Ryanair

[Sherburnflyer92]

Then will moan within the year that his profits "are down" due to increased demand etc etc. Nothing to do with his stupid thousands and thousands of seats sold at stupid prices.

 

[Aviador]

I'm sure MOL once claimed FR could let people fly for free and they'd still make money.

 

[Tarn Spotter]

I'm sure MOL once claimed FR could let people fly for free and they'd still make money.

Have to say delighted as our son and his Norwegian partner flying to the u.k. for £16.94 return in December, looked unlikely before Xmas, but at these prices to good to miss. Would have liked prior news of the promotion as they had video called earlier in the month, to advise were going to be grand parents for the 6th time.
Yet more flights to Norway on the horizon and looking like one grandchild birthday in spain and another within 7 days in Norway, not good planning by our children.
My eldest daughter and I share the same birthday, can it happen again?

 

[AirBingley]

At a time when Ryanair are dumping cheap fares this is not going to help their profitability....

Ryanair baggage fee policy ruled 'excessive' in Spain

A Spanish judge says a passenger should not have been forced to pay a fine for extra luggage.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[TheLocalYokel]

At a time when Ryanair are dumping cheap fares this is not going to help their profitability....

Ryanair baggage fee policy ruled 'excessive' in Spain

A Spanish judge says a passenger should not have been forced to pay a fine for extra luggage.

www.bbc.co.uk

It seems to be a ruling of a fairly low level court in Spain which cannot be appealed which in itself suggests that the court is not one that can set far-reaching legal precedents.

Ryanair says the ruling won't affect its policy.

 

[lbaspotter]

Ryanair have added a Sunday Alicante flight for peak summer 2020 (June 7th to Aug 30th) making it 6x weekly service.

FR1221 = ALC 06:40 – LBA 08:25 / FR1222 = LBA 08:50 - ALC 12:35

 

[Statto]

I dont think Ryanair fly from LBA to Skavsta though, so should be no impact

 

[White Heather]

I dont think Ryanair fly from LBA to Skavsta though, so should be no impact

No they haven't ever done that route from LBA, although I for one think someone should. LBA's offering to Scandinavia is non existent (other than Jet2's Christmas Market trips to Copenhagen) which frankly is inexplicable.

 

[a300boy]

We dont have a single flight to Germany now !! How sad is that.

 

[Finger66]

We generally don't have anywhere near enough European city destinations. And opening these up with frequency to attract business travellers isn't easy because too many airlines have a/c too big to start the routes with sensible capacity. Just needs someone to take the gamble, not that is that much of a gamble as I will repeat, we all know the potential

 

[Heathrowflyer]

The sooner we accept that it's essentially a bucket and spade airport and FAM for Eastern European routes ...and be content with airlines believing that too...then we may be able to make realist plans going forward. Take LBA to EDI, the company I work for were charged a fortune for those flights despite Leeds being a financial/legal centre and Edi having similar parent financial institutions. Similarly, flights were empty from Leeds to Brussels despite Brussels being a hot spot for so many corporates. So if these core business routes weren't viable what hope do we have to make other European business routes work. I'm trying to be realistic here.

 

[Finger66]

Badly overpriced flights will never attract enough pax. It would be interesting to know how many city routes from other airports are actually profitable, or is it a case that these airlines feel they have to operate from MAN for example, or they do it just to deter another operator. Correct and reliable frequency at sensible prices does work. We know LBA is too central for a good UK domestic network but as soon as someone properly puts it on the map for the business routes then that should act as a catalyst. Business travellers do use the LCC's but they often have to find alternative routings in one direction because the frequency isn't there. No one is saying we should have 10 a day to FRA and back on an LH A321, but come on flag carriers and LBA management, wake up and smell the coffee. Unless there really is something we are not being told..............and that something doesn't even bear thinking about!

 

[Statto]

The sooner we accept that it's essentially a bucket and spade airport and FAM for Eastern European routes ...and be content with airlines believing that too...then we may be able to make realist plans going forward. Take LBA to EDI, the company I work for were charged a fortune for those flights despite Leeds being a financial/legal centre and Edi having similar parent financial institutions. Similarly, flights were empty from Leeds to Brussels despite Brussels being a hot spot for so many corporates. So if these core business routes weren't viable what hope do we have to make other European business routes work. I'm trying to be realistic here.

