Tag Archives: Amsterdam

When flights to hub airports are still cheaper if you go indirect

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If you want to reach many destinations from regional airports like Birmingham, Manchester or Glasgow, you would expect to take a connecting flight through a major European hub airport.

But what about when you want flights to that hub itself? You would have thought that there would be enough capacity on the route for it to be cheaper to go direct with the airline which operates that hub facility. As it happens, the opposite is often the case, even when flights via that hub are cheaper than direct flights to the other hub.

Looking at flights to 10 hub airports served by direct and connecting flights from Birmingham, we found the following:

Hub airport
Airline
Direct £
Indirect £
Premium%
Airline
Via
Brussels Brussels Airlines 255 200 28 KLM AMS
Copenhagen SAS 208 151 57 KLM-AF AMS / CDG
Dubai Emirates 470 339 131 Swiss ZRH
Frankfurt Lufthansa 396 151 245 KLM AMS
Istanbul Turkish 183 161 22 KLM AMS
Munich Lufthansa 193 151 42 KLM AMS
New York Continental* 437 369 68 KLM-DL AMS
Zurich Swiss 193 161 32 KLM-AF AMS / CDG

Flight prices were searched using Expedia.co.uk for a 1 week trip (therefore including a Saturday night stay and often being cheaper), between 1st and 8th December. Only flights to Paris and Amsterdam were cheaper direct – hardly surprising considering how close they are, but Brussels still worked out more expensive to go direct.

Now these dates might be quite soon, but they are still before the mid-December Christmas rush. Looking forward to March next year, prices for direct flights to Brussels, Frankfurt, Munich and Zurich fell below the prices for flight connections.

This shows that the network carriers are still charging hefty premiums for direct flights. This seems to fly in the face of environmental concerns over short haul flights being the most polluting – and two short haul flights when one will often do being particularly bad for the environment.

The low cost airlines have shown that point to point routes are what the customers want, and that they shouldn’t need to pay for the privilege. Most low cost airlines actively shun transfer passengers, as if one flight is late, they don’t want to deal with missed connections, and their smallprint makes it clear that they are your problem, not theirs.

Yet, of the routes featured, none have a low cost alternative from Birmingham. At a push, you could fly to Paris with Flybe, and then take Thalys to Brussels, or if your dates were flexible, you could find a cheap flight to Geneva and then train it to Zurich.

So will the legacy airlines ever wake up to the idea that direct flights should be cheaper for them to operate, better for the environment, and therefore cheaper for the consumer? Not without a heft taxation penalty against them, and UK Air Passenger Duty is onerous enough as it is. In the meantime, they will continue to charge more for the convenience of a direct service, especially if there isn’t a realistic low cost alternative.

Notes:

  • *Continental dates were 2nd-9th December. No direct Continental flights found in March 2012.
  • AF = Air France, DL = Delta
  • AMS = Amsterdam, CDG = Paris CDG, ZRH = Zurich

Copenhagen Airport Map showing train Connections

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View Copenhagen Airport Map here

We have always considered that finding a flight is only one part of the journey, and that the onward land connection to your final destination needs to be considered at the time of booking, because finding out later on that you could have flown to a more convenient airport is far too late!
We have produced a sample map showing onward rail connections from Copenhagen airport, and we intend to roll this out across a number of key hub airports in Europe, together with a limited number of worldwide hub cities such as New York, Chicago, Washington DC and Tokyo.

Copenhagen is interesting for two reasons — firstly, if you are trying to get to Malmo in neighbouring Sweden, then it is usually much easier to find flights to Copenhagen and make the short trip across the Oresund bridge. Although Ryanair have recently announced that they will restart flights to Malmo from London Stansted, it will still be quicker to reach central Malmo from Copenhagen by public transport, as the train service is both fast and frequent.

However, whenever one city airport is an alternative for another city, it can often work in the other direction as well, especially if a low-cost airline like Ryanair is offering substantially cheaper fares. Surprisingly, they have not marketed Malmo as ‘Copenhagen East’, even though it is a closer alternative to Copenhagen than the Slovakia and capital Bratislava is to Vienna, which they do market as Vienna East.

Heading west in Denmark, it is possible to reach all other major cities in Denmark within a relatively short time. Although all of the cities on the Jutland peninsular which have commercial airports offer flights to London, there are currently no commercial flights to the UK from Odense. Apart from Lego capital Billund, which still has flights from Edinburgh, only Copenhagen offers a good network of flight choices from UK regional airports.

