Bristol: EasyJet Route News & Base Updates

[Marko1]

Any chance of a few more routes for next year. Im thinking of rhodes, venice , gibraltar etc

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Any chance of a few more routes for next year. Im thinking of rhodes, venice , gibraltar etc

Rhodes was strongly rumoured to be a Ryanair route in summer 2012 - it's poorly served by summer charter flights - along with some others such as Zadar and Biarritz (once operated by easyJet). Well, these routes didn't happen but one of the others rumoured for summer 2012 - Chania - commenced with Ryanair this summer so you never know whether easyJet will take an interest in any of the others. After all they're taking on a former Ryanair route to Marrakech.

easyJet used to operate year-round to Venice Marco Polo with extremely high load factors but apparently even with those sorts of loads it was an expensive route to operate and was discontinued. I remember it was one of the few times when the discontinuance of a route at BRS caused a lot of dismay in the local press because it was so popular. Since then we've had to rely on Ryanair's version of Venice at Treviso.

Interesting that you mention Gibraltar. The tourist ministry there is apparently anxious to get a Bristol route. See this newspaper report of a couple of months ago, although no carrier is mentioned.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/public/gi ... 2013_07_12

 

[superking]

easyjet signed a new long term deal to keep them in brs . they say more routes and exciting routes. dont know the length of deal. but all good news. more details on brs website and easyjet websites.

 

[big g]

Well they should be around for the next 5 years as they have also signed to be handled by Servisair for that length of time.

 

[Aviador]

Here's the Press Release:

[textarea]easyJet and Bristol Airport agree new long-term deal

Bristol Airport and easyJet have entered into a new long-term agreement that confirms the continued growth of the UK’s largest airline at the South West’s leading airport.

easyJet commenced services at Bristol in 2002 following the acquisition of the airline Go. At that time, Bristol was handling a total of 3.9 million passengers each year. Today, Bristol Airport handles more than six million passengers each year with easyJet itself flying around 3.3 million passengers per annum to and from the airport. The new contract provides a framework for further expansion and new route opportunities.

The agreement has already resulted in the addition of two new destinations to easyJet’s network from Bristol, with flights to Reykjavik and Marrakech launching in December. Together the new flights are expected to carry over 55,000 passengers during the first 12 months of operation.

Ali Gayward, Commercial Manager for easyJet, said:
“We are pleased to confirm a new long term deal with Bristol Airport which will allow easyJet to grow and introduce exciting new destinations such as Reykjavik and Marrakech. Bristol remains our largest UK operation outside London and we are committed to providing travellers across the South West with easy, affordable fares whether they are travelling for business or leisure.”

Robert Sinclair, Chief Executive Officer at Bristol Airport, said:
“Our partnership with easyJet has played an incredibly important role in the development of Bristol Airport over the last decade and this agreement demonstrates both parties’ continued commitment to working together to provide passengers in our catchment area with access to a great range of destinations at very affordable prices. It is also great news for passengers across the South West and South Wales who can continue to enjoy access to the easyJet network without having to travel to airports outside the region.”

easyJet is the largest airline operating from Bristol with up to 11 Airbus aircraft based at the Airport, 420 staff employed locally and 46 destinations served – the airline’s widest selection of routes at any UK airport outside London.

Bristol Airport is the UK’s fifth largest airport outside London and the ninth largest in the UK, handling 5.9 million passengers in 2012. It is the only airport in the UK’s top ten to see growth each year since the end of 2009. In August 2013, the Airport recorded the busiest month in its history, handling over 700,000 passengers.

Planning permission is in place to develop and enhance facilities to handle 10 million passengers per annum and development commenced on the first of more than 30 separate component projects – the construction of three new aircraft stands - in November 2011. A £6.5 million central walkway structure is currently under construction and, when completed in summer 2014, will ease departure lounge congestion and significantly enhance the passenger experience.

http://www.bristolairport.co.uk/media-c ... -deal.aspx[/textarea]

This is great news for Bristol airport.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

New 'deal' with easyJet

When easyJet bought Go in 2002 they added at least one aircraft to the base each year until 2008 when 12 A 319s were based that summer. Since then the numbers have fluctuated between 10 and 11 but with up to three A 320s in the based fleet.

The main advantage for the airport will be the knowledge that such a well-known and (generally) popular brand will remain the backbone of operations.

