GSM drop BGI and start BOS

[QUOTE=tommyinyork]Companies like Airtours and Thomsons have become a ripp off in the past couple of months and no longer do the excellent deals they once did.
QUOTE]

Some folk who have booked last minute with High Street
Tour Operator’s airlines have secured excellent discounts.

I doubt these panic fares can be sustained though and
High Street flight programmes will be seriously curtailed
in the next few years.

The High Street could of course fight back by basing aircraft at airports they have neglected in the pass.

Companies like Airtours and Thomsons have become a ripp off in the past couple of months and no longer do the excellent deals they once did.
FlyGlobespan are the way foreward with deals, £300 for return flight and hotel to Toronto, NOT BAD AT ALL.

Its not the travel agents who decide where the flights leave from

Really? Taking into account the biggest bulk of High Street
Shops are tied to parent tour operators and their respective airlines, only a few independents are free to give independent advice and book clients accordingly.

All immaterial now given folk are no longer relying on High Street travel agents and are going DIY for their flights.

Flights I might add that are available from more airports,
giving passengers more local choice than ever before.

Its not the travel agents who decide where the flights leave from, and if people didn’t want to fly from GLA then they would not use the services so they would not be operating.

PS I suspect 90% is another imaginary figure made-up by the wonderful imagination of Josephine Curry?

I haven’t looked in detail at the overall figures for the first half, it appears that GSM may have as he’s stated that international traffic has not fallen…and the reduction overall is a result of domestic traffic. This automatically dispels Silver Snapper’s points.!

I would not quote GSM as an authority… there is a question mark over a lookalike in alt.airports.uk.glasgow presently. http://link.toolbot.com/google.co.uk/22430

As for travel agents, one only has to look at their window displays in Scotland and also on ITV teletext to see where
upwards of 90% of available flights are departing from.
Thanks for your unbiased input here rdc1000, very refreshing. 🙂

Abbotsinch has gained lots of based aircraft and is still in decline – 4 consecutive months of minus growth is officially a recession I believe?

The problem at Abbotsinch is the demise of it’s charter market, folk are no longer ‘sent’ there by the High Street
Travel trade.

CAA figures show that the charter market at Abbotsinch declined by 214,524 passengers in 2004 and by a further 190,278 in 2005.

What figure 2006?

Abbotsinch was particularly vunerable because most High Street bookable Scottish charter flights were only available from there. Look at the travel agent branch closures in recent years, based charter aircraft need strong travel agent arms to feed them.

Folk now have a greater choice of flights from more Scottish airports and of course the opportunity of booking
these flights online.

Based aircraft can and do dictate the popularity of airports.

At the end of the day it’s down to the public if they bow to their own choice of departure airport or someone else’s.?

I’m not sure I agree completely with a lot of what you say. If you’d read my earlier point then you’d understand the terminal decline in charter traffic. The passengers who previously booked package holiday flights with charter airlines are now booking independent holidays, often to the same locations, but using scheduled carriers, and consequently the terminal decline actually retains the same number of passengers to given destinations, but switching between charter and scheduled. Take a comparison of one of the top travel spots in Europe, Alicante. In August 2006 the number of passengers on this traditionally charter dominated destination was 35% higher than August 2005, and there although there was a decline in charter traffic on the route, there was an increase in scheduled passengers. You need to look deeper than the bottomline sometimes.

I haven’t looked in detail at the overall figures for the first half, it appears that GSM may have as he’s stated that international traffic has not fallen, and the reduction overall is a result of domestic traffic. This automatically dispels Silver Snapper’s points. Many domestic routes have shown reductions in recent months. As I pointed out earlier the WCML upgrade has had a significant effect.

Where Silver Snapper is correct to some extent is that there has been some switching between airports within Scotland, and why shouldn’t there be? There are a wider range of destinations available from the region now because underlying markets and LCCs have developed to finally support more services to similar destinations from scottish airports. Of course people will fly from their local airports if they finally have a chance, but this is nothing to do with travel agents, it is to do with flights being offered. If a passengers living half way between GLA and EDI walked into an estate agent wanting to go from somewhere specific then they would REQUEST to fly from GLA if that was the only available flight. What is a noticeable is that passenger’s decisions are influenced by more factors nowadays, primarily being price driven. Passengers will travel further to airports in order to get what they feel is the best deal, even if it means paying more in petrol and parking!

here we go again with Joes crap about travel agents “forcing” people to fly from GLA. see what you get when you encourage this idiot Gaz?

But basically, I think a 1-2% fall in pax figures is insignificant because by its nature, if the airport gains a new based aircraft next year then it will blast that difference out of the water.

Abbotsinch has gained lots of based aircraft and is still in decline – 4 consecutive months of minus growth is officially a recession I believe?

The problem at Abbotsinch is the demise of it’s charter market, folk are no longer ‘sent’ there by the High Street
Travel trade.

CAA figures show that the charter market at Abbotsinch declined by 214,524 passengers in 2004 and by a further 190,278 in 2005.

What figure 2006?

Abbotsinch was particularly vunerable because most High Street bookable Scottish charter flights were only available from there. Look at the travel agent branch closures in recent years, based charter aircraft need strong travel agent arms to feed them.

