British Airways

[Lamix1W]

Hi all

I used the BA last Thursday afternoon. Can't believe what I've been missing all my life! Perhaps a little over the top but the experience from boarding to disembarking was excellent. 92 pax in total and the crew served everybody their drinks in under 15 minutes.

From wheels up at LBA I was getting on the heathrow express in less that an hour. Now that I feel is excellent. Plus there's nothing like a G &T and flight level 190 to set the tone.

Overall an excellent experience, we just need the nightstopper now to enable getting to london that bit earlier.

 

[LBAYORKIE]

Came back from London on BA1344 tonight. 99 pax, with only 14 on return flight.

 

[ridgeback]

Think you misheard them LBAYORKIE.

The return BA1345 had 43 on it.

Pleased to see yr 1344 was 13 mins early into Leeds with a healthy near 100 load.

Loads have been really quite good this week I'm pleased to note.

Regards

 

[LBAYORKIE]

You could be right, my hearings not what it used to be. Let's hope I got it wrong.

 

[ridgeback]

I was right. The load was 40 odd.

I just flew up tonight with 104 on board also.

 

[LBA787]

Out of interest what kind of loads do we need to be seeing?
How many pax per flight?

:crazy:

 

[GMN]

Unfortunately we had to fly into MAN last night ex LHR off an inbound long-hauler due to a lack of a LBA Saturday evening flight (although we did fly LBA-LHR on the outbound). Interesting to note that the BA1376 (A319) we flew on was overbooked and were looking for offloads onto the 2100 departure (55mins later).

 

[White Heather]

I get the impression that slowly but surely the loads on LHR are improving. Bearing in mind that the route is still not much over a year old, I find it encouraging. What isn't encouraging is the way that BA are already chopping some flights. That may or may not be a cause of concern, but it will hardly help the public's view of the route or do anything other than slow down it's progress. Hopefully in summer 2014, loads will be such that BA realise the route can be very successful and we have to hope that before too long, they will sort out the lack of a night stopper and early morning southbound flight. I know LBA management are constantly pushing for this.

 

[a300boy]

I think we all know if we do not get a night stopper the route is probably going to be withdrawn eventually, so lets hope the figures keep rising to make the prospect of the route upgrade possible.

 

[Aviador]

Out of interest what kind of loads do we need to be seeing?
How many pax per flight?

:crazy:

Sadly it's all about yield and not the number of passengers the route's carrying. It could be carrying full loads every time and BA could still choose to chop the route if it isn't achieving the yield they think it should be achieving. On top of that, LBA is always going to be up against other destinations that might offer better yield. The old City Flyer route to LGW was lost despite achieving good loads which leads me to believe it was pulled for similar reasons. Still, we have to look on the bright side, which is we still have LHR for the time being, so lets keep supporting it.

 

[LBAYORKIE]

I am not sure how important yield/profit is to this route. I suspect that BA's real intention is to simply draw in passengers to its connecting flights from LHR that would otherwise have chosen to fly on KLM for example. In other words its the headcount that's really important as I imagine that in truth the amount of revenue allocated on a connecting/through ticket to the domestic leg is going to be so small even a full aircraft would never pay its way. It's really down to how the airline do their sums and how they attribute increased use of services ex LHR, to passengers fed through from LBA (and other regional origins).

I am an exception because I use the service to travel from London (always go down on train because of no early morning flight) but those using it for purely domestic travel must be few and far between, and at £50 each way this is never going to make BA any money either.

In truth then by basing a plane at LBA and increasing the appeal to domestic travellers, BA are not actually going to raise any significant extra revenue and what is more they
will pick up the incredibly high costs of basing an aircraft away from LHR, making the service even less cost efficient than it is at the moment.

KLM seem to have the right idea, they place more importance on the pax numbers that are carried onto their connecting services rather than the revenue vs direct operating costs.

Do you agree?

 

[User0001]

KLM seem to have the right idea, they place more importance on the pax numbers that are carried onto their connecting services rather than the revenue vs direct operating costs.

Do you agree?

I don't agree in the slightest.

As a business, you have to at least cover your costs, and hopefully, make a profit. You could have all the passengers in the world, it doesn't mean you will make money. People always seem to put a higher importance on passenger numbers rather than what it is they pay for their ticket, which is what the airlines look for.

Anybody with aviation knowledge could hire a B757, fly it from LBA to JFK and charge £1. Would you get the passenger numbers? You bet. Would you make any money and last more than a week? Doubt it.

