Tag Archives: Belgium

The shocking lack of European capitals served by flights from Birmingham

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As I see that the Birmingham Airport twitter feed has many comments about the runway extension and the High Speed 2 railway proposals, I thought it was worth a quick reminder of just how many major European capital cities are not served by flights from Birmingham Airport.

Now I’m not just talking about Vaduz or Andorra-la-Vella, which don’t even have airports, these are major European capital cities, including the capital of the largest country in the EU (Germany), aswell as other major players such as the Spanish capital Madrid and the Polish capital Warsaw. Even Lisbon and Rome will not get Birmingham flights until the end of March 2012.

European capitals not served by flights from Birmingham

(but these are served by flights from Manchester or other UK regional airports):

City Birmingham Manchester Edinburgh
Notes
Athens (previously operated by various airlines)
Berlin (previously operated by BACON)
Helsinki
Lisbon (YES) (new route starts 31 March 2012)
Moscow
Oslo (previously by Ryanair to TRF?)
Rome (YES) (new route starts 25 March 2012)
Stockholm (previously by Ryanair to NYO?)
Vienna
Warsaw (previously operated by Norwegian)

Now, surely I’m not being fair on Birmingham here? Aren’t there many other European capitals and major cities which are served by flights from Birmingham?

European Capital* Cities which are served by Birmingham flights:

City Birmingham Manchester Edinburgh
Amsterdam*
Brussels
Copenhagen
Dublin
Istanbul*
Paris
Prague
Zurich*

In virtually all of the above cases, other the cities served from Birmingham are also served from Edinburgh. European cities which are served by Birmingham flights, but not by flights from Manchester, are few and far between.

If there is any unfairness, it is that there are numerous cities in Germany which are both more commercially important than Berlin, and which are served from Birmingham. Yet, Berlin is still important in its own right, both for business, and as a key city break destination. If there are flights to Berlin from several other UK airports, then why not from Birmingham, especially as the new Brandenburg Airport should create an opportunity for new routes.

Surely, it would be easier to create incentives for the airlines already at Birmingham to open up new routes to some of these key cities, rather than chasing much harder to win contracts for flights to Asia, which have so far failed to materialise in any great way from Manchester, and which would be even less likely to work from Birmingham, given its proxmimity to London. And why should anyone fork out a hefty High Speed 2 rail fare to arrive in some field right on the edge of the Birmingham Airport complex, when Virgin Trains will take them to within a two minute shuttle ride of the main terminal building, with an only marginally longer journey time?

Notes:

  • * Amsterdam is nominal capital and most important commercial city in the Netherlands. Seat of government is in The Hague.
  • Zurich is both commercial capital of Switzerland and main gateway airport to Bern.
  • Istanbul is largest commercial city in Turkey.

Ryanair switch from high tax to high sun destinations

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So in their latest media release, Ryanair have stated that they are moving away from ‘high tax’ countries like the UK and Ireland, and setting up more routes in countries which have ‘reduced, or even cancelled their taxes’ – countries like Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy.

The release states:

Traffic at many Irish and UK airports has slumped, with Ireland facing a decline of 15% of its air traffic, and the UK set to lose almost 10% of its traffic.  We again call on the British and Irish Governments to scrap these stupid tourist taxes and reduce airport charges.  VAT receipts on visitor spend alone would be a multiple of the revenues generated from these tourist taxes.  The Belgian, Dutch, Greek and Spanish governments have led the way by scrapping passenger taxes and/or reducing airport charges (in some cases to zero) in order to stimulate traffic growth.  We are switching a material proportion of Ryanair’s Winter capacity and growth away from high tax, high cost countries like Britain and Ireland in favour of “no tax”, lower cost countries like Belgium, Holland, Italy and Spain. 

Now let’s not pretend that the low countries make any significant impact on Ryanair’s route network – they only have one signficant base here, and that is at Brussels Charleroi, which has been subject to different controversies over airport subsidies. So the real move from summer to winter is from the UK and Ireland to Spain and Italy.

Is this really all about tax, or does it have more to do with there being just a little bit more sunshine in these countries over the winter months?