Bristol: Ryanair Routes News & Base Updates

[TheLocalYokel]

From the 1st November 2018 the Winter season starts, and with that, there is the normal reduction in frequencies on most routes.
The RYR Winter 18/19 schedules from BRS however, (like last year), show impressive growth year on year.
This winter season there will be 13x extra departures per week in comparison to last. This is true for most of the weeks from Nov-Mar not including the few weeks around Christmas.

Taking a week at the beginning of December the changes in comparison to the same time in 2017 are:
ALC (5>6) +1
VCE (4>5) +1
KRK (3>4) +1
POZ (2>3) +1
MLA (2>3) +1
NOC (0>3) +3 (NEW)
VLC (0>2) +2 (NEW)
LIG (0>2) +2 (NEW)
SVQ (0>2) +2 (NEW)

These changes mean that from the beginning of Nov to the end of Dec 2018 there will be at least 104 extra departures in comparison to the same period in 2017. (That's nearly 20,000 extra departing seats in just two months)!

I'll come back nearer the time with a more comprehensive overview.

I forgot to add that the Winter 18/19 schedule will require 4 based aircraft. Winter 16/17 and 17/18 have only required 3 based aircraft.

Many thanks again for more fascinating stats, Severn.

13 additional rotations per week in 18/19 over the previous winter means a total of 89, a rise of 17.1%.

The past few winters have seen very substantial Ryanair growth at BRS.

winter 16/17 saw 69 weekly rotations, up 25.5% on the previous winter.
winter 17/18 saw 76 weekly rotations, up 10.1% on the previous winter.

Just need similar growth in the summer months now.🙂

 

[Severn]

New Route: Sofia, Bulgaria
BRS-SOF - 1x weekly (Saturdays) starting 22nd Dec

BRS-SOF will also be operated by 2x weekly by easyJet (Wed and Sat) starting 8th Dec

 

[superking]

Hope its not too many rotations per week. It will be a mainly ski flight. I wonder if it will be all year operation or a winter route by both airlines.

 

[Marko1]

Whilst this is another great addition I can only wonder why Ryanair insists on adding to brand new easyJet routes that they themselves have had plenty of time to launch themselves whilst ignoring more obvious routes like Rome , Berlin , Madrid and Barcelona. Still good news all the same

 

[Jerry]

They may feel that on those routes Easyjet are too strong but on the new routes they aren't and copying them means they won't get too strong on those routes.
I do wonder what Ryanairs strategy is for the whole of the Southwest UK.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

It used to be just the sun routes that Ryanair and easyJet competed on at BRS - apart from the two airlines' versions of Milan, which from 14 x weekly some years ago has since reduced to 3 x weekly and just Ryanair to Bergamo. flybmi still play around with their small Malpensa offering but I find it amazing that easyJet have not returned on MXP. Does not have to be a crazy frequency as it was last time.

Now we have the two airlines going head to head on Venice MP, Krakow, Seville and Sofia with the last two new for Ryanair this coming winter - plus the various sun routes.

I really wonder about Seville in winter with two competing airlines. They might mess up each other. Ryanair operated Bristol-Seville as a summer route from 2009 until 2011 before axing it. Has that market strengthened to the degree that they feel they can now operate in winter and against easyJet?

Krakow and Venice seem to have been viable across both airlines year-round and, given BRS's exceptionally strong ski market, Sofia might be ok with both - it's only once weekly against easyJet's 2 x weekly. There is also the weekly ski charter to Sofia as well, assuming it operates in 18/19. I would hope that one of the airlines carried on with Sofia through next summer but given the start dates for both it seems to be a ski-season only venture.

Jerry,

Re South West strategy, who knows? I would not even begin to guess.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Sofia

Just to add a further comment about Ryanair's decision to take on easyJet to Sofia in the coming ski season, Ryanair has never been a big operator of ski flights at BRS. Apart from Bergamo which it operates as a year-round route, the only previous ski-season routes I can find are Turin and Salzburg. Salzburg was operated for one season (07/08) at 2 x weekly and Turin ran 1 x weekly in the winters 07/08, 08/09 and 09/10.

easyJet operates those ski-season routes now plus a number of others along with charter airlines. For many years BRS has punched well above its weight in the ski-season market so it's perhaps surprising that, with a wealth of destinations available, Ryanair chose to stand aside for a number of years but then came back with Sofia.

 

[superking]

Ryanair pilots in various bases in about 5 countries around Europe are to strike again Friday the 10th. The most notable base on strike will be Dublin. I wonder what sort of impact it will have to English airports let alone airports around Europe.

 

[Jerry]

Well apart from Dublin isn't most of their flights from Bristol with based aircraft? So hopefully that won't effect BRS much.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Ryanair pilots in various bases in about 5 countries around Europe are to strike again Friday the 10th. The most notable base on strike will be Dublin. I wonder what sort of impact it will have to English airports let alone airports around Europe.

Well apart from Dublin isn't most of their flights from Bristol with based aircraft? So hopefully that won't effect BRS much.

On Friday (tomorrow) eight rotations are rostered to be operated by aircraft based away from BRS:

Dublin x 3
Faro x 1
Alicante x 1 (morning rotation - evening one operated by BRS-based aircraft)
Girona x 1
Valencia x 1
Cologne x 1

 

[Severn]

During a week in August, RYR operate 125 weekly departures from BRS.
72 of these are flown using BRS based aircraft and
53 are flown using aircraft based elsewhere in Ryanairs network.
Given that RYR has around 85 bases across Europe and Northern Africa, all bases see a mix of based and non-based aircaft.
easyJet on the other hand operates very differently and from BRS operate only 20 out of its 350 departrues per week use non-BRS based aircraft.

