Summer 2013 charters

[tleeds]

Using an Airbus 321 for the Thomson charters would be a better choice of aircraft as it can been operated by the new LBA based crews instead of having a mixed fleet with 2x Airbus 320's and 1x Boeing 757 been based.

Will Monarch be able to get the A321 in and out of LBA fully loaded and on a hot Summer's day...?!

 

[White Heather]

Cosmos Holidays are now on sale and bookable from Leeds Bradford for summer 2013. I think this is the first time they have used LBA since the 1980's. They are offering 9 destinations, Tenerife, Palma, Rome, Heraklion, Barcelona, Arrecife, Mahon, Dalaman and Larnaca.

 

[White Heather]

Using an Airbus 321 for the Thomson charters would be a better choice of aircraft as it can been operated by the new LBA based crews instead of having a mixed fleet with 2x Airbus 320's and 1x Boeing 757 been based.

Will Monarch be able to get the A321 in and out of LBA fully loaded and on a hot Summer's day...?!

Better still, lets have an A330 from Monarch to fly the Thomson routes! Knowing how popular Thomson are, they would still probably fill it and it could easily cope with all the routes on offer too, although not sure how suited it is for the shorter routes such as Mahon.

If Monarch end up with Thomas Cook on board too (leaving the two based A320's to do Monarch's own and Cosmos Holidays) then they need something with more capacity and the range - that's if Thomas Cook ever get around to deciding what they are doing next year!

 

[lbia]

Thomas Cook had problems getting their A320's to the canaries and turkey so no doubt an A320 to Sharm will be going without any bags.

Be interesting to see what happens as a 757 would be a rostering nightmare and A320/321 will both struggle from LBA. A300 anyone?

 

[Malaga]

As far as I know, Larnaca at 2148 miles is effectively the longest route for an A320 from LBA to be done on a regular basis.

Sharm el Sheik is 2551 miles so quite a lot further and probably not feasable from LBA.

I am not 100% sure about this but I think the A321s performance is inferior to the A320.

I think one solution to the problem is to drop the Sharm el Sheik route, then the A320s can easily cover all the other routes. Maybe Jet2 with their 757 could fly it!

Regards

Malaga

 

[channex 757]

I just had a look on the Monarch website for flights next summer and it looks as tho it will be an a320 as it is showing on the seating maps with an aircraft with 30 rows.

Also over winter, it looks as if it will be an a321 as it is showing an aircraft with 37 rows

 

[Sherburnflyer92]

I just had a look on the Monarch website for flights next summer and it looks as tho it will be an a320 as it is showing on the seating maps with an aircraft with 30 rows.

Also over winter, it looks as if it will be an a321 as it is showing an aircraft with 37 rows

They are ZB flights. Not TOM flights, which are the ones we are discussing.
I'd like to see a A300, as suggested maybe they could drop SSH replace it with something more "thomson" enabling it to be operated by a A320. What would be better is for a 737-800/757 from thomson themselves.

 

[lbaspotter]

They are ZB flights. Not TOM flights, which are the ones we are discussing.
I'd like to see a A300, as suggested maybe they could drop SSH replace it with something more "thomson" enabling it to be operated by a A320. What would be better is for a 737-800/757 from thomson themselves.

We are not talking about Monarch scheduled (ZB) flights here guys, We are on about Thomson Holiday charter flights which currently look like to be been operated Monarch charter (MON).

I think you'll find that Sharm el sheikh is a Thomson Holidays type route now-a-days seen as it's going to be a year round service, They serve it from most of the UK airports. The A300's wont be coming to LBA as they are used out of MAN and LGW plus the fleet is been reduced as there getting old like the Boeing 757's.
Also forget even thinking about them using the A330's out of LBA. As those are mainly used for Long Haul routes and the Military Contract's out of RAF Brize Norton.

Me! Well I still think we will see 1x A321 operating the charters and 2x A320 operating the Scheduled flights next summer, Just because of the crewing issues.

 

[Sherburnflyer92]

By Thomson i meant Turkey somewhere where the dominate the market well against TCX they do in terms of number of flights offered. Egypt is somewhere tom do have a very good presence don't get me wrong.

 

[lbia]

What we haven't thought is that the scheduled routes may have an Airbus flight deck crew based at Leeds. The charter routes may be served by a 757, which makes the longer routes more feasible operationally, but be crewed by Manchester 757 flight deck. The cabin crew could operate both without any problems. The 'charter' aircraft is not that heavily utilised compared to the scheduled routes so I'm sure it wouldn't be THAT expensive to send over a couple of flight deck each day in a taxi from MAN. Operationally an Monarch A320 would struggle to SSH as they are not the most powerful aircraft, similarly the A321 would struggle.

Either way it will be very interesting and almost exciting to see how it all develops. It does make financial sense really to operate Thomas Cook/Thomson's flights with Monarch as there is going to be a crew base and handling agreement already set up with the scheduled routes. No doubt a much lower cost to the tour operators that putting their own aircraft in as there are various economies of scale.

