Outside Influences

[Aceshigh]

The domestic feed into Heathrow is all about supply and demand. Yes there is "probably" demand although the demise of Virgin Red and the BA LBA route doesn't exactly shout success, but as Dobbo says the critical element is the price point.

If it's impossible to make any money on Leeds Liverpool Humberside Teeside etc no one is going to operate the service.

The only airlines who could make a go of it are RYR EZY BA and FlyBe if capacity becomes available , but when a new runway is introduced then inevitably the landing fees will have to come down to make those routes viable , economic analysis suggests they will infact actually go up.

 

[Silvercity]

Heathrow Airport Limited.

Thanks

 

[Dobbo]

Fair point - though I think Flybe would argue its more the APD that still gets applied to domestic routes thats the real problem. Obviously removing that would help all UK airports.

Though then again, MAN is able to sustain at times 9 daily flights to LHR even with their large and growing long haul network. Surely as those long haul flights don't exist from airports such as Liverpool, Doncaster, etc, those airports would have better chance of supporting some flights to LHR. I sense the recent news at LBA will come up again here, but I firmly believe what has happened there is down to LHR being slot constrained and hence BA are trying to make the best use of aircraft & slots.

I don't see how BA fragmenting its offering makes it commercially more viable than it is now (as you say LBA has issues in this regard).

APD is obviously an issue, but the days of flights from the north of England to LHR are probably drawing to a close with the introduction of HS2. A train every hour / half hour taking 90 minutes to T5 is probably as good as a 2/3 daily shuttle. Maybe not in all circumstances but it will take a big bite out of that market.

Despite maintaining 9/10 daily LHR shuttles, the numbers to LHR continues to decline in an otherwise growing market. If the current trend continues, its days are numbered anyway. BA might be able to direct traffic over DUB, DOH and HKG, but I don't know how different that would be to today.

 

[Silvercity]

I fly from Liverpool a lot, normally to Faro. I use Manchester for long haul mainly, like tomorrow i'm off to Bangkok with Turkish for Christmas ; -) .

I also used to fly on British Midland from LPL to LHR quite a bit too, and felt it was a big shame when that ended, same for MME and LBA (although I know BA went back to fill LBA gap). There are loads of regional airports that lost their LHR link over the years NWI, HUY NQY, BHX,EMA probably more. Many of these now use Amsterdam as their hub, which means London is loosing this business and its link to the regions, which I don't think is a good thing, and probably adds to the problem the UK has with Londoncentric attitudes. Of course driving from these regions to Heathrow since their links have gone has got much much worse, their are coach links (still stuck in traffic) train (try that from Norwich to Heathrow !) Domestic transport is in my opinion poor in the UK.

As to Liverpool's London air links, since BMA, Easyjet operated a successful service to Luton, again I used it often, and sat on full 737s. The route ended because of the introduction of APD, and I recall them making quite a bit of noise about this. Since then of course the train has got much faster ( although often not cheap, the dearest in Europe I read at weekend !!). Will remain to see what happens in the future, if you could catch a train from say Crewe or Manchester or Liverpool directly to Heathrow Airport, this would negate air links to LHR. This would really need to be replicated nationwide to the SW , East Anglia, East Midlands and so on. Would it ever happen ? Maybe re establishing some domestic routes is desirable.

 

[rutamkrd]

Carl got to disagree with much of your comments particularly about connectivity.
Unless you personally choose to use BA does it matter if your first stop is at Amsterdam, Dubai, Newark or Billund , or perhaps use of the expanding regional long haul offerings from Manchester in particular.

BTW Anyone who wants to connect at third point for within Europe travel is probably in need of some help and education . Easy and Ryan together offer vastly more opportunities than the legacies EVER provided.

For many the first thing to see is the price and availability of desired dated of travel.
Many these days use the consolidators to find the “low” fare deals -these rely on immense advertising revenues and click through to make their money.

As for ground connections for instance Norwich to Stratford and onto the Elizabeth Line will make a significant difference pretty soon.

Runway 3 or no those small domestic routes are most unlikely to return what ever HAL says

Those twin otters and shorts operating decades ago rarely carried many passengers from the regions in point of fact and BMA pulled Speke years before domestic ADP was imposed, with the slot deployed elsewhere.