If, like most flightmapping.com users, you aren’t starting your journey near London, you have two main choices to get to this part of the world — take a connecting flight, usually via Copenhagen, but this involves a very indirect journey. Some connections are also available via Amsterdam. Alternatively, you might find it much easier and cheaper to fly to Copenhagen, and then take the train. All cities in Denmark which have airports have direct train connections to Copenhagen, except for Billund, which can only be reached by train and bus, via Vejle. Many train services to western Denmark offer through connections directly from Copenhagen airport itself, without having to change in central Copenhagen.

For further information about trains in Denmark, visit the DSB journey planner – although we have always found DB (German Railways) to be much easier to navigate. Both are in English.

A note about the Oresund bridge — if, like us, you have an interest in architecture and engineering, then you will probably want to include a crossing of the Oresund bridge in your visit to Denmark and southern Sweden. In our view, this bridge is perhaps third only to the Millau Viaduct and the Forth Rail Bridge (see Edinburgh Airport Approach!). Note that this cable stayed structure has two decks, with the railway running below four lanes of highway. To get the best views, you will need to use the highway. Details about travel across the Oresund Bridge from Copenhagen Airport are here. Note – Copenhagen Airport is right next to the Oresund Bridge – you can travel straight out and back, but we at least suggest a visit to the Turning Torso in Malmo!

7 Ways to Beat Air Passenger Duty Rises

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    Yesterday, Air Passenger Duty on short haul flights went up by £1, but much larger increases were imposed on long haul and premium service flights. These taxes are set to rise again in November 2010 – and even if a change of government looks likely, there is little to suggest that the Tories will reverse this policy.

    This list was due for a little bit more embellishment, which I’ll try and get round to later in the week, but in the meantime, here are the key suggestions:

    1. Take a Private Jet – you will pay no taxes at all this way.
    2. Let Michael O’Leary pay your taxes – can’t afford a private jet? Look out for Ryanair’s special offers when they pay the taxes for you.
    3. Island hop around Scotland – ‘public service obligation’ flights in the Scottish Highlands & Islands are exempt from duty – and the views are simply stunning.
    4. Take the ferry or Eurostar to Paris or Amsterdam, and fly long haul from there – or even hop over to any European hub on a budget flight, and then continue from there. APD stings you much harder on long haul flights.
    5. Offset the tax by saving on duty free, or not paying other airline hidden charges – ok, so the government sees air passengers as an easy target. Chill out, and enjoy some savings on duty free. The best deals might be at your destination – shop around to see, but even though there aren’t any duty free allowances on short haul flights to EU destinations, these aren’t the ones with the highest taxes. Why not get the best of both worlds and fly via Switzerland or Norway – short haul destinations which also have a duty free allowance. If you don’t have a Visa Electron card by now, then you really can’t whinge about air passenger duty if you are booking flights with a low cost carrier like Easyjet or Ryanair. The taxes aren’t usually avoidable, but the card handling fees always are.
    6. Go all the way by train- this is easier than you might think, and thanks to the new Eurostar links to the continent, you’d be amazed how far you can get in a day from London – and think how much more you see on the way. Don’t fancy a long journey home by train? At least the return flight won’t be taxed so badly, as APD is only levied on the outbound journey – Alistair hasn’t thought out a way of taxing people to come in to the UK yet, but don’t encourage him too much!
    7. Take the ferry to Morocco (from Gibraltar) – ok, so the ferry fare will cost you about as much as the tax you will save, but Gibraltar is a great place to land, and why not add a ferry trip to your African adventure?

    Environmentalists put Heathrow’s third runway in Dragon’s Den

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    Continuation from Heathrow’s Runway in Dragon’s Den | Neighbours | Passengers | Economy

    I’m not going to look at the local environmental issues – these are covered under ‘Neighbours’. This section is about the contribution of Heathrow and the aviation industry in general to climate change.

    So, the arguments against are well known and well practiced – aviation currently represents around 5% of the UK’s contribution to greenhouse gas emmissions, and this figure is set to keep rising as other industries clean up their act. There is a suggestion that if current trends continue, all other sectors would have to reduce their emmissions by 90%, rather than the previously suggested 80%, just to allow people to keep flying. The most efficient form of flying in terms of fuel usage per passenger kilometre travelled is to use no-frills airlines, as they offer the following environmental advantages:

    1. Point to point service meaning no wasteful connections.
    2. Younger business model almost certainly means newer fleet – especially in the case of Flybe, Easyjet and Ryanair.
    3. No frills airlines tend to operate routes with higher load factors, and are quicker to withdraw unprofitable routes.
    4. No frills airlines use less congested airports, cutting down on ground taxiing and pre-landing stacking.
    5. No frills airlines tend to ruthlessly cut costs – and lower costs usually go hand in hand with better environmental performance.