Below is the departures per week (in August 2018) from BRS showing all operated routes and showing which routes have flights operated from other bases.
Destinations highlighted in grey are not RYR bases.
Destinations highlighted in blue do not use any BRS based aircraft (BUD, MLA, VLC, WRO)

DUB - 20x departures per week - (19x operated by DUB based aircraft)
PMI - 10 - (4x operated by PMI based aircraft)
ALC - 10 - (3x operated by ALC based aircraft)
AGP - 8 - (2x operated by AGP based aircraft)
FAO - 7 - (1x operated by FAO based aircraft)
GRO - 5 - (3x operated by GRO based aircraft)
BUD - 3 - (3x operated by BUD based aircraft)
MLA - 3 - (3x operated by MLA based aircraft)
WMI - 3 - (2x operated by WMI based aircraft)
KRK - 3 (2x operated by KRK based aircraft)
CGN - 3 (2x operated by CGN based aircraft)
KUN - 3 (2x operated by KUN based aircraft)
GDN - 3 (1x operated by GDN based aircraft)
BGY - 3 (1x operated by BGY based aircraft)
IBZ - 3
TFS - 3
ACE - 3
BZR - 3
VCE - 3
NOC - 3
VLC - 2 (2x operated by VLC based aircraft)
WRO - 2 (2x operated by WRO based aircraft)
OTP - 2 (1x operated by OTP based aircraft)
SNN - 2
LPA - 2
CHQ - 2
BLQ - 2
POZ - 2
LIG - 2
RZE - 2
EGC - 2
REU - 1

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Summer 2019

Flights beginning to be loaded; so far:

Alicante
Malaga
Palma
Gdansk
Krakow
Poznan
Rzeszow
Warsaw Modlin
Wroclaw
Faro

 

[superking]

With the new routes announced today from Cardiff and Exeter I wonder how much impact it will have on pax numbers from BRS.

 

[Jerry]

With the new routes announced today from Cardiff and Exeter I wonder how much impact it will have on pax numbers from BRS.

Probably not much it's only 8 flights a week.
From a BRS management point of view I'd be asking why Ryanair feels the need to operate those flights to EXT and CWL rather than BRS.

 

[Marko1]

I be a bit concerned that Ryanair feels there is sufficient demand for 4 more weekly Malta flights but then choose not to expand bristols own offering to Malta first .

 

[Jerry]

The surprise for me is Naples from Exeter and it not been offered from Bristol by Ryanair.

 

[Severn]

I be a bit concerned that Ryanair feels there is sufficient demand for 4 more weekly Malta flights but then choose not to expand bristols own offering to Malta first .

Ryanair is not like easyJet, and where they choose to expand can sometimes be confusing to work out. The same view could be seen at STN given that RYR will be opening a new base at SEN nearby plus expanding at LTN... Of course there is a much larger catchment area there however but it still might look like they’re only going to be stealing passengers off their own routes elsewhere.

It seem that RYR clearly feels it can add 2x weekly departures to MLA (378 seats) per week from EXT (covering the South West) and 2x from CWL (covering Southern Wales), plus make money and still not take passengers away from its 3x weekly BRS flights.

For RYR, flying to Naples from EXT and not just add flights from BRS makes sense also. From BRS, Naples is operated 3x weekly by EZY in S18 and will operated 2x weekly W18/19. TUI operated 2x weekly in S18 and will operate 3x weekly in S19.
Rather than RYR operate flights from BRS which already has competition, RYR has chosen to open the route from EXT which has no direct competition and if the route does well make a better profit.

 

[Jerry]

From a Cardiff and Exeter point of view hopefully there'll be more expansion in the future!

 

[Marko1]

I wonder what is Ryanair's strategy at Bristol ?

 

[TheLocalYokel]

I wonder what is Ryanair's strategy at Bristol ?

I can't see why these announcements today would alter any strategy that it has regarding BRS. By chance I suggested in a CWL thread earlier this week that I was expecting Ryanair to offer more sun routes from its many bases in Sunland to CWL, although Malta wasn't at the top of my list - I was thinking more of Malaga, Alicante and Palma. I did not expect it to be announced quite so quickly and I wasn't anticipating anything for EXT.

The Ryanair summer Faro and Alicante routes to NQY and the routes to Faro (summer) and Tenerife (year-round) to CWL haven't seen a reduction in the BRS passenger numbers to these places, quite the opposite, so I'd be surprised if the routes announced today had a different effect.

Malta was served 5 x weekly by three airlines (including 3 each week from Ryanair) this summer from BRS. CWL and EXT have had no Malta flights since Air Malta dropped them at those airports so MLA is a perfectly rational choice. BRS had 28 weekly flights to Malaga this summer so one more at EXT isn't likely to make much difference. Naples is expanding at BRS with 3 x weekly with TUI and probably a continuation of this summer's 3 x weekly with easyJet so it's well covered. CWL has a new TUI Naples flight next summer so perhaps that's why Ryanair took theirs to EXT instead.

Ryanair has been expanding rapidly at BRS in recent winter seasons and this coming one continues the trend. Summer has been fairly static so next summer's offering will be interesting.

A few years ago I had a chat with a senior figure at BRS closely involved with route planning and speaking to airlines, someone I know personally, although I hasten to add he never betrays commercial confidences. When I raised the point he was very relaxed about Ryanair setting up a presence at CWL. In fact, he expected them to put in a few destinations mainly sun routes, although he didn't think that easyJet would do so. This was not long after the WG bought CWL.