Primera Air

[Ray Finkle]

Great to see Ray. Primera really do mean business, lets hope the public support these new routes.

They could be cheeky and put some adverts around northern cities too.

Ive messaged Primera though regarding a point nwoody2001 highlighted the other day. When you go on flight websites such as Skyscanner it comes up with Hahn Air and sometimes Primera Air, this is too confusing for the general public and wont help them with sales. Primera Air are new to the UK, lets not complicate things even more. It will be interesting to see what they have to say. I think Jerry mentioned Hahn Air is some ticketing agent for them, but still the UK public wont wanna book with somebody called Hahn Air ??????

I think that Turkmenistan also use Hahn Air for their ticketing.

I booked Primera a couple of days ago from YYZ To BHX and return for September 2018, and found the prices to be the best option out there. In the past I have flown AirTransat to Manchester, but as my end destination is Leeds, I have no alegience to Manchester or AirTransat. I hope that Primera operate into LBA eventually, but that is just wishful thinking, so for now I will use the Primera and BHX as long as the keep the fares competitive.

Good stuff, we need more of that

 

[GliderPilot]

Read a few pages back in this forum that the aircraft will be on the ground at BHX for up to 7 hours?? I also think I've read this before too but would they not use this time for some short, short, short-haul routes to fully make use of the aircraft? Could be city routes or even small sun routes... Would be a waste if they were remotely parked for 7 hours per day?!

 

[rollo]

I don't think that they should even think of it with each aircraft doing daily returns to the USA and Canada that's 13/14hrs a day utilization which matches industry standards to risk anything else will endanger reliability which would be fatal and you would be adding significantly
to operating costs.

Don't do it.

 

[GliderPilot]

Yeah i suppose, thinking about it they'd do the same time on the ground at night... But the flight times mean this is during the day (i think not sure). Just a suggestion for Primera to maximise BHX's potential

 

[Brum X]

But if they do start Manchester flights this could serously destroy the Birmingham series.

I didnt mention Primera starting MAN, think you mis-understood my post. What i said was they appear to be serious about there new BHX base and if they wanted to be cheeky, they could promote in the North West.

An example of this would be to put a big advert at Manchester Picaddily station advertising our Boston flights which are due to be year round from BHX, a flight which is currently not available at MAN ? Im sure the MAN posters will correct me if im wrong.

 

[Brum X]

I booked Primera a couple of days ago from YYZ To BHX and return for September 2018, and found the prices to be the best option out there. In the past I have flown AirTransat to Manchester, but as my end destination is Leeds, I have no alegience to Manchester or AirTransat. I hope that Primera operate into LBA eventually, but that is just wishful thinking, so for now I will use the Primera and BHX as long as the keep the fares competitive.

Great stuff Peter, so already BHX is catching some north passengers.

 

[Brum X]

My reply from Primera regarding Nwoody2001 and my concern showing Hahn Air on booking websites such as skyscanner/Google flights etc.

Hello Alan, Thank you for the comment! We use Hanh Air as an additional distributor of our inventory for online travel agencies, where we cannot integrate directly. Unfortunately, it means that they are present also in Skyscanner whenever we appear. However, our price directly would always be lower, so we hope that would prompt people to always choose us directly.

So there you go peeps, always cheaper booking direct. However i thought these search engines were supposed to give you the cheapest deals or is that just a load of waffle ??

Good to get a reply from Primera.

 

[Jon Dempsey]

Similar to hotels in engines like Booking.com. You can usually pick up a better price booking direct.

 

[nwoody2001]

Skyscanner show both Primera Air prices as well as Hahn Air prices. This has always been the case until last week which appears to have been a blip that has now been corrected!

Toronto flights are yet to appear however but it took a few weeks for the EWR/BOS routes before they showed

 

[nwoody2001]

Good news.... Primera's BHX-YYZ Route has now been uploaded onto skyscanner.