Its all about money, money, money. If you don't have that, you don't have a route. This is why routes are often pulled, its because they can make more money elsewhere, not just because they may get more passengers.

 

[ridgeback]

The route seems stuck on 9,700 pax/month if you look at the other thread (apart from September/October when it did considerably more and looked great)

How has it done exactly the same numbers every month since it started? I just don't get that. No effect from the advertising? No effect from word of mouth?

I'm genuinely astonished at the erratic nature of the loads on a day to day basis. It's bizarre.

 

[lbaspotter]

Here are the Heathrow route numbers for the last 12 months, 2013

JAN = 7,763
FEB = 9,326
MAR = 9,996
APR = 9,729
MAY = 9,259
JUN = 9,738
JUL = 9,947
AUG = 10,058
SEP = 11,893
OCT = 11,381
NOV = 10,187
DEC = 9,440

 

[airforced]

LBAYORKIE I agree with you as opposed to the view user001 has.

You made the very salient point in my view when saying, "it's really down to how the airline do their sums and how they attribute increased use of services ex LHR, to passengers fed through from LBA (and other regional origins)".

That is what KLM do. They use the LBA route purely as a feeder as I can't imagine there can be any other explanation for them running such regular services from every regional airport imaginable.

Lets hope that the BA sums do add up and we can keep the service.

 

[ridgeback]

KLM have done it beautifully.

Thanks to their unlimited slots and geographic proximity to the UK they have capitalised on LHR's slot constrained nature and provide all these feeder services on 70,80,100 seat machines.

I've said before if LHR had its 2000m 3rd northerly runway BA wld probably hv a fleet of 90-odd seat Embraers doing routes such as LBA and it wld be successful but they don't and when they start a route you immediately require a lot of people to fill 132 seats in each direction on BA's smallest machine.

Furthermore were LHR to have the 3rd runway routes like LBA cld hv the yearned for 0800 arrival into London.

All that said I still believe the offering wrt schedule/equipment/terminal 5/price is very attractive and a metropolis the size of ours shd provide more passengers than we currently do. I don't blame BA and I don't blame LBA for this, but it really does surprise me.

 

[michael]

will be interesting to see what the figures are for this January compared to January 2013. Anything over 9300 would be an increase in excess of 20% year on year. If that were to continue through the year we could be looking at over 12000 per month later in the year infact 20% on to September's figure would be in excess of 14,000. Here's hoping....

 

[kevinbev]

I have been looking at going to JFK in March and starting off from LBA. Going through Skyscanner I can get flights for about £410 via AMS, cheapest I can get going via LHR is coming up at over £470. Some of the flights are cheaper going LBA-AMS-CDG-JFK than LBA-LHR-JFK. If there is more than one travelling there is a big saving going via AMS. Question is why is it so much cheaper going via AMS, do BA charge more going via LHR because of the so called high cost of slots there. I have only ever planned to travel once with BA from LBA to LHR en route to Brisbane back in October but that flight was cancelled when I was driving to the airport. Ended up flying out of MAN, I came back via AMS which was easy and stress free. I would like to use the BA service but the extra worry on the flight being pulled at last minute would be on my mind right up to getting on the aircraft. Does anyone have the stats on how many KLM flights have been cancelled compared to BA from LBA! Not really heard of many. BA have got to be more competitive on their pricing to get the flights full.

 

[ridgeback]

We've done all this to death really and I guess the majority agree with you

KLM also fly MAN-AMS but BA fill 9 or 10 a/c a day from MAN. Go figure.

I don't hv any stats but the route is very reliable these days IMHO. It wasn't in its infancy but it is now.

 

[White Heather]

Well for what it's worth, my view is that BA must, before starting this route, have known the likely yield at the outset, and how long it would take to build the route up to acceptable loads, and have a target for both passenger numbers and yield within a certain timescale. The indications are that there is steady growth and I think the crucial time for this route is this summer. If we cannot sustain 5 figure passenger loads in summer then I fear for the future. However, with the Tour de France and knock on impact on the region, the summer should, by rights, be much better than last year.

I was always told by the director of LBA that it took 2 years for a route to build up to where it should be, so lets just hope that BA don't pull the plug on us before it has really had a chance to build itself up. Surely once the passenger figures are up, and staying up, then BA can start tweaking fares to increase yield, knowing they have a steady customer base.