Tag Archives: Flybe

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

Posted on by
Reply

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

Coventry Airport restarts freight, how about passenger flights?

Posted on by
Reply

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.

  • So, is it time for Coventry to see a return of passenger flights?
  • If so, which airline would be most likely to operate them?

Liverpool to Belfast – Flybe yield to Easyjet

Posted on by
Reply

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.

 

Is this the beginning of the end for bmibaby?

Posted on by
Reply

Following on from yesterday’s news that Lufthansa can’t find a suitable buyer for bmi, we’ve had confirmation today that jobs are going to be axed, and that routes will be curtailed at Birmingham, Manchester and Cardiff.

So, is it wise for bmibaby to concentrate their efforts on one large base at East Midlands airports. They say that they want to concentrate on ‘growth routes’, but with growth comes competition, and Ryanair are already very well established at Castle Donnington. Right now, can bmibaby really push themselves as the ones who offer a ‘more pleasant’ experience over Ryanair’s cut-throat service, or will customers continue to vote with their wallets and choose the airline which gives them the cheapest fees? When going after business passengers, it is much easier to play on offering services which take people closer to where they want to go, but is this so important for the leisure passenger – especially when East Midlands airport itself is playing a hybrid game of serving the three cities of Nottingham, Leicester and Derby, and also trying to poach passengers from Birmingham, without being directly adjacent to any of these cities.

Easyjet might be out of the way at East Midlands, but there will have been obvious reasons why they made a commercial decision to pull out. Baby reducing their presence at Manchester leaves room for Jet 2 or Easyjet to add more services, whereas Ryanair and Flybe will swoon over any signs of weakness at Birmingham, and leave tiny with very little opportunity to come back in once the economy starts growing again. As for Cardiff? Not exactly Ryanair’s favourite airport a few years ago, but if baby reduce their presence there, Cardiff airport operators will have many more reasons to do a deal with Ryanair.

This scenario could easily see bmibaby exposed as a one-airport operator within a few months, with very few other places to go to. It would then be only a matter of time before Ryanair came in and made a pincer movement to finally kill off baby for good.

Why don’t no frills airlines offer more cheap flights to Greece?

Posted on by
2

I was asked on twitter by @Korb0s why there aren’t any Ryanair flights to Greece. The question could of course be extended to why there aren’t more cheap flights to Greece from all of the budget airlines, with Easyjet and Jet2 perhaps being the main exceptions. I narrowed down the 140 characted twitter answer to two words (airport monopoly), and said I’d give a bit more explanation later. So here are the key reasons:

  1. Airports monopoly. Greek airports operate on a monopoly basis, and to paraphrase Ryanair’s route development manager, ‘they wouldn’t know a commercial deal if it came up to them and slapped them in the face’. One of Ryanair’s biggest driving factors in developing new routes is the ability to secure the best possible deals out of the airports it wants to fly to. This can make or break a route decision just as much as whether or not they actually forecast demand to be there. If they get their sums wrong about demand, they can quickly drop the route, if they can’t screw a good deal out of the airports, they are stuck with paying high handling fees forever – that is the crux of the matter.
  2. Seasonality - no-frills airlines prefer to operate routes which have demand throughout the year. The market for flights to Greece has traditionally been dominated by charter companies, who offer packages during the summer season. Greece is not typically seen as a winter sun destination, and unlike destinations like Barcelona (Girona) or Granada, there aren’t any Greek airports which are close to ski resorts.
  3. Dispersal - when no-frills airlines have competed well against charter operators, they have opened up routes where they can put on a reasonable frequency of flights, and where a good range of resorts can be accessed from the destination airports. Apart from the capital Athens, Greek destinations are scattered around a plethora of islands, making no-frills flight routes to any one island less likely to be viable.
  4. Distance – a flight from London to Alicante is 914 miles, whereas a flight to Athens is 1,485 miles. This extra flying distance doesn’t just burn up a lot more fuel, it also means more crewing time, and more usage of the aircraft. For example, Easyjet’s 6:20 flight from Gatwick to Athens doesn’t arrive back into Gatwick until 14:20 – effectively half the day gone to service just one route. Sure, passengers have a higher perception of value for the longer routes, but it is still easier to juggle slots around two shorter routes than one longer one. At a regional level, Flybe have opened up a number of routes into various regional airports in France, but Greece would simply be out of the range of the Bombardier Q400 aircraft that they use on these routes – although flights to Athens from Birmingham using their Embraer 195 jets would seem to make reasonable sense.
  5. Ancilliary revenue – this is just a theory, but I would guess that as many Greek island destinations are fairly small, a large proportion of passengers use transfer buses to get to and from the resorts they are staying at. There is less benefit from having a hire car, and people who do might be more likely to rent a car just for the day. If this is the case, it means less chance of earning extra money for the airlines – but they should at least sell a few more sandwiches onboard their flights.

As always, this is just my tuppence, but I hope it gives a few insights into why there aren’t more flights to Greece from the UK. James

Flybe in £1 car offer

Posted on by
2

We’re very used to the £1 – or even 1p flight offer here, and yes, we have booked these for ourselves, so we know that they DO exist, and that the extra charges on top CAN be avoided.

So I was interested to see that Flybe have come up with a new twist on the theme – the chance to rent a car for just £1 per day, again, inclusive of all taxes and charges. Potential renters should hurry though – whereas Ryanair sometimes boast of giving away 1,000,000 free seats, Flybe are just offering 500 £1 per day car rental opportunities through their partners Avis.

The deal is inclusive of mandatory charges, and I would assume that collision damage waivers can be avoided through having a good travel or car insurance policy, but that is probably something where they will try and sell the add on at the time of pick up.

The offer says:

“Simply book your car hire between 3rd and 14th November for rentals from 1st March 2010 until 30th June 2010. If you are lucky enough to find one of the £1 a day cars, you will see the £1 per day price in your reservation. But be sure to reserve it there and then because you may not see it again! The £1 rate is inclusive of all mandatory taxes and charges, so you really could drive away on a day’s car rental for just £1!”

I’ll have to admit that this offer is of limited interest to a train nerd like myself, but it may well be useful to the majority of passengers out there who like to pick up a car when they get to their destination.

ICARUS fell out of the sky – I hope Flybe’s planes don’t

Posted on by
Reply

So, congratulations to Flybe on winning the ICARUS award, which is actually an award for environmental progress, which I am sure they very strongly deserve, given their commitment to fleet modernisation and environmental labelling.

But I can’t help from wondering which idiot came up with the name ICARUS for this award. Do they not know the story, or do they have a different version? In the one I know, Icarus flew too close to the sun, and his wings melted, so he plummeted straight out of the sky. The story is supposed to be a warning to those who have too lofty ambitions.

Now we’ve come a long way since the legend of Icarus – and yes, one day we might be able to float around like birds with massive wax wings. Correction – some people already like to put on silly bird suits and throw themselves of mountains. Good luck to them – I’m sure it is a great adrenaline rush. But this is just NOT the best name to associate with an award for an airline. To me, it sounds just too much like the Darwin Awards for human stupidity. Oddly enough, there is an airline called ‘Darwin Airline’, and in a cuthroat industry where only the strongest survive, I’m amazed to say that they are still going (double check, yes they are). I flew with them once from Berne to London City – even though that route has since become extinct.

So I might get myself in trouble for saying this, but I think you’d get the same answer if you asked any traveller in your local pub – which airline would you most associate with an ‘Icarus Award’ this year. Answers on a postcard from Rio please.