Oh and just another thought HS2 isn’t going to Heathrow either it’s will have you jump off at Old Oak Common change levels and onto Elizabeth or Heathrow Express in the current plans.

Plus no same station connections to HS1 Eurostar either classic England transport disjointed planning.

 

[Silvercity]

Carl got to disagree with much of your comments particularly about connectivity.
Unless you personally choose to use BA does it matter if your first stop is at Amsterdam, Dubai, Newark or Billund , or perhaps use of the expanding regional long haul offerings from Manchester in particular.

BTW Anyone wants to connect at third point for within Europe travel is probably in need of some help and education . Easy and Ryan together offer vastly most opportunities than the legacies EVER provided.



For many the first thing to see is the price and availability of desired dated of travel.
Many these days use the consolidators to find the “low” fare deals -these rely on immense advertising revenues and click through to make their money.

As for ground connections for instance Norwich to Stratford and onto the Elizabeth Line will make a significant difference pretty soon.

Runway 3 or no those small domestic routes are most unlikely to return what ever HAL says

Oh and just another thought HS2 isn’t going to Heathrow either it’s will have you jump off at Old Oak Common change levels and onto Elizabeth or Heathrow Express in the current plans.

Plus no same station connections to HS1 Eurostar either classic England transport disjointed planning.

Yes I think most people know that Easy and Ryan have connected the regions to many European destinations for some years now. I was referring to Heathrow as a long haul hub, that's all it really offers for passengers beyond London, but as I said its missing a lot of that, because the likes of Amsterdam connect the UK much better. It was easyjet that stopped the popular Liverpool to Luton service due to APD, which was many years after BMA.

 

[rutamkrd]

No so either most of the Heathrow traffic flows are also short haul in actual fact but again I say if you are making a connection what does it matter if it’s at Amsterdam or anywhere else.

Example South African offer quicker connections via Munich daily than Heathrow,
Kenya via Amsterdam, Tokyo via Helsinki, Australia - Qantas sell more tickets today via Dubai than they offered when they flew direct from Manchester with own metal.

Heathrow main USP is a bazillion daily US departures to over twenty differing cities and acknowledged excess capacity particularly at the back of the bus to NYC , leading to price dumping via consolidators and damaged viability of the regional service offerings as a result

BTW are you really trying to hide your Liverpubican view behind a sensible question.

Let’s face Speke can’t maintain legacy support on the key Amsterdam and Dublin routes even without a Heathrow service.

One of the few UK airports to secure and lose KLM that’s a feet to behold !

Perhaps the demand and economic drivers in the city regions industry and commerce just aren’t there to begin with and not helped by having Ringway 35 miles down the road.

 

[Silvercity]

No so either most of the Heathrow traffic flows are also short haul in actual fact but again I say if you are making a connection what does it matter if it’s at Amsterdam or anywhere else.

Example South African offer quicker connections via Munich daily than Heathrow,
Kenya via Amsterdam, Tokyo via Helsinki, Australia - Qantas sell more tickets today via Dubai than they offered when they flew direct from Manchester with own metal.

Heathrow main USP is a bazillion daily US departures to over twenty differing cities and acknowledged excess capacity particularly at the back of the bus to NYC , leading to price dumping via consolidators and damaged viability of the regional service offerings as a result

BTW are you really trying to hide your Liverpubican view behind a sensible question.

Let’s face Speke can’t maintain legacy support on the key Amsterdam and Dublin routes even without a Heathrow service.

One of the few UK airports to secure and lose KLM that’s a feet to behold !

Perhaps the demand and economic drivers in the city regions industry and commerce just aren’t there to begin with and not helped by having Ringway 35 miles down the road.

Actually no, I from Kent, oh by the way Manston also lost its KLM link.

 

[Jerry]

What was the reason that Liverpool lost it's KLM link? As they seem to be able to maintain links at other airports which i quite close together.

 

[rutamkrd]

Lack of use by the locals who wouldn’t pay the fare rates, so service pulled simple economics really, same for the On/off AerLingus offerings and the lamented BMA services to Heathrow and Frankfurt.

