corporate-wage-slave

New BA Routes Humberside to Billund and Aalborg.

This is a guide for one of BA's new routes, HUY-BLL-AAL, or in plainer English, Humberside to Billund and Aalborg in Denmark, operated by BA's long term franchise partner SUN-AIR. This route started on the 15 April 2016 with a VIP launch flight featuring Danish business travellers going to Hull. I was invited to join the 22 April evening service from HUY to BLL, more details in the second post. A number of other FT members will be on this service later this year.



Route history
Route started 15 April 2016 and is currently scheduled to be a year round service. The service is primarily to serve Siemens' UK staff working in Aalborg and returning for the weekend. Siemens are working with Hull on the opening of a Green Port development zone, that includes a new wind turbine blade manufacturing facility. One can assume that Siemens has made some undertakings to SUN-AIR to ensure the route's viability.



Timetable
The focus of the service is on Sundays to take Siemens' workers from the UK to Aalborg, returning them to the UK on Friday evening for the weekend. Since SUN-AIR's operations are based in Billund, this requires a triangle link to and from BLL, so the routing is on Fridays: BLL-AAL-HUY-BLL. On Sundays it's BLL-HUY-AAL-BLL.

Current timetable (April 2016):

Fridays - local times
BLL 15:10 depart BA8251
AAL 15:40 arrive
AAL 16:00 depart
HUY 16:25 arrive
HUY 16:55 depart BA8252
BLL 19:35 arrive

Sundays
BLL 18:00 depart BA8253
HUY 18:20 arrive
HUY 18:45 depart BA8254
AAL 21:25 arrive
AAL 21:45 depart
BLL 22:10 arrive

There appears to be no ticket sales for trips directly between BLL and AAL.

Aircraft
Dornier 328-300, a 32 seater jet aircraft which is the main stay of SUN-AIR's fleet. They have about 15 of these aircraft, along with 2 older turbo prop Dorner 328s leased from a German company, and 2 BAe Jetstream 31s. SUN-AIR also has a private charter subsidiary, known as JoinJet with a variety of high spec corporate jets.


Seating advice
For a single passenger, the solo seat at 2A. For a couple, 2D + 2F. Otherwise, for couples, consider seats towards the back of the aircraft, such as row 9, since the jet mounting obscures the view from row 3 to about row 7. Row 1 is used by the crew (e.g. for newspapers). Departing from HUY you may get views of the Humber Bridge on the port (left) side, and of the Yorkshire coastline from the starboard side, but there's not much in it.



Miles: 409 miles on the Great Circle mapper between BLL-HUY, 469 miles between AAL-HUY, 97 miles between AAL-BLL.

Crew: 2 flight crew, 1 cabin crew. In common with other SUN-AIR services, the crew's names are shown on a board on the forward bulkhead.

Fares
SUN-AIR revenue tickets are generally quite pricey, this it's actually one of their relatively cheap services. There's no HBO option on SUN-AIR services. Cheapest fares available (April 2016):

HUY-BLL single - £250 (V class)
HUY-BLL return - £262 (O class, available Friday out, Sunday back)
HUY-AAL single - £250 (V class)
HUY-AAL return - £323 (O class, 5 nights, this doesn't include a Saturday night)
HUY-AAL return - £263 (O class, 12 nights)

BLL-HUY single - £226 (V class)
BLL-HUY return - £271 (O class)
AAL-HUY single - £226 (V class)
AAL-HUY return - £272 (O class)


POUG and AUP
POUG and AUPs are not offered on SUN-AIR, given that there is no Club Europe. It's a one class Economy service only, albeit one that in many ways is better than CE.

Earning Tier Points and Avios
This is never going to feature for TP running. For the cheaper return services tickets book into O class, which gives 5 TPs, singles in V get 10 TPs, both each trip. The number of Avios you earn depends on your status, for Blue it is 125 Avios, rising to 1,000 Avios for expensive tickets if Gold. There's no difference between the BLL or AAL routes and no extra for flying BLL-ALL.


