If there is going to be a European LF airlines "Blood Bath", who wont survive?
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Just the usual Flybe Bull.
Flybe hold the record for the single most expensive domestic flight that I have ever made. (£305 BTW) yet they get away with claiming that they were the original low fares airline.
the other porker they continually claim that there is 30 mins difference in travel time between BHD and BFS. If I can travel from Belfast to BFS in 25 minutes no sweat then they must be travelling via Ballymena!
ALSO, how come taxes are charges from BHD to LGW are now only £9.95 each way having ripped us off for £38 return before!
call in the ASA I say.
And as proof of the pudding that they are all mouth and no trousers, here are quotes for a trip to Gatwick I was considering making next month. (24/25Nov)
FLYBE £131.55
easyJet £45.98
I suppose you'd pay the extra £85 for the privilege of being forced to check in you bag
Flybe hold the record for the single most expensive domestic flight that I have ever made. (£305 BTW) yet they get away with claiming that they were the original low fares airline.
the other porker they continually claim that there is 30 mins difference in travel time between BHD and BFS. If I can travel from Belfast to BFS in 25 minutes no sweat then they must be travelling via Ballymena!
ALSO, how come taxes are charges from BHD to LGW are now only £9.95 each way having ripped us off for £38 return before!
call in the ASA I say.
And as proof of the pudding that they are all mouth and no trousers, here are quotes for a trip to Gatwick I was considering making next month. (24/25Nov)
FLYBE £131.55
easyJet £45.98
I suppose you'd pay the extra £85 for the privilege of being forced to check in you bag
Last edited by CaptJ; 28th Oct 2004 at 16:23.
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Shift the paradigm...
This thread is very interesting. Some questions spring to mind..
(a) where you have big capacity, why not do what they do in Asia and operate a 747-400 on a short sector, filled to the gills with pax, twice a day ? (eg HKG/MNL). this must be an efficient way to attract the price sensitive customer...
In the US (where I now live) the reverse is true and more and more CRJ type flights are filling the skies where 737's and 727's once plod. Frequency is one thing, price is another ? Which segment of which market represents the future growth ? Many LCC's have created new markets, instead of going to the pub or to the theatre you can now go to PRG for the evening... Maybe these airlines will focus on different market segments?
(b) Whose passengers are they anyway ? The airports or the airlines ? Or maybe the travel agents ? Does your average joe punter care which airline they fly on ? Maybe the airport or handling agent will run the booking engine and buy capacity just ahead of the flight from aircraft operators who can bid for the business on an ad-hoc basis, after all you don't get to see the airline or airplane these days in most cases until you step off the jetway (or climb up the steps)... maybe the future of the brand lies with the catchment area...
c) Interlining. This is what people pay money for in the full service airlines. LCC's generally do point to point only. I think the next very rich person will be the one who develops e-interlining for low cost carriers, maybe Mr Ambrose and the ERA?
d) As to the point of this thread, who will survive ? Easyjet looks most like Southwest, the grand-daddy of them all. But Southwest has a unique feature I don't see in Europe in that it operates a sprawling network that allows pax to be shunted from one hub to another to get from a to b, more like a coaster service than a ferry service....
good luck and success to them all !!
(a) where you have big capacity, why not do what they do in Asia and operate a 747-400 on a short sector, filled to the gills with pax, twice a day ? (eg HKG/MNL). this must be an efficient way to attract the price sensitive customer...
In the US (where I now live) the reverse is true and more and more CRJ type flights are filling the skies where 737's and 727's once plod. Frequency is one thing, price is another ? Which segment of which market represents the future growth ? Many LCC's have created new markets, instead of going to the pub or to the theatre you can now go to PRG for the evening... Maybe these airlines will focus on different market segments?
