If you are not happy with me posting what I am posting I will not bother going forward !

Take no notice Ian! Your insights into the airport, its airlines and their routes are invaluable! You know much more than the lot of us enthusiasts, ignore those picking fault they're jealous that you are in the know and they aren't :)

Personally, I think an average LF would be the way an airline would judge its routes profitability anyway...
 

Great to see the turn around in their passenger numbers I think LHR saw an even bigger decline percentage wise compared to BHX they seems to go unoticed/underated.

By the way what a fantastic teminal at Ashkabad as per thunderchilds previous post wonder how our master plan will compare if it ever gets announced probably not favorably I would guess.
 
You almost get the impression there's some "cosmic force" trying to stop long haul flights to/from BHX :ROFLMAO:

On top of this latest with Turkmenistan, we've had:

- United, American & Air Transat pull out, to be replaced with Primera who then went bust.
- Air India's current financial situation (not exactly good)
- The blockade of Qatar
- In recent days rumour has emerged that Emirates is considering switching it's orders for the large A380, to the smaller A350, possibly indicating lower than expected demand?

Sure long haul is a tough market to crack, and I may be biased here, but I can't think of an airport that has had more woe with long haul than BHX has!

(Disclaimer: most of the above is tongue-in-cheek so don't take it too seriously! :ROFLMAO:)
 
Hi there coathanger16, I totally agree with you, why birmingham has great difficulty in dealing with long haul flights is a mystery indeed, every other airport in the UK that has long haul doesn't seem to have a problem, but birmingham does, would it be how they plan or organise things, I really don't know, maybe they to visit Heathrow, Gatwick or Manchester to see how they succeed and implement then at Birmingham and not continuely agree routes with airlines, then the airline pulls out after 12 months plus, I have always said that it has to be down to the landing fees, why agree that fee for the firdt 12 to 18 months, then tell the airline that's what it will be after this time, then you get an announcement from the airline with three to six months informing that due certain financial or other situations they are pulling out, then that another airline gone and another route disappeared, and so on.. AndyC
 
- In recent days rumour has emerged that Emirates is considering switching it's orders for the large A380, to the smaller A350, possibly indicating lower than expected demand?
The airline business is completely crazy! Emirates cancelled its initial order for A350s to order 787-10s from Boeing, but is now considering cancelling this order in favour of 777Xs and reinstating the A350 order with Airbus instead of A380s .........

If I tried doing this with orders from a trader I'd surely be banned from wasting their time in the future.
 
Andy, I think the biggest problem for BHX is that an airline can serve say Heathrow, Manchester and Edinburgh and that will cover most if not all of the UK. Consider you don't have to go very far South or North before either Heathrow or Manchester is as close as Birmingham.

As for landing fees, I'm not sure what else BHX can do. I'm not sure if it happens with all new routes, but if the landing fees (or any fees) are either waived or discounted for the first year of operation as an incentive for an airline to start, by their very nature those fees will have to increase after whatever that introductory period was (say 12 months).

The idea about reduced fees for a year is partly to incentivise airlines to start new routes, but then after a year of operation the route will have grown to the extent that the reduced fees are no longer required. In the case of Birmingham, the passenger numbers and/or yields haven't grown enough so that the airline can make a profit when the fees increase to their normal level.

If you were to lengthen the time that the fees are reduced, you couldn't do it just for one airline but you'd have to do it for all airlines - that might not be financially possible for the likes of BHX.

It's not secret that airlines don't make much profit per passenger - I believe easyJet is less than £1 per passenger.

Not that it's likely to happen, but the best chance that BHX has for its long haul ambitions is for one of its currently based airlines to launch long haul. Jet2 seem to be favourite to do that, but that's far from certain. Even if they were, its highly unlikely they'd fly any routes East.

The airline business is completely crazy! Emirates cancelled its initial order for A350s to order 787-10s from Boeing, but is now considering cancelling this order in favour of 777Xs and reinstating the A350 order with Airbus instead of A380s .........

If I tried doing this with orders from a trader I'd surely be banned from wasting their time in the future.

