I’ve just logged in and realised that it has been over a year since I’ve made a post here on Flight Blogging.com.
I’m really sorry for being out of the loop - there are some personal and business reasons which I’ll elaborate on later, but in the meantime I just want to get things moving again, so here goes….
Why is the Virgin Trains website so useless, and why is their phone service even worse?
I think this post is one I will have to complete later, to avoid saying anything too libelous, beyond stating the obvious point that Virgin Trains web designers are a bunch of cretins, and their telephone system might aswell just say “Good afternoon, we don’t want your business, please press zero or just hang up.”
Want more people to travel by train instead of flying (I want to go to Glasgow, and could very happily go with Bmibaby or Flybe) - quit the lecturing, just make it possible for me to book online on the dates I want to go.
It really isn’t rocket science!
Coventry airport’s future plans have been scuppered, after a permanent passenger terminal planning application was rejected by the government.
read more | digg story
If you think you can find bargain flights to the Caribbean from the UK, then that is fine - as long as you only want to stay on the one island.
Try moving between them, and journey planning becomes a nightmare. Unfortunately, the story is one with which we are all too familiar - too little competition, inefficient airlines propped up by state subsidies, and an uncaring attitude amongst upper management when it comes to finding ways to make improvements.
Following February’s marger, the only airline offering a significant level of inter-island flights around the English speaking Caribbean is LIAT. Caribbean Airlines (formerly BWIA) connect some of the larger islands, but these services generally act as feeder flights onto their long haul services. Other connection are available with airlines such as Winair (often through St Martin), or American Eagle (usually though San Juan, Puerto Rico).
I’m looking for flights from Barbados to Nevis. This really shouldn’t be difficult, considering the distance, but I am trying to get back to Barbados on a Tuesday, the one day there are no flights to Antigua (from where the connections are made to Barbados), from Nevis.
It would be easy to say that Nevis has it quite good, considering that only around 11,000 people live on the island. But, as with any Caribbean island, when tourism is the mainstay of the economy, the levels of flights are always going to be significantly higher than the population alone might suggest - and the Four Seasons Nevis resort alone can always generate a steady flow of inbound visitors. Unfortunately, from a British perspective, most visitors to the Four Seasons are arriving on flights from the USA, meaning that Nevis always seems to maintain better connections with San Juan in Puerto Rico than it does with Antigua, even though flights to Antigua only take around 25 minutes.
So why not hop over from neighbouring St Kitts? There might be regular ferries from Nevis to St Kitts, but I still can’t find a flight connection which will get me to Barbados with enough time to spare to catch the 17:25 flight back to Gatwick. The best I can get is a boat which leaves Nevis at 7:00 am, with an expected sailing time of 45 minutes, and a 5 minute cab ride to the airport, that gets me there at 7:50, if all goes to plan. The time of the only flight connection from St Kitts to Barbados? Guess what - 8:20, check-in time 30 minutes, leeway zero.
I lilke to cut things fine, but not that fine.
It looks like Ryanair have stopped offering cheap flights from Liverpool to Inverness for the upcoming winter season.
Ryanair are quite often very happy to say which routes don’t perform well, but this seems to be one they have let go of quietly. Unfortunately, when it comes to confirming these details, Ryanair’s website is one of the most cumbersome out there. There is no quick way of checking timetable details, so users have to scroll back and forth through the dates they are interested in finding flights for.
This is, I’m afraid, yet another example of Ryanair’s needless unhelpfulness. So in the time it takes me to write this blog, I have got as far as confirming that there are no flights between Wednesdays and Saturdays in November. OK - can now confirm this route doesn’t operate on any days in November. Checking back through Ryanair’s booking form confirms that these flights do indeed end on 26th October.
So, we can expect the usual questions about why a route which appears to have been popular, both with point to point travellers, and people making their own onward connections from Liverpool, has been axed.
Our understanding is that these flights were indeed relatively full. There is certainly room for competition on this route, as passengers who have got used to Ryanair’s cheap flights to Inverness will now have to make do with Eastern’s services from an alternative airport like Manchester or Birmingham.
The clue lies in the probable reason for Ryanair offering cheap Inverness flights in the first place. Budget airlines like Ryanair do everything they can to get the best usage out of their aircraft, and this process involves carefully matching up city combinations, so that each plane can perform a maximum number of “rotations” (out and back trips) in one day. Sometimes, the schedule results in a time slot of, let’s say, 2 1/2 hours, into which they need to fit a return trip.
We have always suspected that destinations like Inverness and Aberdeen suit Ryanair’s purposes in this respect very well. In the case of Ryanair’s Aberdeen flights, the “yields” (i.e. the revenue the airline earns for each passenger) seem notably above those for Inverness, so the route seems likely to stay - for the time being at least. In the case of Inverness, it looks like even if Ryanair were making money, they can now make more money by moving their aircraft around to serve other routes.
Whatever has gone wrong with Coventry Airport’s attempts to open up a new terminal, and offer flights for upto 2 million passengers each year, there is no point in trying to find a scapegoat. Considering that the airport’s current owners took over the lease from TUI on the apparent understanding that the second public inquiry would be a formality, this ruling must come as a tremendous blow to them.