(b) Whose passengers are they anyway ? The airports or the airlines ? Or maybe the travel agents ? Does your average joe punter care which airline they fly on ? Maybe the airport or handling agent will run the booking engine and buy capacity just ahead of the flight from aircraft operators who can bid for the business on an ad-hoc basis, after all you don't get to see the airline or airplane these days in most cases until you step off the jetway (or climb up the steps)... maybe the future of the brand lies with the catchment area...
c) Interlining. This is what people pay money for in the full service airlines. LCC's generally do point to point only. I think the next very rich person will be the one who develops e-interlining for low cost carriers, maybe Mr Ambrose and the ERA?
d) As to the point of this thread, who will survive ? Easyjet looks most like Southwest, the grand-daddy of them all. But Southwest has a unique feature I don't see in Europe in that it operates a sprawling network that allows pax to be shunted from one hub to another to get from a to b, more like a coaster service than a ferry service....
good luck and success to them all !!
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Stagn8:
Check out www.openjet.com, who basically offer this service (for a half-dozen or so carriers including easyjet but not including Ryanair or flyBE) and also sell you insurance in case you miss your "connecting" low cost flight. I don't think they're very rich yet, though. 
CaptJ:
When airlines break out the taxes and charges, they usually based them on the published landing-fee tariff, not the deal they have. Thus the £38 you paid before may well have been based on the published BHD and LGW tariffs, but the airline wouldn't actually have been paying the airport operators anything like those levels. It's another way for an airline to pretend that they're charging you half nothing and that it's the greedy airports who are responsible for the costs - in fact the airline is typically pocketing a good chunk of the supposed "charges". But then competition comes along and flyBE can no longer get away with supposed £38 charges compared with the much lower charge base easyjet has at BFS...
[Edited to fix openjet URL]
c) Interlining. This is what people pay money for in the full service airlines. LCC's generally do point to point only. I think the next very rich person will be the one who develops e-interlining for low cost carriers, maybe Mr Ambrose and the ERA?
CaptJ:
When airlines break out the taxes and charges, they usually based them on the published landing-fee tariff, not the deal they have. Thus the £38 you paid before may well have been based on the published BHD and LGW tariffs, but the airline wouldn't actually have been paying the airport operators anything like those levels. It's another way for an airline to pretend that they're charging you half nothing and that it's the greedy airports who are responsible for the costs - in fact the airline is typically pocketing a good chunk of the supposed "charges". But then competition comes along and flyBE can no longer get away with supposed £38 charges compared with the much lower charge base easyjet has at BFS...
[Edited to fix openjet URL]
Last edited by Cyrano; 2nd Nov 2004 at 07:56.
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Hey Captain J,
Don't forget that the way the low cost models work is that as the a/c fills up, seats get more expensive, especially if you book just a month in advance. Most offers you have to book at least a couple of months in advance.
It looks from your above example of pricing that the flybe a/c are filling up fast while there are many easyTat seats left empty
Don't forget that the way the low cost models work is that as the a/c fills up, seats get more expensive, especially if you book just a month in advance. Most offers you have to book at least a couple of months in advance.
It looks from your above example of pricing that the flybe a/c are filling up fast while there are many easyTat seats left empty
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Trislander,
"filling up fast" my arse. The last return trip I made with Flybe the flights were half full. the last 4 return trips I flew easyJet I was "Sequence No" 145 or HIGHER. The truth of the matter is very simple, Flybe offer relatively cheap flights and some flights have no cheapies.
Lets just be clear about one thing. All my flights either come out of my own pocket or a very meagre departmental budget. I will always go for the cheapest, taking into account incidental extra costs. Its very, very infrequently I get anything close to the easyjet price out of FlyBe. It does happen, but not very often. I quite like the little Q300/400s, hate the 146s.
And just one other little point - I'm not a very demanding passenger, but I really can't fault the overall experience with easyJet in recent times. When GO was around I avoided easyJet like the plague and there were no cheap fares form the saviour of BHD then either.
It sometimes makes me feel guilty when I fly bmi or FlyBe, because without easyjet/GO and a much lesser extent Ryanair we would still be being ripped off for travel in a country where we have no choice but to fly.
I've been flying from BFS/BHD for 26 years now, so if you want a litany of horror stories you can have them. easyJet hardly figures there at all.
EasyJet's business model requires low fares to fill the planes. FlyBe only offers cheap flights when there is competition. there are routes with and without competion for you to compare. GO flights to STN did not go up in price when Flybe, then British European pulled out for example. Flybe flights to Birmingham shot up after Maersk pulled out and again after MyTravel Lite pulled out.
