Route Development & Rumours

[TheLocalYokel]

Any news about replacements for the German/ Paris services. Is anyone interested ?

I'm not sure how quickly any movement on this should be expected. If anyone still has eyes on the coming summer, then quickly. It seems that BRU will restart on 1 May. That's if the Brussels Airlines booking engine is to be believed. Before the flybmi demise the route was shown as being switched back to Brussels Airlines with AR8 (presumably CityJet) equipment with a seamless transfer from the beginning of April. Why there is now an apparent hiatus in the entire month of April is not clear.

The loss of Frankfurt and Munich is particularly disappointing. I'd be surprised to see HAM and DUS return although CDG might well in some form.

CAA stats show that FRA grew by 8% in 2018 to 53,277 passengers. Since flybmi took on the route in 2013 the annual passenger numbers have seen steady growth, viz: 15,978, 29,448, 44,026, 43,344, 49,347, 53,277.

MUC is a similar story. It grew by 13% in 2018 to 47,994. It too has seen steady growth since 2013 since flybmi took on the route, viz:
9,794, 18,298, 30,567, 36,372, 42,482, 47,994.

Much of the growth springs from the LH code share of course. Whether this is enough to persuade LH that the routes should be continued is not something to which we can be privy. Even if they were profitable LH might have options elsewhere that are more profitable, or there might not be suitable aircraft available or there might be slot problems.

On the Monday after the flybmi news broke at the weekend the BRS CEO told the local tv news that they were working hard to find replacements and that is the story that comes form the airport if an enquiry is made - as one would expect. The European airline he was 'confident' of announcing at that time has not materialised. It might very well be Brussels Airlines using CityJet, which those of us interested in aviation had already known was shown in the airline's booking engine long before the flybmi cessation news.

 

[Marko1]

I could see the possibility of easyJet taking on Munich which it would be very successful at given its prowess at making the likes of Basel work and possibly Ryanair take on Hamburg maybe 2-3 times per week. Both routes have big city break potential not to mention onward destinations from Munich such as the alps and cruise departures from Hamburg. It’s frankfurt I’d be concerned about . I’m just wondering whether Lufthansa wouldn’t want to harm the potential success of the larger aircraft to fly to Brussels from may.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

I could see the possibility of easyJet taking on Munich which it would be very successful at given its prowess at making the likes of Basel work and possibly Ryanair take on Hamburg maybe 2-3 times per week. Both routes have big city break potential not to mention onward destinations from Munich such as the alps and cruise departures from Hamburg. It’s frankfurt I’d be concerned about . I’m just wondering whether Lufthansa wouldn’t want to harm the potential success of the larger aircraft to fly to Brussels from may.

easyJet currently flies to Gatwick, Luton, Stansted, Edinburgh and Manchester (plus Berlin Tegel and Milan Malpensa) from Munich. Ryanair flies to Dublin.

easyJet just flies to Berlin Tegel from Frankfurt whereas Ryanair has a lot of routes but only Manchester and Stansted in the UK.

easyJet flies ten routes from Hamburg including Edinburgh, Manchester and gatwick in the UK with Ryanair operating over 20 with Edinburgh, Manchester and Stansted being the UK routes.

easyJet tried Hamburg from Bristol in 2005-2006 but it only lasted about a year. There are still the Airbus and Imperial Tobbacco connections businesswise between the Bristol and Hamburg areas. Seville seems to be doing all right loadwise this winter with both easyJet and Ryanair on the route. I don't know how much the Airbus connection plays a part.

I would have thought that Brussels and Frankfurt are complementary as hubs. LH were quite happy to begin code shares with flybmi on FRA and MUC. Their Brussels Airlines operation didn't seem to be a block, although I note your concern is the larger aircraft returning to the BRU route after quite a number of years (assuming they do). Whilst MUC with easyJet would be something positive, I would prefer a LH operation of some sort or at least a codeshare, and that isn't likely to happen with easyJet.

easyJet doesn't seem afraid to try BRS on routes it barely serves from other UK airports; La Rochelle and Ostersund are examples with Gatwick the only other UK airport out of the three that serve these destinations (the others are Geneva and Copenhagen respectively). Against that, easyJet would not return to Malpensa or increase Rome or Paris CDG, despite consistently high loads on the latter two.

I suppose only a return of an Air France associated airline would be the likely carrier if someone else popped up on the CDG route.

In summary then, easyJet has shown that it isn't afraid to try BRS on routes that at first sight don't seem obvious but for the most part they seem to succeed.

 

[Jerry]

I’m just wondering whether Lufthansa wouldn’t want to harm the potential success of the larger aircraft to fly to Brussels from may.