The downside is that no airport really likes being in thrall to one dominant customer but that is often the way of things at smaller airports these days.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Diversion followed by lightning strike

easyJet flight EZY423, an A 319 carrying 134 passengers and six crew members, flying this morning from Bristol to Edinburgh was unable to land at the Scottish capital because of the high winds and diverted to Newcastle.

On approach to Newcastle it sustained a lightning strike but landed safely with some passengers saying at the second attempt which, if true, is quite understandable given the circumstances.

Full report at: http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/Flight-Bri ... story.html

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Bristol-Newcastle

The timetable for late September till late October next year shows this route reduced to single daily on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays with the morning rotation not operating. Mondays and Sundays remain at 2 x daily and Fridays at 3 x daily. Saturdays are single daily as has been the case for some time.

It may be then that next winter will see a similar schedule.

There was a time not so many years ago ago when BRS-NCL was 3 x daily on weekdays and for a short period 4 x daily. It remains the busiest route between two English provincial cities by a substantial margin but that's because its nearest competitor, Southampton-Manchester, has also seen falling numbers over recent years, although both routes have been relatively stable since 2010, viz:

Bristol-Newcastle from 2006 to 2012, annual figures

246,000; 246,000; 202,000; 187,000; 166,000; 168,000; 171,000

Southampton-Manchester from 2006 to 2012, annual figures

199,000; 161,000; 156,000; 132,000; 112,000; 114,000; 114,000

The train and different working practices presumably have something to do with this.

easyJet's new deal with BRS is not obviously showing any significant growth yet even with the new routes to Keflavik and Marrakech recently commenced. I note that Lyon and Salzburg have been reduced to single weekly this ski season from 2 x weekly in recent winters.

No mention was made of additional aircraft at BRS so we must assume that this summer will see the eleven of last year, with any new routes accommodated by shuffling the existing pack of routes.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

New routes Keflavik and Marrakech - initial progress report

KEF began on 12 December 2013 (2 x weekly on Thurs and Sun) and RAK on 14 December 2013 (2 x weekly on Tues and Sat).

KEF carried 1665 passengers (CAA stats) which gave an average load of 139. The equipment seems to be the A320 (180 seats) on both days although in the original press release it was stated 319s (156 seats) would be used on both routes. Given that the route is likely to be more heavily used by BRS-originating passengers and that the first southbound flight was probably relatively lightly loaded these figures are encouraging for a route never flown from BRS before by anyone, even taking into account it was a holiday period.

RAK carried 1401 passengers (CAA stats) which gave an average load of 117 on the A319. Because this is almost entirely a holiday route it can be taken with near certainty that the first BRS-bound flight carried very few passengers which suggests a promising start here too.

Ryanair operated BRS-RAK year-round from 2009 to 2011 and achieved in excess of 90% load factors (170+ loads on the 189-seat B738)in the main summer seasons.

In the original press release easyJet suggested a total of 55,000 passengers would be carried on the combined routes in the first 12 months of operation.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

[textarea]easyJet changes flight time for Welsh football fans

easyJet has changed the time of its Amsterdam flight to help Welsh football fans reach the Dutch friendly on 4 June.

Fans can now fly from Bristol Airport to Amsterdam on the day as the match, thanks to a special one off departure time of 09:30am. The flight arrives into Schiphol Airport at 11:45am (local time) in plenty of time for the 19:30pm kick off at the PSV Stadium. The flight went on sale earlier today at www.easyJet.com

easyJet offers daily flights from Bristol Airport to Amsterdam. More information about the flight schedule around the match is available below:

Depart Bristol Airport
16:25pm Tuesday 3 June
09:30am Wednesday 4 June

Depart Amsterdam Schiphol Airport
19:05pm Thursday 5 June
15:30pm Friday 6 June[/textarea]

BRS press release at: http://www.bristolairport.co.uk/media-c ... times.aspx

Very accommodating of them!

 

[Aviador]

I've often wondered if airlines have a department scouring the internet looking for special dates such as concerts, festivals and sporting occasions to ensure sufficient capacity is in place for them. Just about all the airlines seem to make special provisions for such events.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

I've often wondered if airlines have a department scouring the internet looking for special dates such as concerts, festivals and sporting occasions to ensure sufficient capacity is in place for them. Just about all the airlines seem to make special provisions for such events.