Infact, Coventry Airport’s managing director, Chris Orphanou, has not exactly minced his words when commenting on the decision to the Coventry Evening Telegraph:
“I’m not from Coventry, but had I been from Coventry, I would probably have been creating World War Three today”
Well, I’m not sure if I’d say I’m from Coventry either - I happen to live here, but I’d consider myself to be “from” that other town just up the road - Leamington Spa, or Royal Leamington Spa to the snobs out there. So having seen this argument from both sides of the fence, I think that this is the crux of the problem.
Poor Coventry is surrounded by affluent Warwickshire, which will only deal on its own terms - just look at the history of Warwick University, for more details on this. Meanwhile, just up the road is Birmingham, which is still trying to cling to its claim of being Britain’s second city. Sorry Brum, but in terms of culture, sport, and of course transport, you lost that one to Manchester many moons ago. So time for a quote from my favourite band, with whom I share my name, and who also happen to eminate from Britain’s real second city:
“Stop stop talking about who’s to blame, when all that counts is how to change.” - James, Born of Frustration.
The decision has been made, and we have to live with it. For anyone directly employed at the airport, or who’s business depends on the airport, this is a hard blow to take, especially as we approach what should be a busy summer, not to mention the excitement of the new flights to Poland.
I have lived in this area for 29 of the 31 years I have spent on this planet. Prior to moving to Coventry, I lived in north Leamington. I also took a substantial interest in green issues when at university, so I think I can see this debate from most angles.
I have repeatedly pointed out that Coventry Airport needs an intelligent surface access (ie ground transport) strategy. They need to innovate, and to turn this obvious weakness into a strength - just laying on a couple of buses doesn’t do this. They need to look at the shared taxi system used by Chiltern Trains at Bicester North (where parking constraints are a real problem), or they need to investigate whether or not Thomsonfly’s customer database can be used to offer this service as an add-on (hey, potential revenue earner here too).
I don’t buy the argument that mitigation wasn’t sufficient. If this was the case, surely the inspectorate could have imposed greater restrictions on the airport. This is to be expected anyway, as environmental concerns continue to grab more headlines. Let’s not forget that 1 million departures each year would have sent £10m to the treasury, yet nimbys tend to go strangely silent when asked if some of that income should go towards mitigation schemes.
Noise and air pollution will be a problem at any airport, but it doesn’t take a genius to glance at a map, and see that the residential areas around Birmingham Airport are a great deal more dense than those around Coventry.
I still believe that this difference in noise footprint more than equates for any alleged lack of public transport at Coventry Airport - especially as most of Coventry’s passengers are on leisure trips anyway. Let us not forget that, for all Birmingham’s talk about having a station on site, 4 out of 5 people using it still arrive there by private transport or taxi. As with many other UK airport’s, Birmingham’s proximity to the main London to Birmingham railway line can be put down to an accident of geography, rather than any deliberate foresight. However much I would like to see more people getting to and from airports by public transport, this should never be a reason for an airport to be refused the opportunity to expand.
So I think that the environmental reasons for the refusal of planning permission can and should be challenged, however much of a whipping stick the media like to beat the aviation industry with. Once those are given a fair weighting, I think that the case for moderate, controlled and mitigated expansion at Coventry - which is all anyone has ever asked for - is entirely reasonable, and consistent with the needs of the Midlands as a whole.
Flightmapping now has a new user group on Facebook. Drop in and say hi, and share your travel stories with us.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2351507165
So here comes another airline with a stupid name, this time operating two new routes from Dundee, with predictable help from the Scottish parliament’s route development fund. Just exactly how much demand is there for flights to Dundee? Theoretically, the airport offers an excellent marketing proposition, with a superb location on the banks of the River Tay, and one of the shortest airport to city centre transfer times available. Here lies the problem — is the centre of Dundee top of the destination wish list for passengers who regularly take flights from either Belfast or Birmingham?
Dundee’s current schedule revolves pretty much entirely around Scot Airways’ four daily flights to London City Airport. As a general rule, there is almost always going to be a far bigger demand for flights to London, than there is to any other city in the British Isles, so how much commercial logic would there be in operating twice daily flights from Birmingham to Dundee, especially when Flywhoosh are operating with ATR42 aircraft, a notably larger piece of kit than the Dornier 328s used by Scot Airways.
No doubt, the business community has been consulted, and surveys have shown that there is demand for more flights from Dundee, but ask anyone if they want better transport links, and they will almost certainly say that they do. Perhaps Dundee lacks more connections with London because its own airport is too tightly constrained to handle the larger jets that an airline like Ryanair would want to bring in there. On the other hand, Dundee’s problem might simply be a question of catchment area. Again, I’m sure that Dundee airport’s marketing department could produce a statistic showing that there are so many hundreds of thousands of people living within a one hour drive, but travellers in Fife are already going to be very well accustomed to using Edinburgh airport for most of their flights, and occasionally defecting to Glasgow International or Prestwick when a good deal from Edinburgh is not available.