Reward Flight Saver
BA release 2 seats for RFS per flight, so this is a relatively cost effective way to use Avios, particularly if based in middle-Northern England. No difference between AAL and BLL in terms of pricing. Each way:
Peak: 4,500 Avios + £17.50
Off peak: 4,000 Avios + £17.50

Routing
This was my route:


Catering
See photos in the next post, but the service is drinks and snacks, followed by a cold ham and potato salad, followed by drinks and ice cream. A full bar is provided and refills pro-actively offered.

HUY Airport facilities
Humberside is definitely a small airport, its main users being offshore oil and gas workers, with a separate terminal building for helicopter services. KLM operate daily services (it's even a night stop location for the poor crew), and Eastern fly to Aberdeen. Landside there is the inevitable WH Smith, car rental desks for Avis, Budget and Europcar, a forex desk, cash machine, Royal Mail postbox, 2 travel agents, Cable Cabs taxi office, WCs, vending machines for drinks and snacks, and the Aviator restaurant and bar. Airside there is a medium sized Alpha duty free shop, more vending machines, a small bar / restaurant and WCs. No ATM or postal facilities airside. Security is fairly thorough given the relatively small number of passengers and low time pressure. There is a fast track security queue jump for KLM elites, not made available to BA passengers, but it is singularly useless given the low number of passengers.

Landside:


Airside:


HUY transport logistics
The airport is well served by road, less well served by other transport routes even though the main Doncaster-Immingham rail line passes very close to the front of the airport. Car parking charges at HUY are eye wateringly high, though longer stays if prebooked are merely extortionate. £31 for a prebooked Friday to Sunday booking, £41 for turn up. The airport is on the A18, just off the M180, with good connections to the A1(M) and M62. There are roadworks in the vicinity of the airport which will stretch into Summer 2016.

By public transport, the options include an hourly bus service from Cleethorpes-Grimsby-HUY-Hull, though it doesn't work on Sundays. £3 to £4 fare. Click here for more details. By rail you can travel on the hourly service from Doncaster to Barnetby station, which takes 40 minutes. Barnetby is 4 miles, 10 minutes, £10 from the airport and the taxi can be prebooked via the airport's taxi company, Cable Taxis, on 01652 688132. The collection point at Barnetby station is the Whistle and Flute pub. There is a taxi rank at Scünthorpe rail station, 15 miles / 25 minutes / £30. Barnetby station:


BLL Airport facilities
BLL is a medium sized airport with the usual range of facilities. One thing that does stand out as different is that BLL has a Lego shop and Lego play area airside:

BLL has a bus station by the main door, with regular local services and an hourly service to Aarhus.

Lounge
There is a Swissport Executive lounge at HUY, but despite the fact that Swissport is BA's handling agent there, BA haven't (yet?) arranged lounge access for its status members. You can use Priority Pass or pay for access at £18. Note that the entire airside only opens at 15:00 hrs, so any lounge time is restricted to well below 2 hours. The provision is standard Swissport/Aspire operation, with tea, coffee, range of biscuits, cakes, cheese and savoury snacks, and a limited alcohol service. There is wifi and WCs inside the lounge, which has a view on to the apron. There are BA lounge facilities for AAL and BLL (latter is described in the Europe lounge guide via the Dashboard and is one of the better ones in the Nordics).



BLL lounge:


Weekend potential:
The obvious weekend potential is to BLL, since that allows for a Friday service to BLL, and a return on Sunday, albeit via AAL. Aalborg is the much bigger and more interesting town, but the Friday service from HUY terminates at BLL fairly late on. One possibility is to stay at BLL airport hotel on the Friday night, then transfer Saturday morning to Aalborg (by bus and train). For Danish residents, the timings allow for a weekend in the Hull / York vicinity from either airport. Hotels in Denmark are relatively expensive, however.

Back to back and cheap fares potential:
At BLL and HUY the potential sort of exists, in that it is possible to clear both airport very quickly except for perhaps a few days of the summer peak when the charters exisit. In the case of BLL there is an EU transfer channel, avoiding security, but it may not be open if there are services arriving at the same time from non EU countries. Either way it won't take long to go around via landside. The bigger issue is that the timings and schedule don't really work for this.

