Ryanair have now extended their reserved seating to cover all flights – but the service is still only available for the first two rows and for the extra legroom seats by the over-wing emergency exits.
The service costs €10 per person per flight sector. Other passengers can still pay €5 for priority boarding.
Does this make you any more likely to fly with Ryanair?
Coventry Airport has restarted freight flights, and still has stated ambitions to relaunch passenger flights.
Flightmapping MD Mark Avery was on BBC CWR, discussing the future of the airport.
One possible airline which might be interested in Coventry flights is Jet2, which has slowly been marching south from its well established network of bases in the north (including Scotland and Northern Ireland).
Another speculation would be that easyJet might be interested in starting flights from either Birmingham or Coventry, and that it would be seeking to squeeze the best deal out of whichever airport was most receptive to its demands.
Birmingham Airport might have spare capacity, but it already has a good offering from no-frills airlines, ranging from the bargain basement low cost flights offered by Ryanair, through to mid-market low cost airlines like bmibaby and Monarch, topped off by Flybe, who offer a strong network of domestic routes from Birmingham, together with some flights to key European business and leisure destinations.
Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary has confirmed plans to get rid of two of the three toilets which are fitted as ‘bog’ standard on its Boeing 737-800 aircraft.
What Ryanair Toilets will look like if they go down to one per plane
On the surface of it, this seems like a clever idea – on Ryanair’s shortest routes, like its London to Dublin hops, it is very rare to see all toilets used at the same time. This move will send out the message that Ryanair are even more keen to be seen as a company which operates buses with wings, rather than full service aircraft, so this will encourage people to use the toilets inside the airport terminals.
The move is subject to certification from Boeing.
Of course, this move will cause concern for people with medical conditions that make them need to use the toilet more – at least with two toilets, there should be one free if the other is occupied, but cutting back to one could make things difficult.
The promise is that these changes will only be applied on aicraft which operate the very shortest routes, but it is worth remembering that Ryanair have a single fleet policy, meaning that any aircraft could be use to operate any route at any time, including longer flights down to destinations like the Canary Islands or Greece.
I wouldn’t want to be caught short on one of those flights.
So Flybe have said that they are pulling out of their Liverpool to Belfast flights, and have come out with the predictable line about high taxes being the reason for the route being axes.
Now even though we agree with Flybe on this issue, it should be perfectly clear that the axing of this route is a simple case of them yielding to fierce competition from a larger rival. Now larger isn’t just about the size (and therefore the marketing clout) of the airline – easyJet were able to operate larger aircraft on this route at much higher frequencies. Flybe can often still compete against airlines that use larger aircraft, as they can offer better timings and higher frequencies, but on the Belfast – Liverpool route, they were only doing 3 flights each day, compared to 7 daily flights from easyJet.
Easyjet use Belfast International Airport, whereas Flybe use Belfast City, but even if this is more convenient for access to and from the centre of Belfast, Easyjet make up for this by offering a better frequency. Easyjet also have a much more natural customer base at both ends of this route, whereas Flybe have always struggled at airports like Liverpool and Bristol.
As confirmed in our news story, chancellor George Osborne has admitted what we knew all along, namely that Air Passenger Duty (APD) is purely a revenue raising measure, not a green tax.
Finally Chancellor George Osborne has, albeit unwittingly in the form of a leaked letter, admitted that APD is “fundamentally a revenue raising duty” and currently raises around £2.5billion per year.
Mr Osborne’s admission that APD is nothing more than a tax grab came in a letter obtained by a national newspaper that he wrote to Olivier Jankovec, director general of the Brussels-based Airports Council International.
So it looks like the government wants to take a closer look at a £5 billion high-speed train link between Heathrow and Gatwick, dubbed ‘Heathwick’. Whilst this might have some use for people who already have to transfer between the airports, it would be totally pointless as a way of making some kind of joint ‘superhub’ for flight connections.
There is one simple reason for this – there just isn’t enough spare capacity at either airport to justify building a link between them.
Another problem would be that even if such a link might take a nominal 15 minutes between the two airport sites, it still would have to make multiple stops to pick up passengers at the three different terminal areas in the Heathrow site, and then make two drop-offs to cover the North and South terminals at Gatwick.
British Airways will no doubt be looking at the proposal with some moderate interest, as they are the largest hub airline at Heathrow, but they also have a sizeable network of routes from Gatwick, with passengers currently having to transfer between the two airports by bus. However, BA would still be much keener to see a third runway at Heathrow, even if that has been dismissed by the government.
Oddly enough, the £5 billion price tag is in the same ballpark as the (then) £6.9 billion Rugby Airport proposal, which would have delivered a three-runway facility halfway between Rugby and Coventry. Widely ridiculed at the time for being a white elephant no airline is interested in, it could have fast connections to London via the proposed high speed two rail line.
Even though there are a number of technical problems with the Rugby site, it is starting to look remarkably good value, when compared to anything coming from the current government, which, when it comes to transport policy, is remarkably lacking in sensible ideas.
According to this news winging its way over from Australia, V Australia, which is the international arm of Virgin Blue, are expected to announce new non-stop flights to Perth from London in 2011.
This route would be the second longest in the world, with flight times of just 16 hours – a saving of 5 hours compared to the current shortest times, due to the fact that current flights to Perth need a change of aircraft. Even compared to existing sameplane flights to Australia, the non-stop service still offers a huge time advantage, as the routing is direct and there is no need to re-fuel.
This move will see the Virgin group continue its advancement as a truly pan-global company – although I hesitate to use the term ‘network’, since the airlines are each operated independently. An additional non-stop route between Sydney and New York will also be offered – another interesting development, as the majority of USA-Australia flights operate to west coast hubs such as Los Angeles and San Francisco.
It will be interesting to see what sort of fares are offered on this route – the economics of operating these ultra-long flights aren’t as simple as just finding a way to avoid an un-needed set of airport charges. For this type of flight, aicraft don’t just need extra fuel - they also need extra fuel to carry the fuel that they will need later on in the journey. For this reason, Singapore Airlines, which offers the current longest flight in the world between Singapore and New York Newark, operates a business-class only service, thus cutting down on weight.