Remember too that easyjet is a public company whose facts and figures are available for all to see. Same does not apply to FlyBe or bmi.
rant over
"filling up fast" my arse. The last return trip I made with Flybe the flights were half full. the last 4 return trips I flew easyJet I was "Sequence No" 145 or HIGHER. The truth of the matter is very simple, Flybe offer relatively cheap flights and some flights have no cheapies.
Lets just be clear about one thing. All my flights either come out of my own pocket or a very meagre departmental budget. I will always go for the cheapest, taking into account incidental extra costs. Its very, very infrequently I get anything close to the easyjet price out of FlyBe. It does happen, but not very often. I quite like the little Q300/400s, hate the 146s.
And just one other little point - I'm not a very demanding passenger, but I really can't fault the overall experience with easyJet in recent times. When GO was around I avoided easyJet like the plague and there were no cheap fares form the saviour of BHD then either.
It sometimes makes me feel guilty when I fly bmi or FlyBe, because without easyjet/GO and a much lesser extent Ryanair we would still be being ripped off for travel in a country where we have no choice but to fly.
I've been flying from BFS/BHD for 26 years now, so if you want a litany of horror stories you can have them. easyJet hardly figures there at all.
EasyJet's business model requires low fares to fill the planes. FlyBe only offers cheap flights when there is competition. there are routes with and without competion for you to compare. GO flights to STN did not go up in price when Flybe, then British European pulled out for example. Flybe flights to Birmingham shot up after Maersk pulled out and again after MyTravel Lite pulled out.
Remember too that easyjet is a public company whose facts and figures are available for all to see. Same does not apply to FlyBe or bmi.
rant over
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Going from recent personal experience and personal observations (like 3 span new Airbus parked up in BUD for the day for example), WIZZAIR would be the favourite in my book....
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My list of high risk airlines would include EUJet (with seemingly hopeless loads on all routes except Malaga), Air Andalucia, which appears dead before it has even hit the starting grid. Even if they had started Ryanair's plans to go into Granada would have killed them. Ihave always been doubtful about Wizzair. You cannot replace a viable business plan with a colour scheme however jazzy. They seem to have extreme over-capacity already and are very vulnreable to EasyJet competition in particular. I do not see any long term future for Jet2. But Meeson is a very canny character and it is my guess that he is plumping the beast for sale to Easy. Their operations would complement Easy very nicely. Congratulations Phillip you seem to have a profit making strategy at least for yourself. I think you will win it. My Travel Lite have effectively gone already. Flybe does not appear to have any strategy other than trying to imitate the Gadarene swine. They seem to hurtling towards the cliff at a frightening rate. Kidding themselves that they have made a profit when in reality they seem to be losing money is a fundamental problem. Expanding when you ought to be consolidating is exactly the sort of mistake that Laker made. I cannot divine the strategy of bmi baby. I think it telling that Tony Davis left just when they had announced their largest expansion ever. The animals leaving a sinking ship or maybe just deciding what ashtrays they are going to buy for the next voyage? And there are still another fifty or so so-called low cosr airlines out there, most of them seriously undercapitalised. In the meantime RYR, EZY, AB are getting stronger every day. New entrants beware. It is getting tougher every day.
But I do think that TOM will succeed. HLX probably will too. But what are Thomas Cook going to do? Some of their core business is being removed from them before their very eyes and they still have not made any response.
But I do think that TOM will succeed. HLX probably will too. But what are Thomas Cook going to do? Some of their core business is being removed from them before their very eyes and they still have not made any response.
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Air Polonia just made the following announcement:
Dear Passengers,
We regret to inform you that from Sunday 5 December 2004, all our flights are suspended and tickets are not on sale at the moment. We inform you that SkyEurope Airlines has agreed to carry our passengers for free (excluding airport taxes and charges) on its network. You may use this option by rebooking on www.skyeurope.com.
Another one bites the dust...
Dear Passengers,
We regret to inform you that from Sunday 5 December 2004, all our flights are suspended and tickets are not on sale at the moment. We inform you that SkyEurope Airlines has agreed to carry our passengers for free (excluding airport taxes and charges) on its network. You may use this option by rebooking on www.skyeurope.com.
