to entice a third low cost carrier in such as monarch who served that region particularly well. Both easyJet and Ryanair have had ample opportunity to develop routes there but have chosen not too.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

I agree about Blue Air and Ryanair competition on OTP but the mystery remains.

I am confident in saying that the BRS management regards easyJet as its primary airline partner and is never quite sure about Ryanair's 'stickability', but that almost certainly applies to many airports with the Harp organisation who, quite rightly from their perspective, always seek to drive the hardest bargain.

Nevertheless, Ryanair will operate 31 routes from BRS this summer, two more than in summer 2016. Ryanair is certainly a bit up and down with for example 27 routes in summer 2015, 28 in 2014, 31 in 2013 and 28 in 2012.

easyJet operates over 60 routes from BRS, albeit some are seasonal.

I know we've done this exercise in the past but it's worth repeating in the present circumstances where more routes were expected from them this summer but as time goes on seem less likely to materialise. These routes are operated by easyJet but not to BRS (I've not included English domestic routes although I've sometimes wondered about Leeds-Bradford):

Aberdeen - op by bmi regional at BRS
Agadir
Almeria
Are Ostersund (Sweden)
Athens
Bari
Belgrade
Biarritz - once op by easyJet at BRS
Bologna - op by Ryanair at BRS
Brest
Brindisi
Brussels - op by Brussels Airlines (bmi regional) at BRS
Budapest - once op by easyJet at BRS, now op by Ryanair at BRS
Chania - op by Ryanair at BRS
(Corsica)
Bastia - once op by easyJet at BRS, now op by bmi regional for tour operator at BRS
Calvi
Figari - op by bmi regional for tour operator at BRS
Dortmund
Dresden
Essaouira
Friedrichshafen
Granada
Hamburg - once op by easyJet at BRS, now op by bmi regional at BRS
Hurghada
Izmir
Jersey - op by Blue Islands (Flybe) at BRS
Kalamata
Kos - op by Thomson and Thomas Cook at BRS
La Palma
Larnaca - op by Thomson and Thomas Cook at BRS
Lille
Luxembourg
Malta - op by Ryanair, Air Malta and Thomas Cook at BRS
(Milan)
Linate
Malpensa - once op by easyJet at BRS, now op by bmi regional at BRS
Montpellier - once op by Ryanair at BRS
Munich - op by bmi regional at BRS
Mykonos
Paris Orly
Ponta Delgada
Preveza
Rhodes - op by Thomas Cook at BRS
Santiago de Compostela
Santorini - op by Thomson at BRS
(Sardinia)
Alghero
Cagliari - op by bmi regional for tour operator at BRS (Olbia op by easyJet at BRS)
Seville - once op by Ryanair at BRS
(Sicily)
Palermo (Catania op by easyjet at BRS)
Sofia (op by Wizz Air at BRS, and also ski charter airlines in winter)
Stockholm Arlanda - once op by SAS at BRS, albeit for limited summer seasons
Stuttgart
Tallinn
Tel Aviv
Thessaloniki - op by Thomson at BRS
Tivat
Valencia - once op by easyJet and Ryanair at BRS (not together), Ryanair now op to nearby Castellon at BRS
Varna
Verona - op by bmi regional and Mistral for tour operators at BRS and in ski season by other airlines
Zadar - op by Ryanair at BRS
Zurich - has been op at BRS by other airlines in the past, most recent Helvetic and before that BA Connect

A handful of the destinations in the above list do not operate to any UK airport.

I'm not confident that too many in this list would work at BRS. Rhodes, Larnaca and Kos seem good bets for summer routes, and possibly Almeria. Milan Malpensa seems obvious (I don't understand why easyJet hasn't returned to it) and possibly Granada, Tallinn and Seville. Stockholm would be a great prize but it might remain elusive.

 

[BRSregular]

Mykonos, Santorini and Stuttgart would be welcome additions too. I did Tallinn from LGW. Lovely place I would recommend people to visit. Would love to see a route there from BRS.

 

[Marko1]

I would definitely say seville , Rhodes , kos , larnaca and Granada. There's been some social media speculation regarding seville recently . I think Stockholm and Tallinn would also be very successful.

 

[Marko1]

Blue air confirmed to me on twitter this morning that Bristol is not "within their sights ". So somehow a mistake took place by someone somewhere. But we all saw the route on the system and it even was being flown by a b737-400 !!

 

[Jerry]

Blue air confirmed to me on twitter this morning that Bristol is not "within their sights ". So somehow a mistake took place by someone somewhere. But we all saw the route on the system and it even was being flown by a b737-400 !!

Just a theory but if i'm correct Ryanair started Bucharest during this winter? What if Blue Air were planning originally to launch OTP this summer but Ryanair beat them to it so they didn't go ahead with it? Someone may have then forgotten about it or there was a miscommunication somewhere and the mistake of loading it all up and releasing it was made. It does seem like a massive mistake was made by someone!

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Blue air confirmed to me on twitter this morning that Bristol is not "within their sights ". So somehow a mistake took place by someone somewhere. But we all saw the route on the system and it even was being flown by a b737-400 !!

Perhaps the Wikipedians have found a way into the Blue Air website.

 

[Severn]

As has been said before, Blue Air still appears in Amadeus, which is not just a expedia or skyscanner, it is an industry scheduling tool. It doesn't just show random made up flights and for anything to appear there it will have to have been put there by the airline or their operations system.
A quick look in August still shows Blue Air at 3x weekly to OTP, departing at 19:00 on Wed and 19:15 on Mon and Fri.
It is likely that for whatever reason, the airline or BRS were not ready to release the information to the public, but it seems wholly unlikely to have a real schedule uploaded by mistake to Amadeus if it is "not within their sights" - so says their social media people.
One thing to remember is that the guys and girls manning the social media front have no access or information on what's happening next within these companies or if they do they are certainly not going to be aloud to tell people if they ask. So they have no choice but to deny it or to write something vague so as not to give much away.

 

[Marko1]

Qatar preparing to announce 2 new U.K. Routes. No timeline tho http://profit.ndtv.com/news/interna...-india-betting-on-futuristic-pm-modi-1674261( hope the link works )

 

[BRSregular]

Qatar preparing to announce 2 new U.K. Routes. No timeline tho http://profit.ndtv.com/news/interna...-india-betting-on-futuristic-pm-modi-1674261( hope the link works )

Well, taking a rather simplistic approach I admit, looking at their route map, there is a huge area around the southwest of England and Wales where they currently do not fly. The rest of the country seems well served by Qatar so if I were a betting man...

 

[Jerry]

Well, taking a rather simplistic approach I admit, looking at their route map, there is a huge area around the southwest of England and Wales where they currently do not fly. The rest of the country seems well served by Qatar so if I were a betting man...

They do connect to BRS via BRU using BMI plus many of their LHR will come from the area. BRS is in with a shout but they also don't serve STN or LGW or GLA or NCL. Another possibility for them could be BFS especially as they might not have to pay Long haul APD and get some assistance off the Northern Irish government.