WW at BFS

I note that the point that I raised in my last point, that the planning rules at BHD has effectively been ignored, has not been disputed. Since these”rules”don’t seem to be the problem, what is? You say that BHD continues to show steady growth, the latest Caa stats to Sept 06 show pax down at Bhd for the month by 6.6%, for the YTD by 3.8%. It has been like that for all/most of this year, as far as I can recall without checking every month again. Having listened to all the spin about how pax, especially business pax would prefer Bhd, I don’t see the evidence. I just cannot understand why Bhd adds new services, but pax nos decline. And nobody has been able to explain this to me.
I agree with you, that if Bfs needs a new terminal, get on with it. With regard to the LDY situation, what is the point of complaining. Public expenditure in this province is out of control and few seem to care.
It will be interesting to see what happens at Ldy if the belfast Telegraph win their court case currently being heard by the Information Commissioner.

True Blue, you seem to be viewing the entire NI airport scenario through rose tinted glasses – yes, some of BHD’s routes have shown a drop in passenger nos as indeed have some of BFS’s – however, overall passenger nos at BHD continue to rise annually by a small percentage which is in line with the airports’ projections.

You ask why the province needs 3 airports – the very reason for BHD’s success is mainly down to a total lack of investment at BFS by it’s current (and previous) owners – it’s all very well to introduce new routes every week without considering where they are going to put the aircraft or the passengers and, indeed this is the crux of BFS’s problems – the current terminal building is 42 years old and still very much in evidence despite abortive attempts to disguise it by adding bits on here and there – the entire terminal facilities are now quite frankly a mess – the recently published Master Plan cites provision of a new terminal in 8 years time – why not now! The main reason BFS keeps it’s charges low is because it must to retain Easyjet et al and because it, like many airports including BHD, relies on income from ancillaries like car parks to make any profit.

For many years, BFS has spent more time and money trying to compete with BHD on domestic routes instead of trying to attract international routes which is what it should have been doing all along – in fact, had it not been for the Route Development Fund, I suspect BFS would still be sitting with a few summer charter destinations and little else so obsessed were they with trying to prevent any growth at BHD!

Finally, your comments about City of Derry relate to public expenditure and, if you feel so strongly about that perhaps you should direct your concerns to your local MP.

ALLMCC

These restrictions at Bhd that you mention, are these the cap on pax numbers that the planning service has turned a blind eye to for years. If that limit exists, number of seats for sale, how come airlines, especially Flybe, has been able to expand at will?
Then there is the rumered operating hours limit, again conveniently ignored by planners. A check most nights on page 457 of ceefax will show flights, on a regular basis, arriving up to 11.30pm.
So if all these operating restrictions, having been ignored by the authorities for years and now to be made legal by default, ever were applied, how come Bhd still fails to attract more pax, because the extra services are operating? The seats are on sale, but the pax aren’t buying and it’s not the planning laws that are making that happen.
Why might EI be good for the Lhr route, because Bd are a monopoly and their service on the route, in the cabin, shows that they know they are a monopoly and they act like it. It makes me laugh when I hear BD moan about how they can’t operate a late night service to Bhd. They knew the rules before they moved there, it wasn’t important then.
One other question, why does this province of some 1.7m people need 3 airports. The next time any of us have a close friend denied a bed in hospital due lack of money, think of the £10m that is to be spent on a joke called City of derry to massage the ego of a few. This to add a few metres to the end of a runway to please FR. I believe that that money could be better spent on more important things in this small country like health and education.
Back to Bhd, the main reason that it will never be able to expand much more is because it sitting almost in the middle of a housing estate. It’s location is totally stupid for what some want to do there. They also need to spend more money, so the charges will go up. If you were the owners and looking at falling pax numbers, would you be happy to spend more money, especially since any profit that is being made is coming from car parking charges?

Andrew

Can’t agree with all of your comments. I’ve been following the growth at both airports for some time now on the Caa site, Bhd seems to be going nowhere. As I said before, they keep adding all these new routes, but pax don’t increase. The pax figures for Aug show a -2.9%, it’s been like that now for months. I travel on business and I see lots of business pax on my flights from Bfs. You see, some would like to make it seem that business pax are only interested in using bhd, what complete nonsense. As Bd are now finding out since they moved to Bhd, the August pax the lowest ever at just 55k. This on a route that used to carry well over 100k p.m. In fact, Lgw carried just 3k less than Lhr and with the recent increase in frequency from Easy, Lgw may soon become the main connection from NI. BD has lost me from the Lhr route since the move and clearly there are many more like me.

If BHD appear to be going nowhere as you state, it should be remembered that they have had to put up with a ridiculously outdated obstacle in the form of a passenger cap which has effectively ruled out any meaningful expansion – it is no coincidence that BFS involved themselves in the recent Examination in Public so worried are they that any expansion at BHD will affect them!

Thankfully the Government have finally realised that capping passengers numbers at BHD is not an effective way of controlling expansion. Apparently the findings of the EIP panel are now in the hands of the planners and an announcement on the way forward at BHD is expected this month.

On the subject of falling passenger numbers between BHD and LHR, if you look at CAA stats, you will see that passenger nos on most domestic routes to and from LHR have been falling over the past few years not just Belfast.Why then would Aer Lingus consider BFS – LHR even if the slots were available at LHR? Would they fare any better than BMI from BHD? I think not!

Shamrock321 is completely right. Their base fare was £65 return when the train comes in at £40 return. If someone offered the route for £30 you would find it would be used alot especially given BD have pretty much the entire civil service using them from Northern Ireland to London and they could easily get this between Belfast and Dublin as there are approx 100 a day going either way. Aer Arann only ran the route for 3 months and did hardly any/no advertising up here other than in the airport. The times were ok but could have been better to accomodate a full working day or the International Flights.

