WOW Air

[vickersviscount]

Or,how about this for a conspiracy theory.On the routes thread of this forum there has been much speculation about the comments by conns 757 about new scheduled airlines for 2017. What if WOW were enticed into starting services from Bristol Airport by various financial inducements,but now they have been withdrawn because the management have bigger fish in mind i.e Norwegian Air with their b737 max jets.I believe the series 8 aircraft they have ordered have the range but don't know if the runway limitations of Bristol would allow direct ops.If it did then with 100 aircraft on order Norwegian could be with the right support package in place be considering Bristol as a potential base.
At the time Continental cancelled the service one of the reasons stated by some observers was their inability to fill the high yield First class/business seats plus of course the freeing up of slots at Heathrow made it probably a more profitable utilisation of an expesive asset.Although Norwegian have their aircraft configured as two class 12 F/150Y they be more of a bums on seats operation.
With Bristol Airport Managements wealth of information on the period that Continental ran the service they would be in a good place to lure the likes of Norwegian to Bristol.
Of course I could be typing total tosh,and not for the first time as my Wife likes to remind me.Plus I am settling into a second glass of a rather nice Brandy that a relative has sent me as a Christmas gift so the Brain cells might be more skittish then normal.Anyway as they say in educational circles,discuss.

 

[Seasider]

I hope you enjoyed the Brandy.

 

[andrewgreen]

No i dont think the brandy was clouding your thoughts , i totally agree with you . If there is to be an expansion of long haul from Bristol then i believe its more likely to come from a low cost operation such as Norweigan for the reasons you have stated . Like it or not Bristol seems to suit low cost airlines

 

[TheLocalYokel]

It may well be the case that WOW and BRS cannot agree on further terms - I don't know how long the original agreement (if there was a specific one) lasted.

Apart from its restricted runway BRS will always find it difficult to be a major transatlantic scheduled player because it's so close to LHR.

You're right about CO and LHR. In 2005 when the BRS-EWR route began Continental had no access to LHR so they decided to operate to airports such as BRS. For the first couple of years passenger numbers exceeded targets (although we don't know whether the yield did) but then came the recession which began to blunt transatlantic passenger numbers generally.

At the same time CO gained access to LHR and promptly moved its LGW-EWR route to LHR-EWR. From then on I felt that BRS-EWR was on borrowed time and so it proved with the route ceasing towards the end of 2010.

I have a number of personal anecdotes of business people (including my son) who were unaware of the BRS-EWR link when it was operating and continued to use LHR. My son did eventually use BRS-EWR for some North American trips but still found it a better use of his time to drive to LHR (he lives in the Bristol area) and fly direct from there to North American destinations away from New York.

Airports like BRS would never be able to sustain the frequency and choice of long haul routes that LHR can so it's inevitable that people will continue to drive east along the M4.

Given that WOW appears to have attracted a market a non-stop Norwegian operation might well prove successful although they don't seem to be flying to the main New York airports. When FlyGlobespan tried Bristol-Toronto in 2008 it was a disaster, partly because their 'Toronto' was a Ryanairesque version at Hamilton many miles from the 'real' Toronto; the route also flew via Dublin both ways.

Norwegian to secondary New York State airports might only be of real use for point to point journeys.

 

[kraktoa]

As a complete aside i flew Air India LHR to Mumbai around 20008 on a aircraft with Globespan livery and staff. Wonder if the plane was on lease from Globespan.

 

[andrewgreen]

It may well be the case that WOW and BRS cannot agree on further terms - I don't know how long the original agreement (if there was a specific one) lasted.

Apart from its restricted runway BRS will always find it difficult to be a major transatlantic scheduled player because it's so close to LHR.

You're right about CO and LHR. In 2005 when the BRS-EWR route began Continental had no access to LHR so they decided to operate to airports such as BRS. For the first couple of years passenger numbers exceeded targets (although we don't know whether the yield did) but then came the recession which began to blunt transatlantic passenger numbers generally.

At the same time CO gained access to LHR and promptly moved its LGW-EWR route to LHR-EWR. From then on I felt that BRS-EWR was on borrowed time and so it proved with the route ceasing towards the end of 2010.

I have a number of personal anecdotes of business people (including my son) who were unaware of the BRS-EWR link when it was operating and continued to use LHR. My son did eventually use BRS-EWR for some North American trips but still found it a better use of his time to drive to LHR (he lives in the Bristol area) and fly direct from there to North American destinations away from New York.

Airports like BRS would never be able to sustain the frequency and choice of long haul routes that LHR can so it's inevitable that people will continue to drive east along the M4.

Given that WOW appears to have attracted a market a non-stop Norwegian operation might well prove successful although they don't seem to be flying to the main New York airports. When FlyGlobespan tried Bristol-Toronto in 2008 it was a disaster, partly because their 'Toronto' was a Ryanairesque version at Hamilton many miles from the 'real' Toronto; the route also flew via Dublin both ways.

Norwegian to secondary New York State airports might only be of real use for point to point journeys.