In my experience locally Ryanair is the airline more likely to do this than easyJet. Ryanair puts on additional flights to BRS and to BHX for the Cheltenham Racing Festival and also into and out of BRS for rugby matches involving Wales, as it did recently for Ireland v Wales in Dublin and as it's doing today for Wales v France. I can't remember easyJet doing this sort of thing before, and certainly not putting on extra flights.

 

[Sherburnflyer92]

TLY, are easy basing the same amount of aircraft as S13 this summer? Any change in number of weekly departures etc?

 

[TheLocalYokel]

TLY, are easy basing the same amount of aircraft as S13 this summer? Any change in number of weekly departures etc?

So far as I know it will be eleven based aircraft again at BRS this summer. Currently there are three A320s operating - there were two at this time last year with the third arriving at the beginning of the summer season.

Whether this means there will be an additional (fourth) A320 this summer I don't know.

There are additional routes this summer to Keflavik and Marrakech - the winter loads on these new routes have been very encouraging with the Keflavik using a 320 instead of the announced 319. I'm going to Geneva in the summer - originally the aircraft was a 319 but now it's a 320. I'm also going to Edinburgh in a couple of weeks time and that's a 320 as well. So there may be four 320s this coming summer.

Although there are additional routes others may have been reduced slightly. AMS, for instance, now seems to be 9 x weekly instead of the 10 of recent summers.

I will have a more detailed look at the summer programme in the next couple of weeks as I will for Ryanair and put up a summary on the website.

 

[Sherburnflyer92]

What seems to be interesting is that easy are increasing the amount of seats available yet not the aircraft based. This is a good thing from BRS presepective as more passengers = more money, yet bad from a choice prespective.

Think BRS could do with some medium haul expansion from easy such as Sharm, Laranca, Greek Islands etc.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

What seems to be interesting is that easy are increasing the amount of seats available yet not the aircraft based. This is a good thing from BRS presepective as more passengers = more money, yet bad from a choice prespective.

Think BRS could do with some medium haul expansion from easy such as Sharm, Laranca, Greek Islands etc.

easyJet does fly to Paphos so they might be worried about dilution with a Larnaca too. They also fly to Corfu and to Heraklion on Crete, with Ryanair operating to Chania on Crete. There are also some charter routes to these (except Chania) and to some other Greek islands but not as many, either flights or Greek destinations, as there once were.

Ryanair was going to start a Kos and a Rhodes in summer 2012 - flight times and flight numbers were 'in the system' but never released publicly. Other (non-Greek) routes were also to be started then which would have meant six based aircraft instead of the then five. In the end both airport and airline decided the time was not yet right for such an expansion. Had Ryanair not been a bit short of aircraft this summer there might have been some movement in this direction.

easyJet have been fairly consistent with routes during their dozen years at the airport with only eleven dropped and of those just Biarritz, Rijeka and Bilbao are not either reinstated or flown by other scheduled airlines (Ryanair/bmi regional) or a charter route in the case of Bastia.

Ryanair chop and change with bewildering rapidity not infrequently bringing back previously dropped routes.

Sharm is now operated by Thomson but some years ago there were five weekly Sharm charter flights with three carriers. The Egyptian market is still something of an uncertain one with the civil unrest still smouldering. There used also to be charter routes to Luxor and Hurghada. easyJet flies just to London and Manchester in the UK from Sharm. BRS cannot be ruled out for easyJet because it is/has been sometimes the only UK provincial route or one of a small number on some easyJet overseas destinations.

 

[big g]

It's looking like EZY will be going up to 12 based aircraft with 5 of those A320's.
The first based A319 with sharklets arrived on Sunday.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

It's looking like EZY will be going up to 12 based aircraft with 5 of those A320's.
The first based A319 with sharklets arrived on Sunday.

Many thanks for that big g.

I've had a look at the first group of flights out on Monday 4 August and on that morning there is a need for eleven aircraft with five being 320s as you say.

This is the list for that morning with aircraft type found by checking the seat selector and times shown out and back at BRS:

0605-1125 Palma A320
0615-1215 Malaga A320
0635-0930 Edinburgh A320
0645-0940 Amsterdam A320
0650-1225 Murcia A319
0700-0940 Belfast Int A319
0700-0935 Newcastle A319
0700-1140 Nice A319
0705-1250 Faro A319
0715-1635 Dalaman A320
0715-1005 Glasgow A319

The two additional 320s will provide about another 7,000 seats per month compared with last year, assuming that the longer routes will see their presence (although not exclusively as can be seen from 4 August) giving just two rotations a day for some. When the airport last had 12 based aircraft (in peak summer 2008) they were all 319s so five 320s and six 319s is almost the equivalent of that in seats.

