Helvetic Airways

[TheLocalYokel]

I contacted Helvetic yesterday to enquire about BRS-ZRH over the winter they have apologised that there will be no flights to Bristol over the winter but flights will re-commence again in Spring 2015.

Further to my previous post, I have received another communication from Helvetic Airways advising that the Summer 2015 schedule will be finalised by the end of October after which it will be viewable on the airlines website.

BRS has now disappeared from the Helvetic website route map and from the drop down list of destinations.That said so have some other destinations so it's to be hoped that it's a temporary thing whilst next summer is being finalised.

 

[alphagolf]

I contacted Helvetic yesterday to enquire about BRS-ZRH over the winter they have apologised that there will be no flights to Bristol over the winter but flights will re-commence again in Spring 2015.

Further to my previous post, I have received another communication from Helvetic Airways advising that the Summer 2015 schedule will be finalised by the end of October after which it will be viewable on the airlines website.

BRS has now disappeared from the Helvetic website route map and from the drop down list of destinations.That said so have some other destinations so it's to be hoped that it's a temporary thing whilst next summer is being finalised.

I received an email from Helvetic customer services this morning confirming that Helvetic will not be operating a BRS - ZRH route any longer even though previous correspondence suggested a return in Spring 2015, maybe worth bmiregional taking a look, would fit there fleet size quite well.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

I received an email from Helvetic customer services this morning confirming that Helvetic will not be operating a BRS - ZRH route any longer even though previous correspondence suggested a return in Spring 2015, maybe worth bmiregional taking a look, would fit there fleet size quite well.

Maybe a possibility. bmi regional is operating some of the former BACon routes that were abandoned in 2007 when Flybe took on the BACon mantle and promptly closed the five-aircraft BRS base. Of these bmir operates Frankfurt and Munich and did operate Milan Malpensa until this winter. Zurich and Dusseldorf were two other routes that BACon flew and there have been suggestions in another forum that DUS might be on the cards.

Perhaps the snag with Switzerland is that Geneva is so well covered by easyJet (and ski charters in season) where the BRS route has been the busiest in terms of passengers carried of any UK route outside London for the past few years.

It's possible to get to most places in Switzerland using the convenient railway station at Geneva Airport (I've used it myself a number of times) that a lesser known airline (in the UK that is) will find it difficult to get a foothold. I thought that last summer's loads gave real hope that Helvetic would at least become a summer regular but that's clearly not happening.

 

[tpm]

One question (apologies for straying a little off topic for this thread) is if bmi regional would operate such a route 3-4x per week rather than the 5-7x they do for other destinations. They don't seem to do these 'three times a week' routes, perhaps because they're primarily targeting business customers? There must be many other routes which could be well served 3x weekly with their little jets and which are not big enough for Easyjet/Ryanair's jets.

Edit:

It's possible to get to most places in Switzerland using the convenient railway station at Geneva Airport (I've used it myself a number of times).

That may be true, but Zurich is still 4 hours by train, for example, and Basel about 3 hours, not to mention wealthy border areas of Germany and Austria for whom Zurich is the closest international hub airport, which are 5-6 hours from Geneva.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

That may be true, but Zurich is still 4 hours by train, for example, and Basel about 3 hours, not to mention wealthy border areas of Germany and Austria for whom Zurich is the closest international hub airport, which are 5-6 hours from Geneva.

That's a fair point. I remember using ZRH once from LHR and then had a long train trip to Interlaken. I've also done Interlaken via GVA and the train trip seemed about the same length of time. It wasn't direct but the Swiss rail system is so efficient that I never worry about factoring in changes of train.

But you are right about the market in the ZRH hinterland.

Helvetic wasn't great for business travel at 2 x weekly last winter and 3 x weekly last summer. It might be venturing into conspiracy theories but I wonder if Helvetic really did intend coming back next spring but then perhaps couldn't get the deal from BRS that it hoped for because bmi regional (a much greater presence at BRS and therefore presumably of more value to the airport) had expressed an interest in ZRH to the airport.