The UK market as a whole is dominated by passengers flying for leisure rather than business. This table from the latest CAA passenger survey shows that around 80% of UK passengers are flying for leisure and this includes the London airports which typically have higher business use. Manchester was 83% leisure and notable that it has a similar business / leisure mix to Stansted and Luton which are obviously heavily dominated by low cost carriers. So I don’t really think it’s the airline mix as such, but frequency. Business users will typically want frequency. Ryanair fly twice a day between Leeds and Dublin which is good for business but how many other city routes will they, or any other operator with large aircraft be prepared to offer on a 2 x daily or even a daily frequency. Probably not too many. And there aren’t really too many options in the regional market. Flybe, Loganair or Stobart I guess? Yes, they could offer the frequency but the fare structure would price out most of the leisure market, many of whom who will generally seek out the cheapest deal they can from any airport within a reasonable drive. The best option for the airport is to target city destinations which also offer large connecting hubs - which is what they were trying with bmi and Munich. I think there will be lots of customers from the LBA catchment area travelling to MAN to use a service into a connecting hub somewhere and this is an opportunity to claw back some traffic by offering an alternative hub. Every route development team at small airports across Europe is probably hounding Lufthansa, Iberia, Air France etc and it’s much easier said than done.



https://www.caa.co.uk/uploadedFiles...alysis/Datasets/Passenger_survey/T03_2018.pdf

 

[a300boy]

You cannot argue with the numbers !

 

[White Heather]

The sooner we accept that it's essentially a bucket and spade airport and FAM for Eastern European routes ...and be content with airlines believing that too...then we may be able to make realist plans going forward. Take LBA to EDI, the company I work for were charged a fortune for those flights despite Leeds being a financial/legal centre and Edi having similar parent financial institutions. Similarly, flights were empty from Leeds to Brussels despite Brussels being a hot spot for so many corporates. So if these core business routes weren't viable what hope do we have to make other European business routes work. I'm trying to be realistic here.

Are you forgetting that prior to BMi taking on Brussels and making a total hash of it, Sabena operated the route and it was so successful that it expanded to the point where we had 4 return trips a day on an RJ85 aircraft. They proved that with decent fares and interlining options, there was a real market for the route. The sad thing was that once again, LBA lost a route that was viable due to the failure of the airline elsewhere.
From my perspective having worked for an employer that regularly used both the LBA to GLA and LBA to EDI routes when operated by BMi, it was the advances in technology that drastically reduced the demand. My employer banned us from travelling by air to either of these cities and insisted that if travel was absolutely essential, we went by train, but our first option was a telekit or tele-conference. I suspect many employers have gone down that route, resulting in shorter domestic services such as these being less and less viable. Of course, that doesn't explain why these airlines appear able to operate the routes from larger airports such as MAN. I can only assume that the size of such airports enables them to offer far lower fees to airlines to keep them there, thereby pricing smaller regional airports out of the market.

 

[a300boy]

BMI totally screwed the Brussels operation up from Leeds !
No flights on a weekend or bank holidays and constant cancellations made the service unreliable and impossible to use.
I used Sabena all the time until they stopped operations and sadly Bmi jumped on the route before Brussels Airlines were formed.
We also had internet seminars forced upon us but as the fleet were based in Brussels at that time thats were we had to get to.
Started using the jump seat on our flights from Ema to Brussels soon after Bmi took over Leeds flights so it was at least free to get there and the DHL truck driver took me to Ema from Kirkstall Road which made us lifetime friends.

 

[Statto]

I had a look at Loganair’s pricing from Newcastle to Brussels at the end of March 2020 - far enough forward that the fares today should be at or around the base fare for the route. It was £124 outbound and £85 return. So £200. Not ridiculous for a business route and cheaper than a peak day return between Leeds and London during the week. On the same dates, Ryanair are offering MAN-CRL for £34 return and Brussels airlines £62 return for MAN-BRU. But its 3 hours by train from newcastle to Manchester and 2h 30m by car even in light traffic. for business probably means a hotel the night before and extra cost and time that might mean ’all In’ the cost with Loganair is not dissimilar. But would the same apply from LBA. Not so sure. And relevantly, I was looking at Loganair’s fares from EMA to Brussels on the basis there is competition down the road from BHX. I checked a couple of sources and it looked like LM are stopping the EMA-BRU route from early January. If true, another insight about the challenges of making these routes work. It only started in September

 

[LBA8098]

I think potentially they could now be the world's safest aircraft type to fly on.

 

[Len Fish]

“We do our aircraft allocations on a nightly basis”. Don’t believe that for a minute!

 

[Sherburnflyer92]

Isn't that the most bullshi**ed PR exercise by Ryanair? As you've said @Len Fish all allocations are doing weeks if not months in advance due to long term MX. I believe the allocation of each aircraft to certain routes is done the night before - from an operational perspective (swap aircraft a with b as its better suited for the allocated routes) but the allocations to each base etc is defo defo done months in advance.