Blue Islands

[kfs]

future Paris, Amsterdam

The Amsterdam route was via London City. Have the former slots at London City been retained by the administrators? I fear slots at London City, especially the early morning and early evening ones, will be expensive and beyond the means of Blue Islands. Would a direct Exeter-Amsterdam be viable? And of course, slots at Schiphol are also very limited.

 

[Jerry]

The Amsterdam route was via London City. Have the former slots at London City been retained by the administrators?

It was operated as a W pattern in conjunction with LCY.
EXT-LCY-AMS-EXT then EXT-AMS-LCY-EXT. Only in weekdays though.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

The Amsterdam route was via London City. Have the former slots at London City been retained by the administrators? I fear slots at London City, especially the early morning and early evening ones, will be expensive and beyond the means of Blue Islands. Would a direct Exeter-Amsterdam be viable? And of course, slots at Schiphol are also very limited.

Re the viability of a direct Blue Islands route on EXT-AMS, unless Blue Islands could find a partner, preferably KLM, it would be point to point only. I'm not sure what connectivity Flybe had at AMS when they operated the route. The ideal is a KLM Cityhopper route with its myriad of onward connections at AMS but whether that would be feasible for the airline with its substantial BRS operation up the road I don't know. They operate a 3 x daily CWL-AMS despite the proximity of their BRS-AMS route so perhaps an EXT-AMS operation would not be completely out of the question although probably not until the world settles down after Covid-19.

In terms of raw passenger numbers, which of course don't tell the whole story on any route, these are the CAA annual passenger numbers on the EXT-AMS route over the past ten years:

2019 - 61,658
2018 - 52,725
2017 - 44,752
2016 - 44,040
2015 - 43,621
2014 - 44,491
2013 - 35,356
2012 - 33,760
2011 - 33,749
2010 - 35,010

Another point which I've seen raised elswehere is the rationale of the Jersey Government in loaning £10 million to Blue Islands. One might think this was intended to preserve/improve connectivity to Jersey which, prima facie, a route from, say, EXT to AM would not do, unless the timetable was set up to include a JER-EXT-AMS route in this example. The same would apply to an EXT-MAN route and any other non-Jersey routes both from EXT and from SOU.

 

[737 400]

I would have thought KLM would be the most likely candidate for EXT-AMS, but only 'if' they deemed it a viable route. Likewise EXT-DUB is probably the only other route likely to be resurrected, but only if a another operator such as Aer Lingus were to step in to the fold on a once or twice weekly basis.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

New look Blue Islands adds Exeter to its Network - Exeter Airport

Blue Islands, the Channel Islands airline, flew an ATR72 in its new corporate colours to Exeter Airport this afternoon (Thursday, 9 July 2020) as it confirmed the start of daily flights from Exeter to Manchester from 31 August. It also confirmed three times weekly (Tuesday, Thursday and...

www.exeter-airport.co.uk

Interesting recent EXT press release confirming Blue Islands' growing commitment to the airport.

 

[Jerry]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1293183630093647882

 

[Scottie Dog]

Am I going mad Jerry or are those 2 sets of timings totally different to each other? Which is correct?

 

[Jerry]

Am I going mad Jerry or are those 2 sets of timings totally different to each other? Which is correct?

It looks like the times have changed with the new schedule. Along with frequency as it looks only 3 weekly.