Please post any questions about flight routes you would like to see, or have brought back:
May 24, 2007
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Please post any questions about flight routes you would like to see, or have brought back:
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Hi. Can anyone help please…
We along with many other people have bought a property in Northern France. Lower Normandy (Pay de la Loire) and seem to be stuck into having to travel by very expensive ferry crossings which I might add Brittany seem to have the monopoly on. We live in Wales & want to make regular trips over & I cannot understand how Cardiff being an International Airport has no flights to any where near Normandy. In fact the nearest I’ve found is Flybe who go from Exeter to Rennes which is a new route. Surely there must be masses of people who feel the same. I don’t want to have to travel all the way to London to fly to France. Why can’t I fly from Cardiff or Bristol?
The ferries are always packed out but again it’s at least three hours to Portsmouth on a good day.
There are such a lot of people who have either bought holiday homes in northern France or making the permanent move as we are, that want to commute frequently but cannot due to the lack of routes.
I wouldn’t even mind paying more as the ferry crossing is so expensive anyway but would like the convenience of getting there quicker..
Please please please airlines can we have some flights from Wales to Northern France. I’ll be your 1st customer
Comment by Alison Uzzell — May 24, 2007 @ 11:31 am
As luck would have it, Ryanair have just announced flights from Bristol to Dinard this morning, as part of their major new base in Bristol.
Flybe have recently added a couple of Normandy routes, but as you say, their main interest is in Exeter.
There are numerous factors which affect supply and demand on new routes. To be fair to management at Cardiff airport, they’ve seen some substantial expansion over the last few years from airlines like Bmibaby, but Ryanair have also made a huge song and dance about moving away from there, because they tried to increase handling charges.
Comment by ja — May 24, 2007 @ 11:33 am
Does anyone have any news of Ryanair or some other company re-establishing low price flights from the North West of England to Tampere in Finland. Ryanair ran flights last winter from Liverpool to Tampere, but stopped them at the start of May 07 without warning or explanation.
The flights that we went on mid-week last October were well used. My son who works in Tampere says the flights he used every other weekend throughout the winter were always full. There was even a direct bus link set up from Liverpool to Manchester and a bus met the plane at Tampere to take passengers the short journey into Tampere.
Ryanair are still operating flights to Tampere from Stansted, but that’s no help to us in the north west, with the long travel time and the cost of train fares or petrol and airport parking fees.
Comment by Tim Yates — May 29, 2007 @ 1:29 pm
Tim,
To be fair to Ryanair, they are one of the few airlines which does actually tell the media when they axe routes - we covered this back in April:
http://news.flightmapping.com/07/04/13/ryanair-route-changes_1249.html
As I’m sure you are very well aware, Ryanair are a ruthless business - if a route doesn’t make them money, it will get dropped like a hot potato.
Tampere is one of those cities which Ryanair has helped to open up, so I guess those who used them can be grateful for that.
Even if the flights were full when your son used them, that does not mean they were profitable, if everyone was paying a bargain price. Other factors include the deal Ryanair has with the airports concerned, flight distance (longer = more fuel), seasonal demand etc.
There’s plenty more we’ve said about Ryanair throughout this site. You might want to start here:
http://www.flightblogging.com/2007/05/10/ryanair-still-the-consumers-choice/
Sorry I can’t be of more help this time.
James
Comment by ja — May 30, 2007 @ 4:05 am
I agree with Alison. We too have bought a property in the Loire Valley, being one of the most visited spots in France, but find that all the flights that go near, namely Andger and Tours, are from southern airports. Ryan Air provide an efficient service from Stanstead to Tours and Flybe a service to Angers from Southampton. Do the flight operators think that the only part of the population capable of owning and traveling regularly to France live in the South East. For us to fly to France involves a torturous 3 hour plus journey from Hull to Stanstead, a two our wait at teh airport and a 45 minute flight!!
Is there no way for the population based in the North of England to have a voice.
Comment by Andy Craggs — June 10, 2007 @ 10:24 am
Andy,
Aer Arran announced flights from Manchester to Angers earlier this year, but by the looks of things, they never actually started the route.
This would imply that there wasn’t much demand, although it could also be down to poor marketing. Perhaps Flybe have looked at this, and are considering launching Angers flights from Manchester at some stage.
You might want to try Ryanair from East Midlands to Dinard - would that be any better?
Ultimately, all of the airlines mentioned above are commercial businesses. They don’t always make the right decisions, but they do have their ways of looking at routes, and deciding which ones will be viable.
Ryanair’s only route from Humberside was to Dublin, and they axed that due to poor sales. Remember that “poor” by Ryanair’s standars might still mean a full plane, but that they weren’t able to charge enough for each seat to make the route viable.
Marginal routes are also heavily dependent on airlines getting a good deal at the airports concerned. On the other hand, Flybe only have to fill 78 seats on their Q400 aircraft, compared to 189 on Ryanair’s B737-800s.
Unfortunately, airlines don’t like to discuss their route development plans in much detail, due to commercial considerations. However, they do give out general hints.
I think that Flybe could certainly add more French flights from Manchester, but Doncaster has also tried hard to attract more flights to France, and not really succeded so far.
Keep an eye out on our news section for further developments, although I doubt there will be any changes announced before next year.
http://news.flightmapping.com/
Comment by ja — June 10, 2007 @ 11:05 am
Hi, I live and work in Hamburg Germany and regularly travel to the south of the UK to see friends and family along with many other “commuters”. Early last year, Germanwings suddenly stopped their well-supported Gatwick service due to quote “operational reasons” and now the only services are Easyjet to Luton (90 mins on train to Gatwick), scheduled carriers to Heathrow (ouch, the price!) and Ryanair who call Luebeck “Hamburg” which is like calling Glasgow “Edinbugh” ! I keep seeing new services from Gatwick with FlyBe and Aer Lingus who frustratingly (for me) now offer most of the major German cities….except Hamburg :o( If anyone has the inside track if a new service is starting soon I’d be really glad to hear it. Thanks
Comment by Jez R — May 23, 2009 @ 3:32 pm
Jez,
I think it is fair to say that Hamburg was slow to open up to low cost airlines, and is often seen as rich pickings for the scheduled carriers. With regards to routes being well supported - the flights can often seem full, but if a route doesn’t generate enough revenue, or the slot timings don’t suit the airline, a route can still get dropped.
Flybe’s route network tends to operate in reverse to that of other airlines - they are expanding from Gatwick only after having established routes from other UK regional airports. They currently only operate Hamburg flights from Birmingham, so if you want me to place a ‘bet’ on whether or not they would start a Hamburg route this year, I’ll say no, and I would also guess that Aer Lingus will chase other more popular destinations before they look at Hamburg - but there are no crystal balls here, routes chop and change all the time.
Happy flying,
James.
Comment by ja — May 26, 2009 @ 3:57 am