KLM at Manston

That’s quite true but isn’t the problem that passengers can utilise an efficient and cost effective taxi service from East Kent to Gatwick, where they can find a myriad of low cost carriers flying directly from there to their chosen destination and all for much less than the return KLM to Amsterdam and onward connection?

As a local I strongly want Manston to succeed but unless and until it becomes a satellite to Heathrow with improved rail links to London, I really don’t see that it has enough to offer to make it viable. And how much more freight is carried now compared to 5 years ago? And what happened to the highly publicised equine facility? That’s why I am intrigued to read what the Gloags have to say, when they announce their plans for its future.

I think Flybe’s biggest mistake is/was its massive order for the Embraer E175. They’ve begun replacing some of their Dash8 Q400 fleet with these new aircraft and I don’t understand why because the turboprop has been proven to be just as economic and more environmentally friendly. The E175’s are bigger in terms of capacity, so I think that they have tried to over-stretch themselves and it’s back-fired, hence why they now find themselves in the position they are in now.

Details of the base closures and job losses have been announced: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/nov/15/flybe-closure-six-bases-redundancy-details-exeter-jobs

Bases at Aberdeen, Guernsey, Inverness, Isle of Man, Jersey and Newcastle will shut, although a spokesman for the airline said it would continue to fly to the airports.

The carrier also indicated there would be cuts at Belfast, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester and Southampton.

Now that’s a pretty large cull of bases and cut backs, and if you also take into account that they will no longer be flying to/from London-Garwick from the end of March 2014, things must be really quite bad for them.

The bizarre thing though is that they have in fact made a profit…(Half-year results showed profits after tax of £13.6m on revenues that grew 3% year-on-year to £351m), so it is a rather confusing situation. The new CEO says they’ve got to “shrink to grow”…this could be just as risky, couldn’t it?

They may not have used based MSE aircraft, as testing the water, and also EDI and MAN bigger business catchment areas.

I see your point about testing the water, and I agree that basing an aircraft or two is/would have been a bigger risk, however I think it would have allowed them to conduct a far more conclusive test of the market potential at MSE. To blame the discontinuation of a route due to lack of passengers when you choose to operate flights that are of no use to a large market segment (i.e. business travellers) is wrong in my opinion.

To get back to the topic at hand though, I do wonder how long KLM will remain at MSE? The flights are timed pretty nicely to allow for onward connections to KL’s global network (plus it’s cheaper to fly via Europe in order to avoid higher APD taxes!), so if the locals do not make use of the services available then the airline will simply drop the route, and then they’ll all moan that they have no services from their local airport, but it’ll be their own fault.

Indeed they announced staff cuts of 500 and savings of £26 million to “save the airline”.

Yes understand where your coming from. A few years back Flybe launched a load of new routes from Liverpool, again times were not as good as could have been, plus frankly I think their heart wasnt in it, and were more Manchester orientated. Certain routes I used a few times including, Liverpool-Southampton.This was often flown with a 146 jet, instead of Dash8 so you can’t really say, no-one was using it, for sure whenever I flew that route, it was busy, full infact. Then it just went, with all of the others (except LPL- IOM). They may not have used based MSE aircraft, as testing the water, and also EDI and MAN bigger business catchment areas.

On a seperate note, I read Flybe are cutting a number of routes soon, and shedding a lot of staff, so things are not so rosy, with that airline. from them I hightly doubt any new innovative routes (such as Manston) from them in the near future.

The only reason the domestic routes didn’t work on that particular occasion was because they were operated to suit Flybe and not the customer. Flybe used aircraft that were based at the destination airport, which meant that they operated an early morning return flight to/from the destination before heading down to Manston. This ultimately offered a very late morning arrival into Manston and an early afternoon departure, which is hopeless for attracting the key business traveller market, thus the flights only appealed to leisure travellers.

When Flybe announced that they were dis-continuing the flights to Manston, they said: “We tried different routes and the numbers simply weren’t there. It’s impossible to sustain routes without the passengers.”

We’ll had they of chosen to base x2 Dash8 Q400’s at MSE and flown twice-daily return flights to EDI and MAN, I think they would have been far more popular and probably would still be available today.

Although Flybe had a go on the domestic front not long back from MSE to EDI and MAN, neither survived.

Indeed, I’m sure The Gloags will have known the figures when they made their offer…but we won’t know what their intentions are until the sale is sorted, which is due to be completed by the end of the month.

I do sincrely hope that they and KLM can work together in order to boost the traffic travelling to/from the airport and hopefully try to attract new carriers to launch flights to/from the airport. If KLM were to pull their flights it would be a devestating blow and would prove all the critics of the airport right.

I suspect that both BA and EasyJet have been competitively pricing their flights to AMS from LCY/LGW/SEN/STN just to add to the pressure.

Perhaps an ERJ operator such as bmi regional would suit the airport, or possibly a couple of domestic routes operated by a Dornier 328 (CityJet) or possibly Jetstream 41 (Eastern Airways) aircraft would help?

Hi…thanks for updating me. Im from Kent originally hense my curiosity. Yes will be interesting if they manage to make a “go” of it.

It would appear that the route has averaged 31 pax per flight (just over 40% load factor) since it started, significantly less than any of the other regional feeder airports. The Gloags would have known the figures when they made their offer so the next few months will be interesting for the airport.