Tag Archives: Europe

The shocking lack of European capitals served by flights from Birmingham

Posted on by
4

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.

What does Warren Buffett’s train investment say about airlines?

Posted on by
Reply

So, Warren Buffett has invested some $26 billion buying American freight operator BNSF, with news commentators hailing this as an ‘all-in’ bet on the future of the US economy. But there’s more to it than that – it is, of course, a huge leap of faith into the future of railways, even if lumping coal isn’t exactly as glamarous as swish new high speed train sets. But Buffett has never been about style over substance, and trains in Europe are usually associated with massive subsidies.

In typical long-term Buffett style, he has talked about growth potential of rail in the USA over the next 3 decades, and even if this investment is in freight railways, there is no doubt that passenger rail networks will also see substantial development over this period.

Compare this to Buffett’s attitudes towards airlines, after he lost 75% of his $385 million investment in US Airways back in 1995. He pointed out that the he didn’t think the US airline business had ever made money – and this was in an industry without the kind of state carrier subsidies which were common elsewhere in the world. Buffett is quoted as saying, in respect of the Wright brothers’ first flight:

“If there had been a capitalist down there, the guy would have shot down Wilbur. One small step for mankind, and one huge step for capitalism.”

Has anything changed in the airline industry since 1995? Well, there’s been plenty of deregulation across the pond, and plenty of former big names are no longer with us. In Europe, we have Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary echoing many of Buffett’s sentiments, describing the current situation facing European airlines as a ‘bloodbath’, and the ‘perfect storm’. Of course, Ryanair are one of the few airlines to buck the trend, whereas this morning’s announcement from Lufthansa that they can’t find a suitable bidder for bmi, and that consequently bmibaby are shedding jobs hardly comes as a surprise.

Despite all this, Warren hasn’t been put off from investing in flying alltogether, having ditched his own private jet, aka ‘The Indefensible’ back in 1998, in favour of buying private jet hire company NetJets.

A local rant about transport integration

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve just thrown up a post on my personal blog about a new development around Coventry Railway station, which really should include a proper multi-modal interchange between bus, taxi and rail. Sadly, Coventry Airport does not look like it will offer any passenger flights in the near future, but any scheme which improves bus access to Coventry Station will also mean better access to Birmingham Airport, which is just 10 minutes by train from Coventry.

Thinking around Europe, and particularly to countries like Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany, it is easy to praise their public transport systems for being efficient and integrated. Such a dream might not seem so easy with so many different bus and train operators plying for trade, but what has this current government achieved in its 12 years of promising to bring more integrated transport? Putting my Conservative, profit driven thinking cap on, surely any opportunity to combine transport modes, increase property values and open up new development land should be grabbed before it is too late.

One such scheme is happening right here in Coventry, under the brand name of ‘Friar Gate’. The design seems generally quite reasonable, but couldn’t it be so much more exciting if they rebranded it as “Cov Central”, and made it totally accessible from any part of the city by bike, bus, car or train? Such a scheme might be a little bit more bold than the current one, but it would at least provide a chance to connect everything together, something which could be such a symbolic gesture in this City of Peace and Reconciliation.

And the bonus? Good bye Pool Meadow – a dingy, ugly and badly designed bus station which merits no Architectural distinction whatsoever. It might inconvenience the Gala bingo players a little, but it would bring a much greater prize to the rest of the city.

I hope my references here can be of interest to people who have no connection with the city of Coventry, although you are probably quite small in number! Coventry started the whole twinning junket, and we’re now linked with some 23 cities around the world. You can also fly over Coventry in an instant using Google maps – our city centre really is quite compact – but still big enough for the distance between bus and train stations to be a major disabling factor in encouraging more people to use public transport.

Weigh me up before you go go

Posted on by
Reply

One of the most frequent complaints at the moment about low-cost airlines — and even some very high cost airlines nowadays as well, especially for flying across the pond — is the amount being charged for checked baggage, sometimes up to £16 for shorthaul flights within Europe.

Personally, I’ve always felt that it is much fairer to charge for baggage, rather than giving people who want to carry a lot more with them a free ride, but the flipside of this is that the legacy airlines which don’t charge for checked baggage can suddenly become much better value when compared with their rivals which do.

When baggage charges started at just a few pounds each way, the little bit extra didn’t make that much difference, but £16 doubled could make a seemingly expensive £100 flight with an airline like British Airways, which would also include free food and drink, become much better value than a £70 return flight with Easyjet, and this is before you add in the cost of getting to and from a more remote airport like Stansted or Luton.

However, these extra luggage charges really do just reinforce the argument in favour of travelling light, not to mention making sure that you do know how much you are carrying before you leave. For this, we would have to recommend buying some form of travel scale — I have a simple lightweight analogue scale, made by Gotravel products, and available in the travel department of many major stores.

Here are a few personal tips for travelling light:

  • Clothes — how many do you really need? Hotel laundry might still be ridiculously expensive, but you would probably be better off by washing your clothes halfway through a holiday at a local launderette, rather than paying for extra baggage charges. It’s always worth taking some clothing to cater for sudden changes in the weather, but if you are packing tight, isn’t it better to wear that raincoat through the airport, rather than having to take an extra checked bag?
  • Camera — I used to travel with a large SLR where I went, sometimes complete with long zoom lenses, but now I just take a compact digital camera. Where are your pictures likely to end up? If they are only going to be shared with friends on the Internet, resolution is never really going to be that important, so a decent compact digital camera should give you the versatility you need, especially if you can find a model with a high enough ISO for flexibility when taking photos at night. even if you do plan to print your images, aspect ratio (print shops still default at 3:2) might be a more important consideration than megapixels, as a standard 6×4″ print at 300 dpi will need just 2 megapixels (1800x1200px).
  • Laptop — are you travelling for business or pleasure? If the former, then lightweight models can certainly save considerable extra hassle, and if the latter, then I hope you can just ditch the laptop and enjoy yourself! Same goes for PDAs etc, but if you must get yourself connected, you can always use a hotel business centre or Internet cafe.
  • Adapters and chargers — I used to take a whole load of different power adapters, especially to go with my laptop on camera, but as their technology has improved, most portable devices will go for several days now without being charged. Many hotels will have chargers for standard mobile phones behind the reception desk. Can you get by with just taking a spare battery?
  • Buying stuff on the way — buying souvenirs and other products might be part of a travel experience, but they could end up by lumping you with a whole load of extra charges to get home. Always bear in mind that if your goal is hand luggage only, you won’t be able to take any liquids over 125 mL through security, so it is best not to even look at those cheap wines and spirits. With the buying power of modern supermarkets, not to mention online, can you actually get the product you are looking at back home anyway? Work out the difference in price, and the cost of getting it home, and make your own decision. If you’re getting someone a gift, it might well be cheaper to post it direct from wherever you are — this will save you lugging it around all day anyway. Using the postal system might also be a way of avoiding checked baggage charges for your own stuff – so if you want a little bit more space in your bag for non-liquid gifts, why not leave the task of taking your dirty laundry home to the Postal Service?

If you do find yourself scrunching everything down just to fit in one bag to get through the airport, you might want to take a foldable backpack so that you can put your coat in it once you have reached your sunny destination.