Tag Archives: Greece

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 to flush away toilets and gain 6 seats

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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.

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

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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

Hellenic confirm Birmingham to Athens flights launch

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New flights to the Greek capital Athens from Birmingham airport have been confirmed by Hellenic Imperial Airways.

Well, I’ll still maintain my concerns about the long term viability of this route, but it is at least official that these flights will be operating. The first departure date will be 27th May – just 9 days away, an astonishingly quick turn around from putting seats on sale to route launch. It all smacks of a rushed-job, but let’s see.

And if Birmingham can now get flights to Athens launched, how about all those other European capitals still missing off the route map. Madrid? Rome? Berlin?

New flights to Athens from Birmingham?

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According to the Travel Trade Gazette, the Greek charter airline Hellenic Imperial Airways is in discussion with Birmingham Airport about starting flights from the West Midlands to Athens, with onward connections to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.

These flights would be the airline’s first foray into the scheduled market, and will be operated using Boeing 747 — 200 aircraft. Prices have been quoted at £199 plus unspecified taxes for Athens flights, and £350 plus taxes for return flights to Jeddah.
Quite frankly, I don’t think this is really something to get that excited about at this stage. I’m also sceptical about the proposed choice of aircraft for this route.

Flights are touted as operating to Athens up to 4 times each week, with a continuation on to Jeddah twice each week. I can’t think of any flights from Birmingham to European destinations which operate with anything other than narrowbodied aircraft (up to a maximum size of a Boeing 757 or Airbus A321), so filling a Boeing 747 on this route strikes me as a highly ambitious project. Granted, there has to be reasonable demand for direct flights from Birmingham to Athens, but I’m sure that the other airlines based at Birmingham, in addition to the Greek national airline Olympic, who by comparison operate a similar frequency of flights from Manchester to Athens using Boeing 737 aircraft, will have already looked at this.

I would imagine that one of Flybe’s Embraer E195 jets would be far more suitable for this route, and considerably more economic in terms of fuel usage. However, there are several other major European capitals which aren’t yet served from Birmingham — Berlin and Madrid being the obvious two, and I’m sure that however obvious Athens might seem as both a destination in its own right and as a connecting point for other destinations in Greece and beyond, Flybe’s bean counters have done their sums.

In terms of pricing, I’ve taken a quick look at flights to Athens from Birmingham in mid-October, and found availability for just under £170 with Swiss via Zürich. For a new route to work within Europe, I would expect it to come on stream at a much lower price than a compatible connecting flight, especially as we’re talking about a totally unknown airline here, using very old aircraft.

As for flights to Jeddah, the biggest demand here is during the annual Haj season, and this must surely be best met with ad hoc charter services, rather than year-round flights? Granted, Saudi Arabia is a growth market, and flights to both Jeddah and Riyadh from London can be prohibitively expensive, but there must be many more destinations in the Middle East and Asia which are a higher priority to get served from Birmingham.