I will be interested to see how Monarch fair with performance with the A320 from Leeds, the majority of their A320's have the lesser powerful engine option. I don't know if anyone notices that Thomas Cook generally operate the same aircraft out of Leeds, either G-OMYA, G-SUEW, G-DHRJ or G-KKAZ? These are the more powerful A320's. Much like Jet2's 737-300's, the lesser powerful aircraft are subject to much more performance issues. Monarch's A320 fleet is fairly old compared to Thomas Cook's and generally have the CFM56-5A engines which are first generation A320 engines, which are less powerful than the CFM56-5B engines Thomas Cook have on their newer A320's that circulate through Leeds. One of our neighbours used to be a 757 pilot for MyTravel at Leeds and he convered to the A320 when we had Skyservice operating out of Leeds and he said as much as MYT's 757's needed serious work doing to them, they were a pleasure to fly out of Leeds compared to the Airbus which needed constant non standard departures and special performance. He said A320 family was designed to operate from hub airport to hub airport with perfect long runways and not from any payload restricted or extreme airfields. Be interesting to see how it all goes next year. Leeds has never had a serious Airbus operator on longer routes (well apart from the dodgey Turkish charters and odd TCX) so I'd love to see how it all works.

 

[White Heather]

It depends on what you call 'serious'.

We had LTE operating Fuerteventura with an A320 and further back, First Choice flew LBA to Arrecife using an A321, one of which I flew on. Not quite as far as the Middle East but still a fair distance. We also had other airlines, such as Iberworld also operating regular A320's to Tenerife and Inter European to Larnaca and Paphos . The only Airbus flights I can think of that have gone further than that were those that operated to a year or two back to Medina, and they were a French airline I seem to recall. I don't know if they stopped en route, but Medina is further than Sharm el Sheikh I believe?

 

[tleeds]

Where did Air Luxor fly to? They used their A321's and A330's..

 

[Aviador]

White Heather, the A321 Medina flights went via Istanbul. The furthest I have known the A320 to go from Leeds Bradford Airport is Cyprus and Tenerife. I suspect the 757 would be required for flights to Sharm El Sheikh.

 

[lbia]

It's certainly possible, I meant 'serious' as in an operator on the UK register with very strict standard operating procedures. (I'll leave it to everyone's imagination when it comes to SOP's and Onur Air's flight deck!)

 

[User0001]

Will Monarch's Airbus A320's have the range to get to Sharm el Sheikh from Leeds/Bradford in the height of the summer season especially on a hot summer's day? As I have serious doubts about it.

Using an Airbus 321 for the Thomson charters would be a better choice of aircraft as it can been operated by the new LBA based crews instead of having a mixed fleet with 2x Airbus 320's and 1x Boeing 757 been based.

lbaspotter if you look at the original times you gave in the thomson thread -page 19 the sharm el sheikh flight does fit in with 1 based aircraft. The updated (MON)times given by malaga do not allow the sharm flight to be operated by the based aircraft as the IBZ does not arrive back into LBA until 2 hours 20 minutes after the sharm flight has left. So this well could become a W leg and allow a 757.

 

[User0001]

oh just noticed IBZ starts in late may. Anyway something has to give.

 

[whoshotjimmi]

Is it possible that the majority of the thomson flights will be seats on the monarch scheduled operation? In that case, there would not be a third Monarch aircraft and the likes of sharm, enfidha etc will be operated by non based a/c. For example, having two scheduled departures to Dalaman and two charter flights to Dalaman (on what will probably be the same days) is a little bit coincidental.

Though I hope I am wrong, I am just starting to get the feeling that there is a little too much optimism surrounding it. The announcements by Thomson and Monarch operating at LBA were rather conviently timed imo. Then it turned out that Thomson flights were to be operated by Monarch aircraft. Now the revelation that Sharm and Ibiza timings conflict with each other makes me even more suspicious.

I would be thoroughly unsurprised to find that Monarch will base only two aircraft at LBA next summer, Thomson will base none and there will be no extra charter aircraft. Then, all the routes that Monarch did not announce would be based by non based a/c. I know timings would appear that an extra a/c is to be based at Leeds but it just all seems a little bit hard to believe at the mo.

 

[Lamix1W]

The whole will they won't they issue is getting dragged out too much. We should be excited and optimistic about the massive (in Leeds terms) expansion.

Oh and to help with the conversation, there will be 2 based monarch A320's and a Thomson 737-800 based next summer. As for possible 757 w legs I'm not sure but the 738 has the legs to get to SSH no problem.

 

[tleeds]

Oh and to help with the conversation, there will be 2 based monarch A320's and a Thomson 737-800 based next summer. As for possible 757 w legs I'm not sure but the 738 has the legs to get to SSH no problem.

I was just about to make a similar point as Lamix1W... Don't you think SSH on a W-Leg on any aircraft is a bit of struggle, timing wise more than logistical?

Say the a/c was MAN based, and it departed at 6am it wouldn't arrive into Leeds until 7pm and then depart until 8pm meaning it would probably get into MAN again until 9am the following morning! It is probably out the question also them part basing an aircraft in SSH or anywhere else during the next Summer season..

These are the current times for example anyway, Thomson have got for the MAN-SSH-MAN flights:

13:55 20:30 TOM 572 Thu 18 Jul 13
21:30 02:20 TOM 573 Thu 25 Jul 13

Somehow I just don't see Thomson playing that game..!

I have heard two rumours circling the airport (quite literally) that it is either a Monarch B752 or even a Thomas Cook B752! Would Thomson give up a B738/B752 with such a quiet timetable of routes for a based aircraft...?

 

[Malaga]

oh just noticed IBZ starts in late may. Anyway something has to give.

Revised times for Sharm el Sheik when Ibiza starts are: 1350 - 0205* (MON3805/55)

Regards

Malaga