There has been previous talk of an overspill facility to handle the extra demand for flights to and from central Scotland, but neither Birmingham nor Belfast are in need of any such extra links. Both are well connected with Edinburgh and Glasgow, courtesy of competition between Flybe and Bmibaby (Birmingham) and Easyjet (Belfast) respectively.
So what are Flywhoosh about? Is there really a gap in the market for another regional airline using turboprops to connect disparate parts of the British Isles? There are certainly plenty of routes which are ripe for development, but airlines like Eastern, Flybe, Aer Arran and Air Southwest will have already cherry picked the best links. Meanwhile, this field is further crowded by airlines like VLM, who are the main player at London city airport, and EuroManx, who are based in the Isle of Man.
So who are Flywhoosh? Well, if ever there was a clue in the name, then we have it here — other reports about this start-up airline have commented on its usage of a Polish Air Operator’s Certificate. In the single European market, country of origin is pretty irrelevant, but it is very interesting to see Aden Murcott come back to the scene so quickly. Mr Murcott was previously CEO of none other than Flywho, the premium service leisure airline which never got off the ground. After three summers of false starts, Flywho finally disappeared from the scene late last year, after BBC Watchdog exposed them to selling flights without the correct bonding.
Will Mr Murcott’s extensive sales skills be better applied on this new operation? Clearly, he’s had no trouble convincing the bureaucrats who are there to write subsidy cheques on our behalf, but is this venture really going to be sustainable once the development funds run out? Perhaps we shouldn’t be focused too much on a name, but “Flywhoosh” is really just “Flywho” + “osh”. Caveat emptor!
Further information:
If ever there was an award for a stupidly named airline, it would have to go to the Swiss regional airline Darwin Airlines. Do they not know that everyone associates Charles Darwin with the theory of evolution?
Much as though we Brits should be honoured by their selection of one of our greatest national heroes, any mention of the name on the internet always comes up with associations with the Darwin Awards, which are given to people who remove themselves from the gene pool in the most humourous way.
So when I first heard of Darwin Airlines, my natural response was “how long before they become extinct?”. Well, thankfully, they have survived. After a few go-arounds trying to get my credit card details right, my own process of natural selection was heading rapidly back towards Easyjet. Somehow, I succeeded on my final attempt, so I am going to check their services out next Friday, with a flight from Berne to London City.
Flight choice:
Flying with Aer Arran down to Cork gave me the opportunity to visit the airport’s controversial new terminal. Cork airport’s operators have felt the full force of Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary’s criticism for spending too much on the new facility. I wanted to see whether it was money well spent. Flying to Cork also gave me an the chance to fly with Aer Arran, the only Irish scheduled airline I had not yet flown with.
Booked just a few days in advance, the early Sunday morning flight from Dublin to Cork was just €10 one-way, together with a small surcharge for Dublin airport’s handling fee (there is no air passenger duty or equivalent tax for flights from or within Ireland).
Getting to the airport
I could easily have got a shuttle bus back to Dublin airport, but I wanted to try out the pool at The Merrion (see my review on hotelsnob.co.uk), so was running a bit late. I therefore had to order a taxi instead – the journey to the airport took just over 20 minutes and cost €30.
Check-in
The Aer Arran check-in desks are very close to the terminal entrance, with one queue serving all flights. There were three or four passengers in front of me, but the whole procedure was done within five minutes. One great innovation at Dublin airport is the fast track security queue for domestic flights - although even the main security queue seemed to moving pretty quickly. If there is one major reason for advising against taking domestic flights from airports like Gatwick, and giving the train serious consideration, then it is the length of queueing time needed to get through security - any time-saving brought about by flying can rapidly be eaten up by these pointless delays, but this is clearly not the case in Dublin.
The flight
This morning’s flight seemed to be a good demonstration of the principal that flights will always be well utilised if the base price is low enough – the flight was almost full, apart from a couple of seats at the rear, which were being used to hold the Sunday morning newspapers. This was the first time that I had flown on an ATR turboprop - the ATR42 is one of the few passenger aircraft in service in the British Isles to use only rear loading stairs (I love my plane spotter trivia!).
Once on board, the cabin crew handed out free newspapers, and shortly after takeoff we were offered the usual array of in-flight drinks.
Arrival
The flight from Dublin to Cork takes just under 45 minutes, and we landed a little ahead of schedule. The disembarkation was extremely rapid because the ATR42 uses its own stairs to speed up the process. Mind you, the handrail was a bit wobbly – not clever considering our ever increasing compensation culture.
With all the fuss over Cork’s new airport terminal, I had wanted to check the place out for a while, but to be honest, I found it a little underwhelming. The new facility cost a cool €160 million to build, so I was disappointed by the sheer mediocrity of what I saw in front of me. Looking at the figures, it is easy to see why Michael O’Leary has been so outspoken about the project - the previous terminal managed to squeeze in over two million passengers per year, whereas the new one only has a capacity of just under three million. By my reckoning, that works out as €160 per new passenger per year, meaning that the duty free shops are going to have to sell huge amounts of whisky and Guinness paraphernalia to go anywhere near recouping its costs!