Wow has attracted a market for Bristol to New york , Boston, Toronto , San Francisco,Los Angeles ( and any others i cant think of at the moment ) Not just Bristol-New York so its a much bigger pond to fish in !
I used the Continental service from Bristol many times , only twice was it point to point .The connections onwards from ewr were always good. Although im not sure without checking im confident ewr would have just as many, if not more,connections than any other airport in the us so i cant agree with your statement about it being easier to drive to Heathrow. Also if i was flying to the us west coast for instance i would much prefer to break the flight in two at New york or Boston rather than a long flight followed by a short hop.
You are right about Norweigan ( or anyone ) flying to secondary New York airports , i just dont think Bristol would support a point to point like that it needs to attract connecting passengers as well,hence the only two that would work in my opinion would be ewr or jfk , indeed i am surprised that Norweigan think Edinburgh will support flights to an obscure New York airport .
But as someone said earlier im probably talking a load of tosh !

 

[andrewgreen]

The wow flight was operated by an A.321 again today , does anyone know why ? is it pot luck or is it an indication of higher than expected passenger numbers ?

 

[TheLocalYokel]

The wow flight was operated by an A.321 again today , does anyone know why ? is it pot luck or is it an indication of higher than expected passenger numbers ?

I don't know the reason but WOW has used 321s before on the BRS route (you are probably aware of this), and during last year also used other types on the route instead of the usual A320: a look back through this thread shows a B 757 as well as Titan and Cardiff Aviation aircraft standing in at various times.

It would be nice to think the reason was high loads but equally it might be down to aircraft utilisation. Balkan Air used A330s into BRS quite often last summer on the Burgas route instead of the scheduled A 320 but that was due to a lack of 320s at times. Other UK airports were similarly affected.

Still no booking availability beyond March.

 

[AndyMoore]

I thought i'd have a go and message wow via facebook and they have replied.
"
Hi Andy. Unfortunately don't have a flight schedule for Bristol after March yet but we're working hard to release our summer schedule with BRS airport as soon as possible. Sorry to keep you waiting for so long! "

 

[Aviador]

I thought i'd have a go and message wow via Social Media and they have replied.
"
Hi Andy. Unfortunately don't have a flight schedule for Bristol after March yet but we're working hard to release our summer schedule with BRS airport as soon as possible. Sorry to keep you waiting for so long! "

Hi Andy, welcome to F4A!

At least your reply was less generic than previous communications with the airlines social media team. The mention of Bristol airport this time is very promising. I just hope not too many people have sought alternative means of getting to Iceland or onwards from there during the wait.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Thank you for that Andy and welcome to Forums4Airports.

A couple of days ago someone asked about the route on the BRS Twitter pages and received this reply from the airport:

This route has not been confirmed for Summer '17. You may get more direct info from WOW Air directly 01183218384.

 

[Marko1]

I have to say I'm a bit sceptical to be honest. Less than 3 months to go and they still can decide whether to carry it on or not. I may be wrong tho

 

[AndyMoore]

thank you for the kind welcome, i have been with this forum for a while now, but only just registered.

 

[andrewgreen]

View attachment 4313 I recieved this back from Wow air in answer to the question they must be getting fed up of by now ! basically still not saying anything either way

 

[TheLocalYokel]

It does seem very odd. If they are going to axe the route then they should say so. If not what is the delay in putting the schedule on their website for booking?

The only thing I would say (I think I mentioned it recently but I'll say it again anyway) is that there was a similar situation with Helvetic to Zurich a few years ago. It looked as though they were going to cease their BRS-ZRH at the end of that particular summer because their winter schedules had long been put on their website for their other routes. At the last minute - literally three or four weeks before the winter timetable was due to kick in - BRS-ZRH suddenly appeared in the booking engine.

The route lasted about another year before being axed. I can only think there were negotiations going on between airline and airport right up until that 'last minute'.

 

[Jerry]

I wonder what's making them not commit either way because even if say Norwegian came along and did a New York route from their new american base then i can't see it really effecting WOW as it would be point to point and WOW serves a lot more destinations than just New York. Personally i can't see one of the US3 serving BRS because they seem to have put regional UK on hold plus they all have loads of flights to New York from Heathrow. Only thing I can think of is they want a better deal from the airport and the airport hasn't given it to them yet.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

I think you're probably right re the WOW negotiations and the likelihood of a legacy carrier operating BRS-NYC in the foreseeable future. The major US carriers seem to be cutting back on UK regional routes, possibly with Brexit in mind.

Norwegian would be of limited use to BRS as it's point to point and to secondary airports in the New York area: better than nothing I suppose in the absence of a legacy carrier. A Norwegian route should not affect WOW that much for the reasons you've highlighted.

The other point is that currently both WOW and easyJet are operating to Keflavik but come the summer easyjet will stop its route as it now seems to regard KEF as winter-only. If WOW does stop operating that will leave no KEF route this coming summer.

 

[andrewgreen]

Yes very strange they wont commit either way , putting a more optomistic slant on it , maybe Wow have proposed increasing the frequency in exchange for a better deal but the airport is not playing ball ?
As others have said that may be because they have interest from another airline but i cant think of any in a similar position to Wow to be operating flights to multipe destinations Westwards without heading East first !

 

[BRSregular]

Iceland Express?

 

[Marko1]

Wow doesn't have any flights released for Milan , stuttgart, Barcelona , Lyon or Warsaw yet for next summer either so we are not alone in waiting. The trouble with wow is the mixed messages that we are all receiving via social media and email . I just wish they would say it's being discontinued or not. There must be people out there wanting to book their flights who are truly getting fed up !!!