Tag Archives: Denmark

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

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.

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!

Cheap flights to Denmark – Copenhagen v. Billund?

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I’m flying to Billund next week, courtesy of those kind folks at Ryanair, who sold me a one-way flight to Billund from Birmingham for just 1p. There’s various places in Denmark, Sweden and Finland that I want to visit, and I’ll be flying back from Helsinki to Gatwick with easyJet.

A few weeks ago, my brother went to a wedding in Malmo, Sweden, which is just across the fantastic Oresund bridge from Copenhagen. He flew with SAS direct from Birmingham to Copenhagen, and was waxing lyrical about the service. That’s all well and good, but in these price conscious times, it isn’t surprising to find so many people grabbing the cheap flights with Ryanair.

Now I know that everyone’s motivations for travel are different, but if you wanted to visit three of Denmark top attractions, then you might well start in Billund, which is home to Legoland, before heading on to Copenhagen via Odense, which is the birthplace of author Hans Christian Andersen.

Personally, I’m off to immerse myself in Danish urban design, so Odense’s network of urban parks will be the highlight of my trip, but say you are visiting various different places in Denmark, and you have a choice between flying with Ryanair to Billund (flights available from London Stansted, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Dublin) or with another airline to Copenhagen (wider choice of different departure airports).

Which would you do?

Is it time for Ryanair to start over-booking?

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Right now, I should be somewhere in Scandinavia, probably crossing the glorious Oresund Bridge between Copenhagen in Denmark and Malmo in Sweden. I booked my outbound flight from Birmingham to Billund via one of Ryanair’s £1 special offers, but never got round to booking the rest of the trip, and then other commitments this week meant I couldn’t go anyway.

So what put me off booking the rest of the trip? Well, the problem is that when you can get a flight for £1, all taxes and hidden charges included (I have an Electron Card), everything else just seems so much more expensive. I wanted to head all the way up to Helsinki in Finland, mainly to visit the garden suburb of Tapiola, which is reputed to be one of the best places to live in the World. But by the time I had added in the cost of a ferry from Stockholm to Helsinki (I like to get in a couple of ferry trips each year), and all the rail travel, it all got out of hand very quickly – and that’s long before I’ve had my first pint of Carlsberg!

So I wonder just how many other people avail themselves of Ryanair’s free or £1 flights, and then don’t turn up? Or are people who do this so keen to protect their ‘investment’ that these special offer flights actually have a very good turn out? Whatever the case, Ryanair have always claimed that they never over-book passengers, i.e. if each flight has 189 seats, they only sell 189, and no more. This doesn’t sound like particularly sound economics, considering that there are always going to be no-shows, and logic would imply that the proportion of no-shows goes up as the fares get cheaper. With Ryanair’s keenness to put bums on seats at any cost, it does seem surprising that they won’t oversell their flights by even one or two seats.

Anyway, as I write this, Ryanair have just launched another £1 ticket sale. This time, I might see if I can nail down a return flight as well as an outbound one, and make sure I get to go somewhere a little bit cheaper than Denmark and Sweden.