Another one bites the dust...
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much as I hope it doesn't happen, I fear EUjet may fall off the edge of the world. In Europe I suspect Wizz may not last the pace, although apparently they got extra funding recently. As for Easy buying JET2..not so sure. Easy have had enough pain in the past with clapped out tractors..why buy another bunch of them?
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For access to their routes.They could always get rid of the clapped out tractors. Having said that I have to say I've flown on a few and they're well maintained and reliable so why get rid?
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For access to their routes.They could always get rid of the clapped out tractors.
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Would PM really want to sell the Jet2 bit of Dart Group? LS has become the predominant part of the aircraft operation side with the demise of the F27s and the growth of his squadron of 737s.
A look a Dart Group's share price for this year, a low of 121p ish to something along the lines of 345p shows that despite all those 'doubting Thomas's' that regularly posted on PPRuNe that Jet2 @ LBA would not work, have been proved wrong. A quick squint at their loads from LBA and they are making some serious money. On share price alone, PM if he was minded to sell ought to do now.
The aggressive expansion at MAN will drain resources and send the share price down. I get the feeling PM is looking at the long-term. The next set of route announcements will certainly be of interest and might be being timed specifically for effect.
A look a Dart Group's share price for this year, a low of 121p ish to something along the lines of 345p shows that despite all those 'doubting Thomas's' that regularly posted on PPRuNe that Jet2 @ LBA would not work, have been proved wrong. A quick squint at their loads from LBA and they are making some serious money. On share price alone, PM if he was minded to sell ought to do now.
The aggressive expansion at MAN will drain resources and send the share price down. I get the feeling PM is looking at the long-term. The next set of route announcements will certainly be of interest and might be being timed specifically for effect.
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The aggressive expansion at MAN will drain resources and send the share price down.
I could'nt agree more. The fortune they must have made at LBA will be wiped out at a stroke with a loss making MAN operation. All their recently announced routes from MAN are already covered, sometimes by several operators, and nearby at LPL. If the rumour of Easyjet at MAN becomes reality, then I think Jet 2 will find they have bitten of more than they can chew. EZY is a household name, Jet 2 is not. Therefore the average person will immediately look for flights with EZY before thinking of Jet 2. The charmed life they have had at LBA, creaming of all the loco work with virtually no opposition, and the profits to go with it, will not look as good in next years report to shareholders. There was and still is serious money to be made at LBA, and Jet 2 should remember this before any further money wasting plans are put into operation at MAN, otherwise someone else just may commence ops at LBA and blow them right out of the water.
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Not sure about the statement regarding Jet2 not being a household name - in the South Manchester/North Cheshire area they seem to have ads on billboards and the side of nearly every bus for miles!
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I think there is a misconception out there that Easyjet somehow don't know what to do with it's 120 airbuses. There are plenty of uses for them..but the logistics of hiring/ retraining more crews tends to slow the process down. Should the company wish to reduce its expansion targets, they can use the buses to roll over the UK fleet a little earlier. I really can't see Easy buying out any other LCC in the current market conditions. Although Jet2 has a robust operation at LBA..it's still surrounded by orange bases within 1-1.5 hours drive and in any case the Esteemed Leader reckons that all new roads point at the former eastern block.
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I think Jet2 is going to do very well out of Manchester as people I speak to not wish to travel to Liverpool anymore because they can travel locally loco from Manchester,
Their advertising has been second to none
and seems to be very well known even though they have only been operating 6 days out of Manchester
There is room for most of the locos as long as they don`t all go for the same routes
Good luck to them all and lets stop wishing airlines to fail
Golf India Bravo
Their advertising has been second to none
and seems to be very well known even though they have only been operating 6 days out of Manchester
There is room for most of the locos as long as they don`t all go for the same routes
Good luck to them all and lets stop wishing airlines to fail
Golf India Bravo
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I heard a rumour that Monarch Scheduled are less than pleased about Jet2 moving in on their Manchester patch. Revenge will be in the form of a Monarch Scheduled base in LBA, allegedly.