That could be there strategy. Try and get as much of the connecting traffic as possible through Brussels with the rest going to Heathrow.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

The snag with the theory that LH won't restore the FRA route because of their putting on larger aircraft on their BRU route is that the change had appeared on the Brussels Airlines booking site a few months ago. Unless they had months of prior warning that flybmi was going out of business (which they wouldn't have had) they were quite content for flybmi to code share on FRA against the larger BRU aircraft.

 

[Marko1]

But Lufthansa does not have a similar sized aircraft of its own so it too would have to operate a larger aircraft. I note that many of bmi s fra services were operated by the e135 .

 

[Jerry]

But Lufthansa does not have a similar sized aircraft of its own so it too would have to operate a larger aircraft. I note that many of bmi s fra services were operated by the e135 .

Smallest aircraft it has is the CRJ900 of Cityline

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Lufthansa operated BRS-FRA from the end of March 2008 until the end of April 2009. They used Bae 146-300 aircraft of Eurowings at a frequency of 3 x daily (21 x weekly). This provided at least 600 seats per day on the route which seemed a lot.

Within six months of its opening Lufthansa announced that connecting passengers from BRS had used every one of its long haul routes from FRA. From that it seemed that LH was looking at a high frequency (for an airport of BRS's size) but that Bae 146-300 aircraft were too large.

During the 13-months of the route's life 98,591 passengers were carried. The best month was June 2008 which saw 9,858 passengers. Even this only gave an average monthly load of just under 55. The summer monthly average was in the range 45-51. Winter saw fewer passengers but I have a recollection that the frequency was reduced at times, although Mayfly and the winter 08/09 timetable doesn't support that belief.

The final month, April 2009, carried 8695 passengers when it seemed the frequency was 21 x weekly, so an average load that month of just over 48.

It does seem that an E135/145 is the right sized aircraft for a 3 x daily frequency to FRA but we don't know how well the code share worked for flybmi (originally bmi regional), or for LH for that matter. Furthermore, flybmi had become so unreliable in terms of cancellations that some people were bound to be put off booking. Even so, BRS-FRA saw healthy passenger growth during flybmi's tenure as I set out in #321 above.

Cityline's CRJ900s seem to have a seating capacity of 79 which might work. Bear in mind that LH's previous 13-month BRS-FRA experiment occurred at the height of the recession with 2009 being the only year this century where BRS saw a fall in overall annual passengers numbers - over 600,000, a drop of 10% on the previous year. I know for a fact that LH blamed the recession and said that they would be back when economic conditions improved. There were strong rumours in 2011 that they would return with bmi regional which they owned at the time. The following year they sold bmi regional to Sector Aviation Holdings and that led to the bmi regional-BRS connection and the return of a FRA route in 2013.

 

[forest1979]

Is eurowings out the frame? Do they not operate out of Frankfurt? They have Q400’s in their fleet.
Maybe once or twice a day with a slightly bigger aircraft might be a goer? Times have changed. I don’t see how an airport of Bristol’s size can’t fill a jet daily to a major hub or European city like Frankfurt... how do they manage at smaller airports? There is no competition at Bristol really in German routes.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Is eurowings out the frame? Do they not operate out of Frankfurt? They have Q400’s in their fleet.
Maybe once or twice a day with a slightly bigger aircraft might be a goer? Times have changed. I don’t see how an airport of Bristol’s size can’t fill a jet daily to a major hub or European city like Frankfurt... how do they manage at smaller airports? There is no competition at Bristol really in German routes.

Eurowings don't operate into FRA at the moment. Three winter long haul routes are planned for later this year.

Lufthansa itself operates to a number of UK airports with London City being the smallest but that's a special case of course. London City apart, Glasgow seems the smallest UK airport to host Lufthansa. It has an annual passenger throughput about a million more than BRS. The smallest Lufthansa aircraft appear to be A319s. It looks that CityLine with its CRJs doesn't fly into FRA.

So, short of a code share with someone (I can't think who), it seems increasingly hard to see how the BRS-FRA link might be restored. A single daily flight with a small Airbus might not be attractive to connecting passengers (or to Lufthansa) as it would make connecting to and from much of the airline's long haul network very unattractive with exceedingly long waits for some connecting flights.

 

[Marko1]

I think it looks like it’s goodbye to Frankfurt and aim for a link to Munich with easyJet instead. Then focus on encouraging klm who have always been faithful to brs to increase its connectivity and build up the Brussels route as well

 

[TheLocalYokel]

I think it looks like it’s goodbye to Frankfurt and aim for a link to Munich with easyJet instead. Then focus on encouraging klm who have always been faithful to brs to increase its connectivity and build up the Brussels route as well

Or get Air France back to operate connections via CDG.