    So how can Heathrow’s third runway possibly be justified in the face of such serious environmental concerns, and the lower environmental performance of traditional ‘legacy’ carriers?

    Time to play devil’s advocate:

    A new runway would reduce airfield congestion and stacking

    More capacity means less congestion – this is a fair point, except that more capacity also means more flights to take up that capacity. And in Heathrow’s case, this would almost certainly mean going from being 99% full on two runways to 99% full on three runways. Result – some efficiency improvements might be created, but these would be counterbalanced by the increase in flights.

    We still need hub and spoke networks

    However much better the no-frills airlines might seem on paper, there will always be a need for some hub and spoke routes, and only Heathrow can serve these – not Gatwick or Stansted, even though those airports might have smaller noise footprints.

    If Heathrow doesn’t expand, somewhere else will – and the UK loses out without any CO2 reduction

    This is true to a point, but the passengers would still need to get to the other hub airports. Taking up slots with feeders into Frankfurt or Amsterdam will use up more runway space per passenger than operating direct flights to the destinations people want to go to (assuming long haul flights use larger aircraft), so whatever BAA claim, Heathrow will always cherry pick the most important and profitable destinations, rather than serve every route it can.

    Expanding Heathrow means more direct flights, so less need for connections

    With regards to flights into European hubs from other UK regional airports, passengers from cities such as Birmingham or Bristol are already more likely to transfer through Amsterdam or Paris, as they have feeder routes from most parts of the UK, whereas such a short route into Heathrow would not be viable. This is obviously more wasteful than a direct flight from Heathrow, so adding more capacity and building a high speed rail link into Heathrow would partially alleviate this problem.

    Verdict: The environmental dragons would always be expected to shoot down any proposal for expansion at any airport. Although there are clearly some environmental benefits, these are often outweighed by other factors. For example, for every seat which an expanded Heathrow would enable to be filled on a point to point bases, how many other seats would just be filled by transfer passengers who might have gone elsewhere? Even if a clear distinction is made between the need to minimize the contribution made to climate change by aviation as a whole and the effects of one single airport, there is still an obvious correlation between more capacity and more flights. However much BAA try to massage the arguments, the concept of ‘sustainable aviation growth’ is always going to be an oxymoron.

    Economic Arguments for Heathrow’s Third Runway in Dragon’s Den

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    Continued from – Heathrow in Dragon’s Den | Neighbours | Passengers

    According to the Institute of Directors (IOD), delaying further investment in Heathrow is costing UK PLC £1 billion each year in lost opportunity and congestion.  Heathrow employs 72,000 people, making it the largest single-site source of employment inthe UK. Yet a third runway is projected to cost a massive £8 billion. How will this investment be recouped? Clearly, BAA believe that they will get their investment back, and the IOD figure would suggest that UK PLC would see a return in just 8 years – not bad for such a huge piece of infrastructure. But what if the airline industry continues to see weak demand?

    Heathrow’s attraction

    In the current downturn, Heathrow has stayed steady whilst other UK airports have seen demand fall. Heathrow operates at 99% capacity, whereas its main three European rivals (Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Paris Charles De Gaulle) all operate at around 75% capacity. Neither Amsterdam nor Frankfurt has the population to support airports of such size in their own right – these two airports only thrive because of the huge volumes of transfer passengers they attract. Only London and Paris can claim to be true hub cities, where there is substantial latent demand together with the demand for inter-connecting flights, which makes more routes viable.

    But does UK PLC really want all these transfer flights?

    There is a legitimate argument to say that transfer flights are the most wasteful form of air travel, and that it would be better to encourage people to make such connections at airports like Paris, where there is a lower noise footprint. This is, of course, a blatant ‘not in my back yard’ argument, but in terms of economics, is it really worth building an extra runway just to encourage more transfer passengers? The argument behind such transfers is that they enable huge numbers of routes to be profitable, when they would not otherwise be viable. Typically, 25-40% of passengers on long haul flights to and from Heathrow are making transfers – without these passengers, there would be much fewer routes.

    Of course, point to point flying is the most efficient way of getting from A to B, but there are always going to be journeys where the hub and spoke system will be needed – for example from Edinburgh to Entebbe or Oslo to Osaka. Is it really right that these passengers should be forced to be funnelled through Paris, Dubai or Amsterdam, just because Heathrow doesn’t have the capacity?