Folk now have a greater choice of flights from more Scottish airports and of course the opportunity of booking
these flights online.

Based aircraft can and do dictate the popularity of airports.

At the end of the day it’s down to the public if they bow to their own choice of departure airport or someone else’s.?

Only trying to point out your grammar/spelling need a lot of work in the coming school term 😀

Yaw, boring **** :diablo:

There are a number of key points which people are absolutely correct about on this thread, in terms of justifying the decline in passenger numbers, but I think the important thing is that the decline is so marginal its hardly worth any concern, and I certainly don’t think its a result of GSM LOL. Like all regional airports, Glasgow is on a bit of a yo-yo, its the way things are, you have a good month/year and then you have a bad month/year. It can be the result of lots of things. At airports of this scale, a small change in based aircraft for example can make a lot of difference. BHX is a good example of this. It appears to have suffered a terrible loss over the rolling 12-months, but this is purely the result of the closure of MyTravelLite.

Whilst somebody was right to point out that short haul charter markets are declining, they fail to recognise that the overall markets to most of these desinations is not falling, it is purely a shift of passengers to scheduled LCCs. For example, if I’m modelling this for Airport Forecasts I would tend to use a gradual switch from charter to LCC scheduled for the major leisure dominated routes. Therefore the decline in charter markets should not translate itself to the bottom line of an airport’s pax figures.

One major reason for the decline in growth on many domestic services from GLA has been the improvement of services on the WCML with Virgin Trains. For recent work I have been doing we actually paired back growth on routes following this line to only 1% per annum because there has been a significant measurable switch across to this mode.

But basically, I think a 1-2% fall in pax figures is insignificant because by its nature, if the airport gains a new based aircraft next year then it will blast that difference out of the water.

Only trying to point out your grammar/spelling need a lot of work in the coming school term 😀

Bigot only has one “T” 🙂

Shut up 🙂

You woule know anyways seen as you are another one, anyone see Roberts posts in google last week?

How come its the two EDI boys that are the biggest ***** on the forum? The saying really is true, people from Edinburgh are upthemselves.

The summer months are always going to be popular, so the key months are infact the winter months. A more even yearly spread of passengers is what BAA are aiming for at GLA,
Gaz

Of course, one cannot ignore the fact that current results
are hardly encouraging?
Abbotsinch has experienced 3 consecutive months of passenger decline (-48,500) and four months of decline in the last 9 months.
The airport has to grow by 10,900 in the 01.10.2006 to 31.12.2006 period just to stand still.

Which again poses the original question.. “Are GSM doing more harm at Abbotsinch than good”?

If not GSM, who/what?

BAA operate a special exclusive Abbotsinch winter discount, will that do the trick this winter?

oh shut-up Joe, the biggot from the east.

Bigot only has one “T” 🙂

Gaz, dont encorage him.

GLA had record breaking internatinal pax numbers, it was domectic numbers that caused the over all fall, maily due to people leaving BA via LHR, good on them!

Looking at the normally ‘key’ months..

In May, June, July and August 2006, Abbotsinch ‘dropped’ 63,700 passengers compared to the same months in the previous year.

I’m not sure if other UK airports recorded the same patterns.?

Well BHX has not been a strong performer recently. Anyway, the months you describe as “key” are not so important for GLA. The summer months are always going to be popular, so the key months are infact the winter months. A more even yearly spread of passengers is what BAA are aiming for at GLA, but unfortunately with Prestwick down the road carrying a lot of Glasgow bound passengers from the likes of Eastern Europe and Scandinavia the bosses at GLA find it hard to attract other airlines who would offer good frequency due to the proximity of Ryanair. Hopefully easyJet will have the balls to challenge them. With the success of the SXF route to date we can only hope for further expansion.

But I’m not going to get into an airport vs airport arguement, aslong as it benefits the country as a whole.

Gaz

Why? He makes a valid point.

Looking at the normally ‘key’ months..

In May, June, July and August 2006, Abbotsinch ‘dropped’ 63,700 passengers compared to the same months in the previous year.

I’m not sure if other UK airports recorded the same patterns.?

oh shut-up Joe, the biggot from the east.

Why? He makes a valid point. One which I’m sure we will find the answer to in the years ahead. GLA has had a rather disappointing year in terms of percentages. I wouldn’t call it “alarming” but it certainly can be better. The airport is 99.99% guarenteed to grow so we have nothing to worry about in my opinion.

GSM and EZY have mostly been fighting with the charters to the sun spots, so hopefully when they start to look further afield things will improve. I look forward to 2007 anyway.

Gaz

*Edit – I forgot to add, I do disagree with his sig however, Edinburgh is hardly a secret:P

oh shut-up Joe, the biggot from the east.

Rather disappointing, but Glasgow to Boston is still on-sale and will definitely be operating.

One must pose the question if GSM’s new routes are actually doing the Glasgow Abbotsinch market irreparable harm.?

Look at these figures..sourced CAA/BAA

January to September 2005 – 6,782,700 passengers.
January to September 2006 – 6,771,500, a shortfall of 11,200 (-0.165%) compared to the same period in 2005.

Ok..the charter market has been declining UK-wide but
in the case of Glasgow Abbotsinch the figures appear
alarming.. Anyone?