And this is the reality being deliberately ignored by politicians and vested interests at HAL.

Shout all they like about R3 and ring fenced domestic access without PSO grants the services won’t ever develop.

For the most part they don’t exist today because they aren’t viable- in fact never were !
Cambrian and North East made losses to the point of the BA merger, The Twin Otter and Shed services over the 70 and 80s carrierd literally 10s ! of high fare paying passengers at huge loses as well.

Over all the numbers of inter line passengers that might make use of these mythical future domestic hub and spoke feeder services top out at perhaps 100,000.

That’s a drop in the ocean at Heathrow today and adds relatively few passengers to any of the half dozen potential UK regionals

Once again domestic air connectivity is a smoke screen.

Further some of the UK politicians are utterly naive in their actual understandings of Hub and Spoke models and their actual complexities, and competitive markets.

Heathrow is Europe’s largest One World Hub serving just about anywhere except South and Central American markets where Madrid steps in.
IAG group AA CX MH QR AY JL JJ QF feed each other with BA the distributors around the whole of Europe indeed they get a better return collecting an Italian business person from Milan and onward to Austin than a Yorkshire business person to Chicago.

Competing hubs all have this effect .

Unless British carriers somehow gain access to Heathrow and membership of Star what advantage is there in putting anyone on a domestic leg with a competitor rather than lifting them directly to Frankfurt Munich Brussels or Zurich - NONE

Sky team similarily via Amsterdam and Paris.

These fundamentals do NOT change when Brexit is delivered , it’s the way the European Legacy Hub and Spokes have developed and fortified over decades.

 

[Silvercity]

What was the reason that Liverpool lost it's KLM link? As they seem to be able to maintain links at other airports which i quite close together.

I don't recall exactly now as the route was due to go from 3 to 4 per day. It was rather strange decision. I flew on it a few time and it was well supported. It had nothing to do with locals not paying the fare.
Maybe it will return.

 

[Jerry]

I don't recall exactly now as the route was due to go from 3 to 4 per day. It was rather strange decision. I flew on it a few time and it was well supported. It had nothing to do with locals not paying the fare.
Maybe it will return.

It is a strange one as they seem to maintain flights at much smaller airports than Liverpool.

 

[Silvercity]

It is a strange one as they seem to maintain flights at much smaller airports than Liverpool.

Indeed, of course Easyjet added more schedules on the route too and had been running LPL-AMS for a long time.

 

[rutamkrd]

Carl numbers said different Again lack of the high fare payers.

Humberside and Teesside are maintained by a very healthy Royal Dutch Shell contract .
Walk up fares are shocking

 

[Dobbo]

The main issue LPL has is how close MAN is to the eastern end of Liverpool. So much catchment overlap...

 

[Coathanger16]

I think the bigger issue is probably easyJet - they offer cheaper fares than KLM meaning easyJet will typically be the choice for city breakers leaving KLM with just the transit passengers. These possibly aren't enough to warrant a service from KLM. I expect if easyJet didn't operate LPL to Amsterdam, KLM would be in there with multiple daily flights.

Cardiff is a similar distance to Bristol that Liverpool is to Manchester and KLM serve both BRS & CWL (easyJet also serves BRS, and KLM is the only carrier operating CWL - AMS). With Liverpool being a similar size city to Cardiff, I think there's sufficient demand there, just not for 2 carriers, which is a shame as easyJet doesn't offer connections onto KLM's long haul network at AMS.

KLM flies to 16 airports in the UK, 9 of which are smaller than Liverpool - pretty sure the demand is there...

EDIT: Also worth adding that Liverpool lacks a connection to a hub with an airline offering through connections onto a long haul network. Trying to book a flight from LPL to New York through Skyscanner and the top result is a self connection in Rome!

Back to the earlier point - if BA provided a domestic link to Liverpool, it'd probably do OK as it allows for transfers that current airlines flying from Liverpool don't. At LBA, BA has to compete with KLM and Aer Lingus for transiting pax.

