CAA Provisional Statistics Update

[Kevin Farnell]

Those figures are for June, so before the upgrade of the EK to an A380, before the return of QR and before the start of SV. July's figures and onwards should look better.

 

[Karl C]

Can someone in the group confirm how many flights a week to Preveza there were last summer? I thought there was only one a week. This year there are two yet the figures are down

 

[Matt995]

Can someone in the group confirm how many flights a week to Preveza there were last summer? I thought there was only one a week. This year there are two yet the figures are down

Karl, 44 departures, and 44 arrivals last year 01/05 - 23/10 - Sundays & Wednesdays with Jet 2

 

[Karl C]

Thanks Matt....time sure is flying

 

[Coathanger16]

Easyjet can't come soon enough, we are seriously lagging behind the other big airports in post Covid growth.

BHX's recovery had certainly started to flatten off over the last few months (March to May remained constant at 86% recovered) so yes easyJet will go someway in getting us back to pre-covid levels, but I wouldn't say we're lagging behind. BHX isn't at the top, but it's not doing badly either.

Comparing June alone between 2023 and 2019, BHX had recovered 90% of passengers.

Gatwick had also recovered 90% whilst Liverpool 83% and Glasgow 82%. Above BHX, East Midlands and Luton had both recovered 91%, Manchester 94%, Heathrow, Stansted & Edinburgh 97-99% with Bristol the only major airport to have surpassed 2019 levels by 12%.

The UK as a whole in June had recovered 92% of 2019 passengers levels, so BHX is slightly below that but not significantly enough to suggest we're lagging behind IMO.

 

[rollo]

BHX's recovery had certainly started to flatten off over the last few months (March to May remained constant at 86% recovered) so yes easyJet will go someway in getting us back to pre-covid levels, but I wouldn't say we're lagging behind. BHX isn't at the top, but it's not doing badly

Agree with the above BHX has done pretty well and with July seeing Qatar, Saudi along with Emirates upgrade that's a significant increase plus EasyJet in the bank for next year with possibly Ryanair with two extra based as suggested by BHX 492 in the Routes development thread things looking pretty good all in all.

Mr Barton seems to play a longer game rather than collecting one season wonders which we were prone to a few years back.

 

[nwoody2001]

2023 defo seems to be a transition year for BHX and whilst people are looking at the above Jun figs in isolation, its worth seeing the Journey. Having been tracking the pax levels (obviously the official pax levels have not been released for Jul/Aug but below is my best guess) you can see how things are changing....

Jan 2023: 79.8% 2019 levels
Feb 2023: 83.0% 2019 levels
Mar 2023: 85.6% 2019 levels
Apr 2023: 85.8% 2019 levels
May 2023: 86.2% 2019 levels
Jun 2023: 89.8% 2019 levels
Jul 2023: 91.0% 2019 levels*
Aug 2023: 92.4% 2019 levels*

* Approximations so far...

So far this year, our monthly pax levels will have gone from 79.8% of 2019 levels up to 92.4% of 2019 levels. With increases for RYR and EZY for Winter 23/24 compared to Winter 22/23 and this being the first winter of ops for EK 388, QR788 and SV 789/X I suspect that by the end of the year, we should be close back to 2019 levels....

2024 i hope will be a new record year for bhx

 

[IanFarquharson]

BHX July figure was 1,231,337 up 11.7%

 

[Ianbutty]

BHX's recovery had certainly started to flatten off over the last few months (March to May remained constant at 86% recovered) so yes easyJet will go someway in getting us back to pre-covid levels, but I wouldn't say we're lagging behind. BHX isn't at the top, but it's not doing badly either.

Comparing June alone between 2023 and 2019, BHX had recovered 90% of passengers.

Gatwick had also recovered 90% whilst Liverpool 83% and Glasgow 82%. Above BHX, East Midlands and Luton had both recovered 91%, Manchester 94%, Heathrow, Stansted & Edinburgh 97-99% with Bristol the only major airport to have surpassed 2019 levels by 12%.

The UK as a whole in June had recovered 92% of 2019 passengers levels, so BHX is slightly below that but not significantly enough to suggest we're lagging behind IMO.

We have to factor in that it is not just covid that has impacted, but the dreaded B word has also. Making it more difficult for passengers, as well as business to business drop off (for which B is an issue) reduces demand.

New markets and direct services is the growth point. And I 100% agree with Rollo's point: Mr Barton knows his job. Long term.

 

[IanFarquharson]

All airports were affected by Brexit and by COVID which lead to more online meeting rather than face to face plus home working.
BHX was third in the UK after LHR and LCY but business passengers as a % of total passengers, so we have suffered quite hard.
But the biggest factor for BHX lagging behind in recovery has been FlyBe, Monarch & Thomas Cook who were all major players at BHX and were all in our record 2017 figure of 13m.
Easyjet are the ideal fit to claw back both business and leasure traffic.

 

[IanFarquharson]

BHX had its busiest day of 2023 yesterday and should achieve 1.3m pax in August which is a good result but still a way below August 2017 but each month is closing that gap and 2024 should see further ground recovered when the easyjet base starts.

Lots of canx flights yesterday included the outbound EWG to PRG which hit a set of steps on pushback !.

 

[IanFarquharson]

Just over 1.3m pax at BHX in August 2023 which is up 11.4% on August 2022

But still 7.3% below August 2019 and 12.8% below August 2017

 

[Coathanger16]

July Statistics are out:

Total Passengers: 1,229,335
Up 11.5% on July 2022
Down 9.3% on July 2019

12 month rolling total: 10,866,310
Down 14.6% on 2019 highest (Aug 2019 - 12,717,223)

Some key routes:

Dubai: 55,927 | 87.3% LF
Istanbul: 18,465 | 89.3% LF
Doha: 12,149 | 92.0% LF
Jeddah: 4,341 | 60.7% LF

Doha doing especially well - July 2019 saw 12,160 passengers travel to Doha, so to go straight back to the same passenger levels Qatar had prior to the pandemic in their first month of resuming operations is pretty darn good. And that was also only starting operations on 6th July. Had they resumed on 1st, they would have had more passengers this year than 2019.

