Originally Posted by
giorginho
I've seen these graphs posted 1-2 times in the past days and I just wanted to point out, that the huge spikes during high season are not because Aegean suddenly operates that many more flights or finally fill their previously empty planes, but rather due to a whole bunch of airlines and charter airlines operating extremely seasonal flights!
That's precisely my point. Demand for travel is highly seasonal. All these other airlines "join in" when the demand is there.
Even on a destination that's served year-round, it somewhat defies logic to "upgauge" the aircraft being used during the months where demand is lowest. (Unless, of course, you are going to also cut back (drastically) on frequency of service. But for a prime destination like LHR, why would you want to sacrifice your frequencies?)
Now, LHR might have a more "steady" year round demand than those huge troughs and peaks, but
no other European widebody operator places its widebodies during their low seasons on intra-EU sectors that are served by narrow-bodies during the high season. You'll sometimes see that happen during the HIGH season - but I've never seen it during the low season (except for unusual occurrences - such as after weather or due to irrops when they have a backlog to clear). They all also have fluctuating demand, but nobody responds to their low season by moving longhaul aircraft to their shorthaul network.
It's just illogical to buy/lease a widebody fleet if the best you can do with it during the winter is to fly it on short hops around Europe; if that was a logical strategy, it would be happening more frequently.
Originally Posted by
giorginho
Aegean has many international destinations which are operated throughout the entire year and since early 2022 they've been able to basically fill those planes up even during winter to either completely full or nearly full. I mean they're approaching a 90% average capacity fill these days over their entire network and the entire year!
This is correct - Aegean is good at managing its capacity. But they don't do this by upgauging aircraft in their low season.
How often has an ATR72 been replaced by an A320 during winter?
But in any case, this was all a hypothetical scenario - Aegean is not going to be acquiring widebodies, or even just leasing them for the summer months. They know better than to make that kind of mistake!