The thing is airlines pit one manufacturer against the other to get the best deal from them. Also with airlines as large as Emirates, an order can represent a large amount of that manufacturer's 'income' for that year.

Consider that Emirates operates/order for:
-B777X account for 46% of all B777X orders
-A380 account for 50% of all A380 orders
 
I maintain my view that BHX suffers from Travel Agency bias towards London and Manchester. I lost count the times agencies tell me I cannot get to say MIAMI from Birmingham,, until I suggest Lufthansa via Munich. There follows an excuse such as additional costs and waiting times etc.

I have a medical issue that makes traipsing across London highly problematic, walking is difficult and underground access is a nightmare from Euston to the Paddington Heathrow train.

Manchester is almost as difficult. What happened to Flight's coaches?

Anyway, if potential passengers cannot get a booking through travel agencies why should an airline offer to serve? Most people are not aviation nerds or hobbyists and can tell Lunn Poly the airline timetables without the computer saying NO.

As to Turkmenistan being barred from EU I feel that they may resume UK services 30th March.
 
That's a shame, Turkmenistan have been around for quite a while now and I do enjoy seeing their 777's.

It's unfortunate that Air India don't seem to be in a position to increase capacity, even bringing back the Friday flight would be something. Good news for Emirates and Qatar I guess.
 
This situation makes me wonder what Air India have to do to get a ban by the EASA.
They have 9 long haul aircraft sitting idle,awaiting the time the airline can afford spares or maintenance costs.
Neither airline have cancelled flights recently,yet delays to ops have been a regular occurrence.Air India’s financial problems are well documented,yet still they continue to operate.
Turkmenistan is a relatively small nation and insignificant country in Asia,while India is a major player in the world.
Is this why the authorities don’t want to upset anybody.
I hope that nothing untoward happens,because the repercussions could be serious.

I saw the Turkmenistan B777 (EZ-A779) land yesterday and at no point did I think that their was a problem.I hope this is a short term thing.
I did not think that Emirates would benefit that much as they do not serve Amritsar,or has that changed?I would have thought Qatar would have a better chance of picking up the extra passengers.
As for Air India,well I don’t think they are in a position to do anything right now.Unless they make changes elsewhere,I think we may have to wait until later in the year to see any changes to the current schedule.
 
Emirates serve Delhi which is just as important as Amritsar. Also, whilst most of their passengers were to India, Turkmenistan did see healthy numbers connecting through to Bangkok.

It might what India LCCs needed to make BHX more viable
Indigo ?
Spice Jet ?

Both have been very strongly rumoured as you know but can they make it happen?
 

Upload Media

Remove Advertisements

Subscribe to help support your favourite forum and in return we'll remove all our advertisements. Your contribution will help to pay for things like site maintenance, domain name renewals and annual server charges.



Forums4aiports
Subscribe

NEW - Profile Posts

All checked in for my flight to Sydney from Manchester via Heathrow. Been waiting for this trip for nearly a year and now tomorrow I'll finally head to Australia and New Zealand!
If anyone would like to share their local airport news right here in our news area let me know so I can give you the correct permissions to do so. It only takes a couple of minutes to upload a news story with an accompanying image. The news items can then be shared on the site homepage by you. #TakePart #Forums4airports Bring the news to one place!
survived a redundancy scenario where I work for the 3rd time. Now it looks likely I will get to cover work for 2 other teams.. Pretty please for a payrise? That would be a no and so stay on the min wage.
Live in Market Bosworth and take each day as it comes......
Well it looks like I'm off to Australia and New Zealand next year! Booked with BA from Manchester via Heathrow with a stop in Singapore and returning with Air New Zealand and BA via LAX to Heathrow. Will circumnavigate the globe and be my first trans-Pacific flight. First long haul flight with BA as well and of course Air NZ.
15 years at the same company was reached the weekend before last. Not sure how they will mark the occasion apart from the compulsory payirse to minimum wage (1st rise for 2 years; i was 15% above it back then!)

Trending Hashtags

Advertisement

Back
Top Bottom
  AdBlock Detected
Sure, ad-blocking software does a great job at blocking ads, but it also blocks some useful and important features of our website. For the best possible site experience please take a moment to disable your AdBlocker.