The A380 also doing well for Emirates as most if not all the extra capacity has resulted in extra passengers. Average load factor for Jan - Jun (before the A380 started) was 85.8% vs 87.3% with the A380 (obviously started during peak summer so would expect load factors to increase anyway).

Turkish continue to do well on Istanbul, though passenger levels down by 2% vs last year - considering the extra capacity from Emirates plus Qatar resuming and Saudia launching, a plateauing of passenger levels was to be expected.

For a first month of operations 60% LF isn't too bad for Saudia. Given the recent increase in 787-10s we've been seeing from Saudia vs -9s they must be happy with the loads. Hopefully by the end of the year loads will have increased and stabilised at a decent level.

 

[Brum X]

Sorry but im disappointed with 60%, with all the recent chatter on here about flights full or near full. I think 60% is pretty low ????

When Qatar started, it was in the 70s or higher in the 1st month of operations.

Yes lets hope indeed that the LF goes higher than 60% through the coming months.

 

[nwoody2001]

Sorry but im disappointed with 60%, with all the recent chatter on here about flights full or near full. I think 60% is pretty low ????

When Qatar started, it was in the 70s or higher in the 1st month of operations.

Yes lets hope indeed that the LF goes higher than 60% through the coming months.

Qatar is a much wider known brand than Saudia in the UK and Qatar started from BHX in 2016 flying 8x weekly compared to Saudia's 3x weekly.

From a complete standing starts with very little brand awareness in the UK/Midlands, on a dry airline flying 3x weekly, 60% is pretty impressive. Not to worry though, Aug loads look to have hopefully exceeded 80% which if confirmed when CAA stats are released for august would be pretty impressive!

 

[Coathanger16]

Sorry but im disappointed with 60%, with all the recent chatter on here about flights full or near full. I think 60% is pretty low ????

When Qatar started, it was in the 70s or higher in the 1st month of operations.

Yes lets hope indeed that the LF goes higher than 60% through the coming months.

By way of comparison, the other routes Saudia serve from Jeddah had the following LFs in July:

Manchester: 77.0%
Heathrow: 74.3%
Gatwick: 64.6%
Birmingham: 60.7%

Gatwick was also a new route, but saw 5 flights per week vs our 3 flights, plus it's a London airport so you would expect it to do better.

 

[Brum X]

Qatar is a much wider known brand than Saudia in the UK and Qatar started from BHX in 2016 flying 8x weekly compared to Saudia's 3x weekly.

From a complete standing starts with very little brand awareness in the UK/Midlands, on a dry airline flying 3x weekly, 60% is pretty impressive. Not to worry though, Aug loads look to have hopefully exceeded 80% which if confirmed when CAA stats are released for august would be pretty impressive!

I feel better now, that's more like it ;-)

 

[Scottie Dog]

As some of you may be aware I have been going through a difficult time of recent and, as a result, my compilation of statistics has taken a bit of a back seat.

As soon as I am able to I will return with monthly data and in the meantime I would ask that you bear with me.

SD

 

[IanFarquharson]

BHX September pax should land at just over 1.2m
Which is a good result with over 40k per day on average.
96% of September 2019
But only 88% of September 2017

 

[IanFarquharson]

AUGUST 2023 HEATHROW		7,554,482​		up		25.07​	%
GATWICK		4,502,986​		up		10.12​	%
MANCHESTER		3,086,665​		up		13.00​	%
STANSTED		2,912,864​		up		11.78​	%
LUTON		1,691,587​		up		11.29​	%
EDINBURGH		1,480,878​		up		23.50​	%
BIRMINGHAM		1,307,941​		up		11.58​	%
BRISTOL		1,127,752​		up		15.87​	%
GLASGOW		708,820​		up		1.50​	%
BELFAST INTERNATIONAL		633,084​		up		21.58​	%
NEWCASTLE		559,301​		up		8.42​	%
EAST MIDLANDS INTERNATIONAL		528,672​		up		23.36​	%
LEEDS BRADFORD		506,239​		up		16.29​	%
LIVERPOOL (JOHN LENNON)		439,584​		up		9.42​	%
LONDON CITY		303,960​		up		1.48​	%
ABERDEEN		212,899​		up		16.05​	%
BELFAST CITY (GEORGE BEST)		203,706​		up		16.59​	%
JERSEY		171,654​		up		9.12​	%
BOURNEMOUTH		124,761​		up		25.93​	%
CARDIFF WALES		110,950​		down		-17.04​	%
INVERNESS		80,393​		up		5.00​	%
SOUTHAMPTON		75,554​		up		7.05​	%
GUERNSEY		72,942​		down		-1.73​	%
PRESTWICK		62,947​		up		13.44​	%
NEWQUAY		57,536​		up		56.48​	%
ISLE OF MAN		55,622​		up		8.16​	%
EXETER		53,422​		up		6.00​	%
NORWICH		41,249​		up		5.06​	%
TEESSIDE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT		25,901​		up		10.89​	%
SUMBURGH		25,256​		up		1.32​	%
SOUTHEND		17,557​		up		13.23​	%
CITY OF DERRY (EGLINTON)		17,380​		down		-10.63​	%
HUMBERSIDE		14,824​		up		28.39​	%