One "cheap flights" option that does exist is that sometime Denmark offers low fares of the so-called ex-EU type. Moreover BA main fleet is operating BLL-LHR from May. So someone living in Lincolnshire/Yorkshire area may find it sensible to book BLL-LHR-USA (for example) and then wrap a flight from HUY on RFS into this. The timings make it not entirely practical, and it may force an overnight stay in one of the more expensive hotel locations in Europe, there again it may still work out in some cases. Broadly speaking if a CPH fare looks interesting, there is a good chance BLL will also be interesting.


Four things to do in BLL
1) Legoland: This is walking distance from the airport and the airport hotel, though there is an hourly bus service as well.
2) Lalandia Waterpark: The largest one of its sort in the Nordics, this aquadome has a wide range of water and terrestial activities aimed at children. Day visits and overnight accommodation options exist. Not cheap!
3) Billund town centre: a few hours stroll will take in everything here, there are a couple of supermarkets, some clothing stores, several cafés and a few low-spec restaurants. At the end of 2017 the Lego House will open in the centre of the town, a multi activity centres for children. It's currently under construction.
4) Givskud Zoo - or rather safari park - is 30 minutes away.

Interesting features
HUY airport (which is some distance from both Hull and the Humber) started life as RAF Kirmington, home of 166 Squadron at the later stages of WWII. There are plaques inside the airport that mark the deaths of 922 aircrew members, from a number of the Allied countries - a very high percentage - as part of Bomber Command. There is also an information panel by the bus stop outside the building.

[Click here for a larger version of the above]

Hull was the birth place of Amy Johnson CBE, the first solo female pilot to fly between the UK (Croydon) and Australia (Darwin) when she was 26 years old. She died in an aviation accident in 1941 while working for the RAF, aged 37. Her family still live locally. In the airport there is a memorial to her, including a detailed map of her route, by The Aviator restaurant landside.


Other links
Hat tip to shefgab for raising this here:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...l#post26458005 (and see further discussion from his post onwards)

Humberside Airport website
Billund Airport website
Aalborg Airport website

SUN-AIR website

Press releases on the new service: From Green Port Hull and SUN-AIR

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...hafen-fdh.html

corporate-wage-slave

Here are some reflections on my experience of this flight on Friday 22 April 2016, where I was the only passenger.

I turned up at the airport fairly early, since it's quite some distance from where I live - at least in my terms this is a south of England airport. I took the train to Barnetby, prebooked a taxi and that all worked quite efficiently. I had OLCI'd via BA.com, there was no mobile boarding pass option but I got the BA.com boarding pass. Nevertheless I was quite keen to get a locally printed boarding pass for this story, which I got - though they did take back all but the stub at the gate.



The airside area, including security, only opens at 15:00 hrs, and indeed there were 3 services leaving around 17:00 hrs, the BA service, KLM to AMS and Eastern to ABZ. These 2 services looked quite popular. I was told the desk for BA would also open at 15:00 hrs, at which point the other 2 service desks opened, but there was nothing showing for BA. After 15 minutes I approached a Swissport staff member and asked when BA check-in would open. She replied "Oh, you are our customer - we weren't going to open up a desk until you arrived, I'll get someone to help you". And indeed a desk was opened just for me, the ground agent then wrestled with FLY and duly a boarding card was issued.



I then went through security swiftly and off to the Swissport lounge to confirm what I had already suspected, namely no lounge provision for BA passengers. I am a Priority Pass cardholder, and so I had no problem gaining entry there, and awaited the service. The lounge is quite similar to the Swissport lounges elsewhere in the UK, mainly of which have been refurbished into Aspire lounges. The lounge agent was particularly friendly and helpful, and seemed a bit miffed that she couldn't invite me to go for my flight at the right time - I wanted to get some photos of the aircraft on landing so left a bit sooner than needed.

I had a bit of an explore of the airside area, it was interesting to see the different notices up for the helicopter services, such as this seating and boarding plan:



The departure board was also interesting in terms of destinations served. On the other screen was a helicopter service to York, which did seem a bit unnecessary.



Coming off the arriving BA service there were 20 passengers and 7 checked bags leaving the aircraft at HUY. 19 passengers had joined in AAL, another one had joined previously in BLL - I presume most of the AAL passengers worked for Siemens. When it was my turn to board the agent still made a broadcast message to the whole airport, even though I, as her only passenger, was stood right beside her at the time.

