Route Development & Rumours

[Marko1]

Yes red flyer informed us on nov 4 . Good news to see some variety. Dalaman fri am Antalya day pm

 

[forest1979]

Turkish look to have gone into STN.. good for them.. I wonder if they are thinking about further expansion into the UK with a new airport and new aircraft coming online?

 

[BRSregular]

Turkish will be increasing their Istanbul to BHX route to 2x daily from March. Do you think that would put any chances of a Bristol route to bed or not make any difference?

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Turkish will be increasing their Istanbul to BHX route to 2x daily from March. Do you think that would put any chances of a Bristol route to bed or not make any difference?

I guess it depends on how many passengers they attract from the BRS catchment at BHX. No doubt a lot of Gloucestershire residents use BHX across many airlines, as for many in that county BHX is as easy to reach as BRS.

There would still be a very large gap in their network from Bristol south-westwards but that applies to many legacy airlines and they don't seem to be falling over themselves to do something about it.

Another point is that West Country travellers seem content to use LHR, especially for long-haul (although UK-Istanbul isn't long-haul in itself) and some of Turkish's LHR passengers might well emanate from the West Country/South West.

In short, I don't know whether the extra BHX rotations would deter Turkish if they were looking at a BRS operation.

What's your view on this?

 

[BRSregular]

I think at 14 times per week, up from 10, they obviously value BHX. Impossible to tell if that rules BRS out but if they are increasing an existing route instead of trying a new one, perhaps it does. Or perhaps they’ll announce a daily BRS route tomorrow!! If I had a crystal ball I’d be speculating this from a far more exotic location than my current one

 

[Jerry]

It's possible that they want to maximise BHX first before launching BRS. I don't think it rules them out at Bristol in the future just maybe not till 2021 and beyond maybe?

 

[TheLocalYokel]

It's possible that they want to maximise BHX first before launching BRS. I don't think it rules them out at Bristol in the future just maybe not till 2021 and beyond maybe?

We've been saying this for years. It must have been 6-7 years ago when that nice Mr Calder was suggesting in print that BRS was likely to be the next UK airport to be served by the airline from Istanbul.

 

[Ray Finkle]

Turkish have been 14x weekly at BHX in the summer for a while now.

One year it dropped to 12x weekly so there is more than a little spin involved with the headlines that they are increasing to double daily as it's just back to where they were before

We've been saying this for years. It must have been 6-7 years ago when that nice Mr Calder was suggesting in print that BRS was likely to be the next UK airport to be served by the airline from Istanbul.

Turkish to BRS is another one of those routes that to us enthusiasts seems blindingly obvious but for whatever reason has not happened yet.

 

[Marko1]

I think if they wanted to Turkish would have been here by now.

 

[forest1979]

I agree. I don’t think they will be coming anytime soon..

 

[Marko1]

I was having a look at capacity that had been lost by the collapse of Thomas cook. Most seems to have been replaced by Tui and EasyJet. However some of the Greek islands ( Zante and Corfu ) plus Tunisia have not had capacity replaced. Additionally I note that easyJet is primarily using the a319 on its Greek flights this summer further reducing capacity available. Given I thought that demand for Greece and Tunisia is increasing it seems a big decrease

 

[Severn]

The A319 is being shown to operate Greek destinations from most EZY/EJU bases even when there is only an A320 slot available.
I assume this is either a glitch on the system or a cunning plan by easyJet to change these all to A320s at some point and then being able to announce they’re increasing capacity to Greece?
Either way, the schedules are not yet complete and although I have no inside knowledge, I’m positive that there is more is to come at BRS.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

I was having a look at capacity that had been lost by the collapse of Thomas cook. Most seems to have been replaced by Tui and EasyJet. However some of the Greek islands ( Zante and Corfu ) plus Tunisia have not had capacity replaced. Additionally I note that easyJet is primarily using the a319 on its Greek flights this summer further reducing capacity available. Given I thought that demand for Greece and Tunisia is increasing it seems a big decrease

The A319 is being shown to operate Greek destinations from most EZY/EJU bases even when there is only an A320 slot available.
I assume this is either a glitch on the system or a cunning plan by easyJet to change these all to A320s at some point and then being able to announce they’re increasing capacity to Greece?
Either way, the schedules are not yet complete and although I have no inside knowledge, I’m positive that there is more is to come at BRS.

Following the pattern of recent years some easyJet routes either don't commence or don't increase in capacity until peak summer, ie mid June/July onwards. This usually coincides with the arrival of the additional based aircraft that has been a feature at BRS for several years. The extra based aircraft becomes part of the regular summer base complement the following summer when another extra based aircraft arrives from mid-summer that year, and thus the pattern continues and in so doing the easyJet aircraft base complement builds from year to year.

The below airport/easyJet press release didn't appear until 16th April last year:

• easyJet will position a 17th aircraft at its Bristol base from summer 2019
• Brand new routes to Milan and Brindisi in Italy and Biarritz in France will launch in July
• easyJet will add a second daily flight between Bristol and Paris to allow day trips for business travellers from July
• easyJet summer flights from Bristol will increase by 10% to 770 flights a week in peak summer
• easyJet will this year fly 55 million passengers since launching operations in Bristol over 18 years ago

That press release was the first intimation that there would be new easyJet routes to Milan, Brindisi and Biarritz, and yet they were to commence in less than three months time. Interesting too that the opportunity for day trips for business travellers to Paris would be available following the increase in rotations on the CDG route was highlighted. Yet a year later it's being made awkward by switching one of the daily rotations to Orly.