 

[Dobbo]

I agree the demand is there in LPL's
catchment, but that catchment is substantially overlapped by MAN's catchment which gravitates towards MAN. This situation doesn't really exist at any of the other UK regionals KLM flies to.

I don't know if Cardiff-Bristol is a similar distance to Liverpool-Manchester or not, but it is certainly easier to travel between the later because the Severn estuary isn't there. Also, the size gap between Cardiff-Bristol is nothing like the size gap between Liverpool-Manchester.

 

[Coathanger16]

Also, the size gap between Cardiff-Bristol is nothing like the size gap between Liverpool-Manchester.

In terms of airport size or city size?

Airports wise, MAN is 5.4 times bigger than LPL, whilst BRS is 5.7 times bigger than CWL.

In terms of city size, yes Bristol and Cardiff are similar, certainly more so than Manchester and Liverpool. But then again Bristol and Cardiff combined is 32% bigger than Liverpool, yet they have almost 250% more weekly flights to Amsterdam. Combined, the populations of Manchester and Liverpool are double that of Cardiff/Bristol, yet they only have 67% more weekly flights. Surely that demonstrates a weak link at Liverpool?

The argument of overlapping catchment I accept for long haul - it happens to pretty much every airport within 100 miles of MAN & LHR - not so sure it works so much for short haul. Sure it still comes into play, but not to such a greater extent. I'd feel OK driving over an hour to MAN/LHR for a direct long haul rather than a one stop option from my local airport. Not so OK if I was only going to Spain say.

 

[Dobbo]

Quite right, the overlapping catchment is the major issue.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

In terms of airport size or city size?

Airports wise, MAN is 5.4 times bigger than LPL, whilst BRS is 5.7 times bigger than CWL.

In terms of city size, yes Bristol and Cardiff are similar, certainly more so than Manchester and Liverpool. But then again Bristol and Cardiff combined is 32% bigger than Liverpool, yet they have almost 250% more weekly flights to Amsterdam. Combined, the populations of Manchester and Liverpool are double that of Cardiff/Bristol, yet they only have 67% more weekly flights. Surely that demonstrates a weak link at Liverpool?

The argument of overlapping catchment I accept for long haul - it happens to pretty much every airport within 100 miles of MAN & LHR - not so sure it works so much for short haul. Sure it still comes into play, but not to such a greater extent. I'd feel OK driving over an hour to MAN/LHR for a direct long haul rather than a one stop option from my local airport. Not so OK if I was only going to Spain say.

It's more to do with city region size than actual city populations isn't it? Populations are described in so many different ways these days: municipal city; urban area; metropolitan area; city region; larger urban zone (EU).

For example, Bristol as a city, a physical city that is, is bigger than many people think. Its municipal population is currently around 450,000 but the unbroken urban area is closer to 700,000. The reason is that the city's boundaries have not been enlarged since the early 1960s but the urban sprawl has grown and grown into neighbouring areas, especially into the unitary authority of South Gloucestershire which is a 'city' with 200,000 residents physically joined - you can't see the join - to municipal Bristol. Physical (unbroken urban area) Bristol is over 50% bigger than physical Cardiff population-wise, but when it comes to the EU larger urban zone (LUZ) measurement the two are much closer because neighbouring towns and cities that are associated with the main one are taken into account.

Remaining with AMS as an example, is the difference so striking that in 2016 BRS handled 408,000 on the AMS route and CWL 135,000? BRS has 28 weekly KLM Cityhopper E190 flights as well as up to 12 weekly easyJet flights whilst CWL has 21 weekly KLM Cityhopper flights, many on the smaller E170. Actually the ratio on this route is much closer than the ratio of overall passenger numbers at these airports, but the differential still seems difficult to fathom even taking into account the size and make-up of the core and wider catchments of both.

Cardiff is also a capital city; Bristol is not.

Taking the 2011 census figures coupled with the EU's LUZ concept, Manchester/Liverpool population is over 3.5 million whilst Bristol/Cardiff is around 2 million with, it is true, a far greater bias towards Manchester whereas the Bristol/Cardiff LUZs are fairly even in population size.

In the end, I suppose it's down to airlines knowing/thinking/believing/hoping what works best for them at any given airport.