I was welcomed on board by the cabin crew member and offered any seat I wanted, so I swapped over to 2A which has more space than the other forward seats and a good window alignment.

We were airborne fairly swiftly, given I was HBO, and soon I was getting the view from the sky. This is the airport, you can see the KLM service next to the airport terminal, before getting views of North Yorkshire.



Drinks, food and ice cream followed fairly swiftly:





There was also a small wrapped piece of Camembert and some crackers.



I can't really go into the onboard service too much since I don't think it fully followed usual procedures - and I am not getting anyone into trouble as a result! But I was well looked after and the service passed swiftly enough and soon we had crossed the North Sea, over the Danish coast and had a smooth landing into Billund.

I didn't go to Aalborg on this occasion, though I am scheduled to visit AAL in May and I'll update the first post with more local information after that visit.

KARFA

Thanks for the guide. There was a little bit of a discussion on this route here also http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...cbg-got-9.html

On it to BLL in July. HUY, BLL, and Sun Air will all be new to me.

vibrex

HUY is a great little airport, I use it up to 4 times a week. Mostly the Helicopter Services but KLM to AMS too.

York is a Gas Field BTW.

Edit: It should be noted that the airfield is prone to being fogged in more often than most airports.

KLM and Eastern airways crews who night stop do so in the nearby Forest Pines Golf and Country Hotel, as do I . I thoroughly recommend it to anyone needing to overnight before or after travelling.

orbitmic

+1. I will always have a soft spot for HUY so very glad to see BA there! I hope the route gets enough business to be kept and who knows, that BA decide to open more!

PS: Great trip report!! -- c-w-s doesn't your ham look suspiciously like a slice of roast beef on the pic?

corporate-wage-slave

Yes, you are quite right, I don't know possessed me to say ham. It was definitely roast beef, and I should have waited for it to get a bit warmer before eating it since very chilled beef does little for the flavour.

Thanks, that makes more sense than a hop up the A1.

I look forward to your report and better quality photographs than my cheapo HBO approved Canon!

HIDDY

Nice report, I like small airports.

Is that a large pickled gherkin I see on the far right of the plate?

vibrex

I may look to taking a trip to BLL myself, I haven't been there since 1984!

From a Helicopter point of view CHC operate out of their own terminal but Bond, Bristow and NHV use the main airport Terminal and use the check ins at the far right hand side.

I think HUY needs new routes as it looks like a good proportion of the helicopter work will move to Norwich and I believe KLM are either pulling out or cutting back operations.

I have to confess it confused me the the first time I saw it. It belongs to a company I'm not involved with so it wasn't familiar.

flatlander

Thanks for the full report, C-W-S.

I note with approval that Sun-Air are using the main domestic Danish maker of ice cream (Polar Is), not the Unilever-owned producer marked by the International Sign of Mediocre Ice Cream ("Heartland" logo).

If visiting the Billund area with ambitions of going to more than Legoland, I would recommend renting a car (even though it's not cheap in Denmark) to explore some of the Viking sites nearby, the coast by Esbjerg or up towards Skagen, and so on. One could also take the bus/train combination which takes about 3 hours to get to Copenhagen (via Roskilde, also worth a look).

rapidex

Excellent report c-w-s.Is this a sign that you will be spending more time in Y in future?

MarcD

Many thanks c-w-s lots of useful information in advance of our HUY-BLL weekend in July

flatlander rental cars at the weekend aren't too bad from BLL certainly for our dates 1-3 July. avisba.com coming up pricey but Auto Europe got us a Golf/equivelant for £38 Fri-Sun through Enterprise.

Given it's a weekend for the sake of it to try the Sun Air route and hotel rates are high around Billund we are going to base in Aarhus - 2 for 1 rate for Club Carlsson Golds and higher came in at only £54 a night

cynicalmoose

I think it's inside the Hamburg rule:

flatlander

That's a good rate, I think. There's a lot more going on in Aarhus, too.

Worcester

Well within, (LHR <> HAM is 463 miles) whereas HUY <> BLL is 408 miles.

Our main UK operations are based just north of Hull and I normally use LBA, but will have to see if I can get a routing via HUY sometime.

bluemoon68

SO British!