Picking a random date 17-24th July next year, RTN prices compare as follows:

BHX-YYZ (Primera) = £481 RTN
BHX-YYZ (Via Dublin) (Aer Lingus) = £717 RTN
MAN-YYZ (Air Transat) = £602 RTN
MAN-YYZ (Air Canada Rouge) = £786 RTN
LGW-YYZ (Air Transat) = £521 RTN

Looking pretty good to the Birmingham market!!!

 

[User001]

Im surprised you managed to find many AC rouge MAN returns for as low as £786 Rtn, every time I've tried to book the flight it ends up jumping to at least £1200 on the last pages!

 

[Ray Finkle]

Good news.... Primera's BHX-YYZ Route has now been uploaded onto skyscanner.

I'm waiting to see some digital adverts plastered across the German Market

 

[nwoody2001]

Very early days but interesting for discussion. Looking at one-way flights to see prices and how many seats are booked! Far from an exact science as a) cost may pay no relation to number of booking and b) you don't have to book/reserve seats with your booking..

Primera Air Bookings (As of 8th November 2017)

BHX-EWR

First flights
1st Flight - £209 (10x Seats Booked)
2nd Flight - £189 (7x Seats Booked)

Peak Flights
16th Aug - £329 (0x Seats Booked)
17th Aug - £329 (0x Seats Booked)

BHX-BOS

First flights
1st Flight - £169 (2x Seats Booked)
2nd Flight - £169 (2x Seats Booked)

Peak Flights
16th Aug - £249 (0x Seats Booked)
17th Aug - £249 (3x Seats Booked)

BHX-YYZ

First flights
1st Flight - £209 (4x Seats Booked)
2nd Flight - £169 (6x Seats Booked)

Peak Flights
16th Aug - £329 (0x Seats Booked)
17th Aug - £329 (0x Seats Booked)

STN-EWR

First flights
1st Flight - £169 (5x Seats Booked)
2nd Flight - £169 (1x Seats Booked)

Peak Flights
16th Aug - £329 (0x Seats Booked)
17th Aug - £329 (0x Seats Booked)

STN-BOS

First flights
1st Flight - £149 (0x Seats Booked)
2nd Flight - £149 (0x Seats Booked)

Peak Flights
16th Aug - £249 (0x Seats Booked)
17th Aug - £249 (0x Seats Booked)

STN-YYZ

First flights
1st Flight - £189 (2x Seats Booked)
2nd Flight - £149 (0x Seats Booked)

Peak Flights
16th Aug - £249 (3x Seats Booked)
17th Aug - £249 (0x Seats Booked)

Worth keeping an eye open on a monthly basis t see how things pan out. Interestingly, STN hasn't got a single seat reserved for any of the BOS flights I looked at, even the inaugural flight!!!

 

[GliderPilot]

Sorry just to clarify is that the total amount of seats booked by anybody on the first flights

 

[nwoody2001]

Seats reserved, not necessary booked.....

 

[GliderPilot]

"..." indeed

 

[Ianbutty]

So Primera have sold or had reserved 42 seats? Got a bad feeling about this, if that is the case....or is this overwhelming level of non-interest at such an early stage? Need to be careful because this could really cause a lot of damage.

 

[Coathanger16]

I haven't yet looked at booking with Primera, but do they charge to reserve seats in advance?

 

[Creguk]

Wow at those stats!

 

[Ray Finkle]

I'm not knocking Woody's work in any way as it is interesting but I wouldn't take too much notice of seat maps this far in advance.

As has been pointed out not everyone books seats in advance, I myself know of several people booked on Primera to New York and not one has pre-booked seats. We also have 6 months to go before the first flight even departs. Many leisure travellers won't start planning their trips until the Christmas season is well behind them and business travellers can often book at very short notice.

I check various seat maps from time to time and even 2/3 days before departure it's not uncommon for a huge amount of seats to appear to be available. Checking the same flight the day before departure can then reveal only 1 or 2 seats are actually free. Monarch were the prime example with many of their passengers checking in at the airport, even on the morning of departure some of their flights looked empty when in reality they were far from it.

It'll be interesting to see how/if the reserved seats fill (or don't fill) in the months leading up to the first flight but I wouldn't get too concerned until hours, rather than days, before departure.