 

[Marko1]

Fares on flights to Greece are painfully high so let’s hope that’s the case

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Now that BRS is likely to see a ceiling of 10 mppa perhaps for at least the next 18 months, perhaps indefinitely, I wonder how that will affect their immediate strategy.

They have a million more passengers a year 'to play with' before reaching their current planning limit. For a number of years the management has said that growth will lie mainly with existing airline customers, and so it has proved.

If something like a Turkish or a Swiss came along they might put out the welcome mat because it would still leave plenty of passenger space for the easyJets, Ryanairs and TUIs over the next couple of years.

However, what about something like Jet2? Would that airline be too similar to TUI and even the new easyJet Holidays for the airport to go out of its way to offer a too-good-to-turn-down deal at a time when it's getting ever closer to its planning limit? Jet2 might take up too much of the remaining passenger cap availability.

If BRS was hoping for Jet2 at some point they might miss out if that airline is looking to 'come south-west' sooner than later. There are some rumours doing the rounds that Jet2 is talking to both CWL and EXT. I imagine they would be given an outstanding deal to go to CWL. Pitching up at one or both of those airports might be tempting to Jet2 as they might feel they can still get a share of the generally well-off BRS catchment. It might be a hard sell to get much with easyJet and TUI well set at BRS but they might get a bit.

I notice that Jet2 regularly advertise their BHX programme in the West Country edition of the Metro free newspaper. Probably the emasculated county of Gloucestershire 'proper' (minus the South Gloucestershire Unitary Authority on the edge of Bristol) looks to BHX as much as BRS anyway when it comes to flying, almost certainly the further north one goes into the county. It would be fascinating to know how much custom Jet2 at BHX picks up from the Bristol area itself.

 

[Marko1]

I can’t imagine that Bristols management team expected the plans to be approved wholly first time around given the level of publicity regarding objections etc. Given the fact that negotiations with airlines can take a fair while I should imagine that if jet2 has been talked to or should I say talking to then they would have been fully aware of the 10 mill gap. Personally the fact that easyJet has yet to use the slots it has acquired suggests to me that it may have been done to block a jet2 entry perhaps. I’ve read somewhere that jet2 likes to be no1 or no2 at it’s bases. That could be a challenge at Bristol given easyJet’s dominance and the growth to 7 based tui aircraft.
I’m sceptical about jet2 to be honest. If they do arrive in the sw uk they like to go big and can cardiff or Exeter have the demand for say 4 plus aircraft each ? That I doubt

 

[Seasider]

I don't think EXT could support that level but CWL would be able to support a 3 aircraft base.

 

[IanFarquharson]

I don't think EXT could support that level but CWL would be able to support a 3 aircraft base.

Jet2 have no immediate plans for new UK bases, they will however concentrate on MAN, BHX & STN for growth.
I am sure there better people on this forum who can add more !

 

[Jerry]

Jet2 have no immediate plans for new UK bases, they will however concentrate on MAN, BHX & STN for growth.
I am sure there better people on this forum who can add more !

How do you know that?

 

[Severn]

I don't know for sure, and I'm not to saying it isn't possible, but I can see why Jet2 might rather expand at their current large bases rather than open a new base at CWL/BOH/EXT.

Apart from the odd city-break destination, Jet2 mostly serves the same destinations that TUI do. I doubt TUI will roll over and let Jet2 in at CWL without a fight which means if Jet2 were to arrive there would be a huge increase in flights on routes that are already served. I'm pretty sure that would not be sustainable, and more importantly would it make money for Jet2? Instead of placing aircraft into the SouthWest, their other option would be to instead place aircraft into one of their larger bases that are already doing well.

To give you an example, I've made a list below of the routes Jet2 serves from it's smallest base BFS (4x B738) in the peak summer. I've then noted which routes are already served from CWL and which are not.

These are the routes Jet2 serve from BFS that are already served from CWL:
MLA - served by RYR 2x weekly
BOJ - served by TUI 2x weekly
DBV - served by TUI 1x weekly
LCA - served by TUI 1x weekly
PFO - served by TUI 2x weekly
NAP - served by TUI 1x weekly
FAO - served by RYR 2x weekly, TUI 1x weekly
AYT - served by TUI 2x weekly
DLM - served by TUI 3x weekly
ZTH - served by TUI 2x weekly
RHO - served by TUI 2x weekly
HER - served by TUI 1x weekly
LPA - served by TUI 1x weekly
ACE - served by TUI 2x weekly
TFS - served by TUI 3x weekly
MAH - served by TUI 2x weekly
IBZ - served by TUI 3x weekly
PMI - served by TUI 6x weekly, VLG 3x weekly
REU - served by TUI 1x weekly
AGP - served by VLG 4x weekly, RYR 3x weekly, TUI 2x weekly


These are the routes Jet2 serve from BFS that are not currently served from CWL:
ADB
FUE
LEI
GRO