Its only a matter of time before an airline runs BHD-DUB and sucessfully if they get the price right. Its been well researched and I know 2 “airlines” are looking at it as a possability. Also the train is becoming less and less of a viable option as its getting very old and dirty which is putting people off (as well as the quite frequent bus replacement services). The road is being improved (2010 i believe it finishes on both sides of border) but given Dublin car parking is worse than Belfast that wont make more people go by car instead!

BTW True Blue, when easyJet (whos prices rival BD for business passengers) overtakes BD on one single route ill eat my hat. Given they operate only 10 flights compared to bmis 16 and bmi having more seats per plane i dont see that happening very soon.

If the demand was there easyJet would have capitalised on it and put more flights on. At the moment their flights are spread throughout the day which is not the “norm” when it comes to business travellers patterns!

You couldgetaway with 20 min check in @ DUB because domestic passengers are fast tracked through secuirity. Part of Aer Arranns problem last time out was their stupidly expensive fares.

The BHD to DUB was tried by Aer Arann a few years back and completely failed, the load factors were extremely poor. If they couldnt even fill an ATR 42, WW would have no chance with a 737. The road and rail service between the two cities is now very good and an air route with not be commercially viable.

WW at Bfs

Andrew

Can’t agree with all of your comments. I’ve been following the growth at both airports for some time now on the Caa site, Bhd seems to be going nowhere. As I said before, they keep adding all these new routes, but pax don’t increase. The pax figures for Aug show a -2.9%, it’s been like that now for months. I travel on business and I see lots of business pax on my flights from Bfs. You see, some would like to make it seem that business pax are only interested in using bhd, what complete nonsense. As Bd are now finding out since they moved to Bhd, the August pax the lowest ever at just 55k. This on a route that used to carry well over 100k p.m. In fact, Lgw carried just 3k less than Lhr and with the recent increase in frequency from Easy, Lgw may soon become the main connection from NI. BD has lost me from the Lhr route since the move and clearly there are many more like me.

True Blue,

If you check the prices of easyjet compared to flybe (whilst this is a different topic) flybe is usually cheaper. BHD has increase their psssengers figures year on year as have BFS. BFS is a much large complex compared to BHD and hence it has better room for expansion.

BFS will only become a viable alternative for business travellers once their transport links are improved.

Geographically BFS appeals to alot of NI due to its location but worth keeping in mind somehting like 50-60% of people flying from NI airports come from within 20 or so miles from Belfast City Centre. Ill dig out the info that says that.

WW at Bhd

Why would WW move to Bhd. Is this the same airport that keeps on adding new services and yet, when you look at the Caa stats, the pax keep going down. Clearly pax are voting with their feet and deciding that they would rather spend their ££££ in other ways rather than on the high charges at Bhd. A BD move to Bfs would make more sense, especially as Bfs have stated that they have been talking to EI about starting a Bfs – Lhr service. See Belfast Telefraph business section 1st? oct.

True Blue

You make valid points David. 20 minutes checkin is easily doable at Belfast City Airport but Dublin you do need 30 minutes. Therefore including dublin transfer time you are talking just under 2 hours all in i reckon. Train is a minimum of 2h hours 30minutes.

According to some Translink stats under 50% of the travellers are on business to Dublin City.

Cheers guys very useful.:cool:

James

WW=bmi baby.

I’m not sure I could see them starting BHD-DUB. I’d be interesting to have a race a la Top Gear style from centre of Belfast to centre of Dublin, with one going by train and the other by air via BHD. Factor in check-in times and passage through both airports, then DUB-city centre, how much would it save, time wise? Maybe 2hours on train allows you to be more productive, work wise?

I could be talking complete nonsense though.

As for moving to BHD, gosh, where would you park them? Considering the last time I flew with them from BFS on the morning flight to BHX, 3 aircraft from EMA, BHX and MAN were in at the same time.

BMI Baby!
IATA Code : WW ICAO Code : BMI

Cheers,
Sam

BMI baby

Who WW?

James

They didnt actually have the oppertunity to move to Belfast as this was just part of the “ww moving to bhd” rumor saga. Bmi are comfortable at Belfast City and to bring WW to Belfast City would mean they would need to share checkin desks due to lack of checkin space (the terminal is actually reaching its capacity of airlines and passengers and expansion plans are a foot). Bmi, i hear, would not been keen to share check in and essentially dilute their brands from the customers pov.

I think with the strike actions proposed and the common thought of bmi being much like a headless chicken, bmi baby will not see much happening in NI possibly for a few years. We are actually running fast of our routes that bmi baby could easily offer unless they open a new european destination as we have quite comprehensive coverage of their route network (not including bmi routes).

If they did move to Belfast City they could always look at a Dublin route as recent figures have shown if there was a £40-50 return fare including taxes (30min flight at peak times) passengers would be willing to travel with an airline rather than the train due to various factors but mainly due to less time spent travelling. This would also fit in with the international flights if timed well.

I think I can safely say Belfast City will not see any new airlines until any expansion is carried out. Common belief is that AB wanted different slot times but due to apron space they got what they were given (they would have prefered to arrive at 0800 from STN and come back about 1900). We can only hold 2 A320/B737 sized aircraft at a time without “double parking” which does effect the capacity for airlines such as Wizz to consider BHD as slots are very limited.

Also remember its bacon also on MAN and BHX routes and doing well i hear. WW do offer good fares as you can get £15 single from MAN or BHX if you get the right time and dates in advance which saves at least £10 each way compared to the others!