    Verdict: UK PLC clearly sees the advantages of Heathrow’s third runway and says ‘I’m in’. Score so far: 2-1 in favour.

    Continue to: Environment | Airlines

    Are British Airways always more expensive when they are the only airline offering direct flights?

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    In our news section, we’ve just looked at long haul routes where British Airways is the only airline offering non-stop point-to-point service.

    The expectation might be that they would be able to get away with charging a premium for providing such a service – this has always been the way with the traditional airlines. However farcical it might sound, the logic has always been that the punter should be charged more for the direct routing, even though it costs the airlines much less to service such a route.

    The article looked at flights to 10 different destinations across Africa, the Americas and Asia. Generally, the rule does still apply – regardless of the cost to the airline, consumers are prepared to pay more for the convenience of a direct routing, and the market is still driven by what the consumer is prepared to pay, rather than what it costs the airline to provide the service.

    Infact, the main exceptions to the rule were where you might expect them – on flights to Bermuda, where British Airways were 18% cheaper than the nearest alternative, the non-direct routing would mean taking flights to New York, and then doubling back again to Bermuda – a route which hardly makes any sense at all, considering that Zoom Airlines used to offer flights from Gatwick to New York via Bermuda.

    BA were also cheaper on flights to St Kitts and flights to Providenciales in the Turks and Caicos Islands – again, these were niche destinations where the alternative option would have been an unwieldy flight via the USA. However, BA weren’t always cheaper when it came to Caribbean flights where they were the sole direct provider – on flights to the Cayman Islands, it was cheaper to slug it via New York with Continental. Meanwhile, for flights to Trinidad (Port of Spain), BA were effectively competing against themselves, as the cheaper option was to fly with BA to neighbouring Tobago, and then take a short hop from there with Caribbean Airlines. However, the competition here is simply down to the fact that flights to Tobago are also available from airlines like Virgin and Monarch – therefore BA have to be competitive on that sector, making them competitive on the whole route through to Trinidad, providing you take the hop via Tobago.

    On all the other routes we looked at, BA were still able to charge a premium for providing the non-stop service. In many cases, the difference was only a few percent, but when it came to flights to Entebbe / Kampala, the difference rose to 41% over the alternative of flying with KLM and Kenya Airways via Amsterdam. We can only assume that this is down as much to the perceived differences in service between British Aiways and their African rivals as much as it is down to the fact that BA serve the route non-stop.

    As BMI scrap flights, is Heathrow’s loss just Amsterdam’s gain?

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    If ever there was a clear-cut argument in favour of Heathrow third runway, then it would be the fact that BMI have just scrapped their flights from Leeds Bradford and Durham Tees Valley to Heathrow. Anyone looking to transfer onto other flights will now have no option but to travel to Amsterdam with KLM instead, as neither of these airports offer hub feeder flights from any other airline.  

    Proponents of Heathrow’s third runway argue that the extra capacity that would be created could be used to keep open domestic routes like these two, and also to connect other British cities with Heathrow which have lost their links due to the high taxes imposed on UK domestic flights. Obvious cities which might otherwise support flights into Heathrow would include Liverpool and Inverness in the north and Plymouth and Newquay in the southwest. Meanwhile, opponents argue that people should travel to Heathrow by rail, and that the overall number of flights should be reduced anyway, thus reducing the prospect of these routes from ever becoming viable again. 

    Right now, the facts would appear to speak for themselves when it comes to connecting flights, but what about people who just want point-to-point travel between British regional cities and London? We would expect some passengers from Leeds Bradford and Durham to transfer to flights from Manchester and Newcastle respectively, but a far more significant number will travel by train. Both airports also talked about finding replacement airlines to open up new routes into London, but we heard the same rhetoric when VLM scrapped their Liverpool to London City flights. Perhaps Flybe could come onto the scene at Leeds Bradford, where they already have a presence, but I don’t see them operating Gatwick to Durham Tees Valley flights alongside their existing Gatwick to Newcastle route. 

    When it comes to the economic arguments about losing jobs to Amsterdam, there is nothing new here. For many years, KLM have offered more feeder flights from UK regional airports than any other airline, and they are set to increase this further still when they open up their new Liverpool to Amsterdam flights at the end of this month. Naturally, this isn’t good news for the UK economy, but we shouldn’t forget that Heathrow’s third runway would come with considerable economic and environmental costs as well. Nor should we forget that the ‘hub and spoke’ model is an inefficient way of operating flights, even if there is always going to be a need for it on some routes.