With the two TCX aircraft 321s instead of last year's 320s there will be a lot of additional seats at the airport even without extra flights.

The loss of TOM long haul will see around 20,000 passengers lost although the new Aer Lingus Regional SNN should go a long way to cancelling out that. I still haven't looked closely at Ryanair. They've chopped four routes, I think - 3 Polish and Bratislava - but added a new one (Bologna). DUB had been increased to 3 x daily for the first part of the summer the last time I looked but that was a few weeks ago and might have been altered again.

Good to hear from you on here again big g.

 

[superking]

is the 319 a new aircraft or are they fitting sharklets to existing 319 aircrafts.
good to see seats increased for s14. it sure is better than nothing. i often wonder what routes easy can do from brs now. it seems between all the airlines that most short haul is covered.
just a thought with extra 320 based that it was early days to start a few longer sectors, as easy said some time back that they were looking at longer routes from brs.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

is the 319 a new aircraft or are they fitting sharklets to existing 319 aircrafts.
good to see seats increased for s14. it sure is better than nothing. i often wonder what routes easy can do from brs now. it seems between all the airlines that most short haul is covered.
just a thought with extra 320 based that it was early days to start a few longer sectors, as easy said some time back that they were looking at longer routes from brs.

I agree that there may not be too many options left for easyJet to add new destinations to its BRS network although I didn't expect Keflavik and Marrakech (year round at that), and thus far these two have had very high load factors which is particularly good news for brand new routes (although Ryanair did RAK of course until two or three years ago).

Looking through easyJet's network some of the Greek islands might bear scrutiny - as nicholas1992 suggested in this thread the other day. easyJet does fly to Heraklion in summer of course but with the Greek charter provision from BRS not what it once was - either in frequency or destinations - there might be opportunities.

The trouble is they would be no more than 2 x weekly summer routes and would add nothing to the local economy in the West of England as very few inbound passengers would be likely to use them. Nevertheless, Kefalonia, Kos and especially Rhodes could be in easyJet's mind because the charter frequencies are not very high. Ryanair was supposedly starting these three in summer 2012 but eventually decided the time was not right then.

Salzburg is another thought I have. It's a winter-only ski route from BRS with easyJet (and charters). Thomson had a summer charter to SZG for many years (2 x weekly at one time) but it was axed a few years ago.

Dubrovnik could feature as perhaps a Saturday service in summer might come about, and Vienna might be a goer now that Ryanair seems to have stopped its Bratislava service yet again, despite consistently very high loads last summer.

Ryanair also had a Porto service at one time so easyJet might look at that. It's one of Bristol's twin cities and there is the wine trade connection; and it shouldn't affect the airline's Lisbon route. The same applies to Seville with its Airbus links which is another route that Ryanair once flew. Both these cities and regions offer a lot to tourists too.

The other one on easyJet's current route portfolio that might be considered is Tallinn. Kaunas seems to do well with Ryanair as did Riga but they dropped the latter. Nevertheless, there is a substantial interest in the Baltic States market.

I'd also be surprised if easyJet is not looking to increase the Paris Cdg frequency now that Air France has pulled out.

The route though that I'm very surprised hasn't been brought back is Venice Marco Polo. It operated daily thoughout the year from 2003 until 2009 and had monthly load factors of at least 90% winter and summer. Apart from Newark it was the only axed route from BRS I can remember attracting a lot of comment in the local press with articles on the withdrawal. easyJet acknowledged the high loads but said the flight costs were high. They've since started a Southend-Venice route. Ryanair half-heartedly took on Venice and still flies there but to its version at Treviso.

I've been looking at the easyJet website more closely in recent weeks and it's pleasantly surprising to see how many BRS flights are being shown as 'sold out' these days. There are three or four Madrid sectors already sold out in the next few days as well as several to/from both Edinburgh and Glasgow. There may be other routes too but these are the ones I've noticed.

However, the overall thrust of your post is true and not just with easyJet. It really is difficult to see how BRS can get up towards the 7 mppa the CEO mentioned was the likely target in the next two/three years and to the 10 mppa beyond that which is the ultimate target.

Then again, who would have said at the beginning of this century that BRS would be handling 6 mppa in less than a decade?