 

[Kernow Bravo]

So, short of a code share with someone (I can't think who), it seems increasingly hard to see how the BRS-FRA link might be restored. A single daily flight with a small Airbus might not be attractive to connecting passengers (or to Lufthansa) as it would make connecting to and from much of the airline's long haul network very unattractive with exceedingly long waits for some connecting flights.

Presumably an arrangement similar to the (allegedly!) upcoming CityJet operation for SN may also be possible for LH? After all, KLM can run the E190/E195 BRS-AMS at the frequency they do, albeit there is probably more of a point-to-point (O&D) market BRS-AMS than to either FRA or MUC.

SN ex-BRU does not offer the reach of LH other than perhaps to African destinations so I'm not sure that LH group providing only BRU as a connecting hub from BRS will provide much competition to KLM via AMS. AF offering connections via CDG on the other hand may canibalise the AMS connecting traffic, although all revenues end up in the same place of course!

It would be interesting to discover the balance of passengers from the BRS catchment connecting at mainland Europe hubs vs those who make the trip to LHR for a non-stop flight so as to understand the total size of the market. Whilst EZY and FR offer an enviable variety of destinations from BRS, the fact remains that few are daily services with all the implications for pax who need flexibility or any fallout in the case of irrops, so one would expect there to be a market for reliable daily services.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Presumably an arrangement similar to the (allegedly!) upcoming CityJet operation for SN may also be possible for LH? After all, KLM can run the E190/E195 BRS-AMS at the frequency they do, albeit there is probably more of a point-to-point (O&D) market BRS-AMS than to either FRA or MUC.

SN ex-BRU does not offer the reach of LH other than perhaps to African destinations so I'm not sure that LH group providing only BRU as a connecting hub from BRS will provide much competition to KLM via AMS. AF offering connections via CDG on the other hand may canibalise the AMS connecting traffic, although all revenues end up in the same place of course!

It would be interesting to discover the balance of passengers from the BRS catchment connecting at mainland Europe hubs vs those who make the trip to LHR for a non-stop flight so as to understand the total size of the market. Whilst EZY and FR offer an enviable variety of destinations from BRS, the fact remains that few are daily services with all the implications for pax who need flexibility or any fallout in the case of irrops, so one would expect there to be a market for reliable daily services.

I don't know what the percentage figures are for passengers flying from BRS to AMS with KLM and transferring on to connecting flights. A number of years ago I seem to recall reading it was around 60% but whether the increasing number of easyJet and Ryanair point to point flights around Europe has affected that figure I don't know.

Before the easyJet (mainly) expansion some people would use AMS for short haul connections. I did so myself on one occasion to reach Geneva before easyJet began its own service from BRS. Probably some still do with European destinations not available at BRS or through inadequate frequency.

The total number of passengers flying from BRS to hubs in 2018 (ie AMS, BRU, DUB, FRA and MUC) was 1,019,315 according to CAA stats.

easyJet flew point to point to AMS against KLM and probably carried around 160,000 passengers (we know they carried that amount in 2017 because KLM published its own numbers for that year), and Ryanair flew point to point to DUB against EIR. I can only 'guestimate' but let's say Ryanair carried 300,000 in 2018. flybmi also had a code share with Air France at Paris CDG but only to 20-odd French cities so I have discounted CDG as a hub from BRS.

Broadly then that would mean about 550,000 passengers travelling to hubs with airlines offering connectivity. How many did connect is anyone's guess. If it was the 60% I mentioned earlier with KLM the figure would be somewhere around 330,000.

CAA stats tell us that each year about five million passengers from/to the South West use the London airports, mainly Heathrow, but that's the entire South West not just the West of England as Greater Bristol-plus is often known.

 

[alphagolf]

Turkish Airlines

Sent a message to Turkish Airlines earlier this evening on Instagram about when we will see them operating from Bristol Airport, got quite an interesting response:-

We have codeshare flights for now, we are currently working on providing you new routes, we have something up our sleeves. Announcements will be made soon on turkishairlines.com

 

[Jerry]

Interesting reply!

 

[superking]

A good reply being positive but also cryptic.We wait with open arms for them and hope things happen for the good of BRS.

 

[Marko1]

‘Something up their sleeves ‘. Very interesting.

 

[Kernow Bravo]

What are the 'codeshare flights for now' the TK response refers to?

 

[alphagolf]

What are the 'codeshare flights for now' the TK response refers to?

Currently if you book via Turkish Airlines booking engine flights are via DUB with Aer Lingus...........