orbitmic

It seems to me that LCY is going through a bit of an identity transformation. BA have become by far the dominant player there (although they have also closed some routes such as HAM and BRE in recent weeks) and I think that WX has been going through a slow death for years, first struggling with some of the key routes that they operated, then absurdly trying to replace them by secondary FR-type destination routes, all that under AF, and now trying to find an original and sustainable market for them if there is one, which I personally doubt. At any rate, they are now closing the unnatural routes that they only operated because AF wanted them to (such as NTE) and which, quite frankly, never made much sense. They will now fly 4-6 routes depending on season, and I'd personally expect FLR to disappear or become seasonal before long, and Rotterdam to follow suit before long.

The bottom line is that there is not much money to be made on European short haul routes nowadays. LCY has its strength in its attractiveness to business traffic, but business traffic actually flies discounted Y nowadays on short haul trips in the vast majority of cases. That means much lower yields than once hoped, and that comparatively, with small planes with comparatively high per pax crewing levels, fuel use, and airport fees, the LCY operations are not that cheap.

That leaves three types of operations currently going on at LCY:

- Routes to hub where the business attractiveness can be used to generate high value connecting traffic. In that context, AF is now the main European major not to have links to LCY (LH fly to FRA, LX to ZRH, KL to AMS, AZ to FCO). The next ones in pecking order missing an LCY link would be IB and SK, but for AF it is particularly odd because the route is so short that it would actually be comparatively cheap to operate.

- 'Key point to point' that can appeal to high value traffic and command proportionally high fares in both Y and C, like GVA, EDI, GLA, NCE, VCE, LIN - however, BA has a natural advantage on those.

- 'Placehold routes' that BA and/or WX operate in the summer and/or weekends to underserved pure leisure destinations with high peak fares whilst business traffic is lower (Greek islands, Southern Spain, French holiday routes like Chambery, Quimper, Avignon, Bergerac, etc)

I personally doubt much will change, except that I'd guess more hub airlines will add hub routes. I could imagine in particular AF reopening CDG-LCY, SK CPH-LCY, and/or SN BRU-LCY, perhaps even OS VIE-LCY or IB MAD-LCY (but that is longer so more expensive to run) wanting their share of the connecting traffic to/from LCY particularly to their network strengths like West Africa for AF and SN.

NickB

I think that the serving of secondary French routes was not something that AF imposed on WX but rather a conscious and deliberate decision by WX to try to carve some kind of niche for themselves. I do not think that it was necessarily "absurd" of WX to serve those destinations. Their options are limited and they are working within those restricted options. What choices exactly do you think they have and what routes would they thrive on out of LCY?

The problem for WX is that it simply is not capable of sustaining competition from more established carriers so that, as soon as a major carrier comes onto a route, WX is forced to retreat. WX can still sustain AMS because it still has a codeshare agreement with them but if Cityhopper were to increase their frequency to LCY, that would be the end of the AMS route for WX.
Similarly for NTE, it is less a question of WX being at last free from being forced to do what those nasty people at AF forced them to do as one of BA re-entering the NTE market (albeit out of LHR) and thereby ousting WX from the route. WX is certainly struggling to find its place. Even for French secondary destinations, they are now down to 2 (AVN and TLN) although they are now serving TLN throughout the whole of the IATA summer season rather than just peak summer (although still only with 2 or 3 weekly frequencies).

I would not put money on their surviving long-term at LCY. I suspect that their future,if any, is primarily as what the Americans call a "commuter carrier" for a bigger airline. They have acquired Cimber Air and are doing just that for SK. They will also be doing that for SN with their new SSJ.

orbitmic

Sorry if I wasn't clear: I do not think that they have any. I guess my words are: 'WX has been going through a slow death for years' closing routes one by one till there were none.

At the extreme, they might be able to sustain LCY-DUB where they are a historical player but then, equally, they might not. The few routes they could have sustained as an independent player, like BFS and EDI have now been taken by BE which is better placed than them. Maybe they will be bough by someone else who needs the birds for regional routes, at least if their operational costs are low enough (I don't have a clue) or reopen from some completely different airport in whatever country which could give a new airline a shot. To me, the future of WX in London looks just as it did for BD a year or two before they were finally bought by BA: non-existent.

NickB

Yes. It seems to me that our conclusions are remarkably close.

orbitmic

not for the first time! Now let's hope for WX's that we are both mistaken!!!

San Gottardo

I strongly suspect that there actually is a market out of LCY to some leisure destinations. The trouble is that it has extreme peaks and troughs. You could easily fill an A321 to Sion on a Friday night and back on Sunday late night or Monday early morning in Winter, or re-instate commercial flights to Courchevel. Or pack a plane to St. Tropez and Mykonos in August (BA already covers some of the other where-City-folk-go-because-their-wives-tell-them-it-is-great-to-go, such as IBZ). But what to do with the capacity the rest of the time?

BA6501

BA just cancelled their 2-3x daily LCY-MAD service (after having a season with messed up times) - but I would love for this route to come back.

orbitmic

I don't really agree to the extent that in my views, all those are at least as efficiently served if not more from LGW or LTN, which are best located for the most affluent residential parts of greater London. To be honest, LCY is actually a complete pain in the back to get to if you are not coming from specific parts of the City or Canary Wharf (where, in both cases, quite few people live), or some very specific areas like Greenwich, and particularly so on weekends. You can make your way from the Central or Jubilee lines, but quite frankly, if you can do that chances are that you can more easily get to LGW and/or LTN anyway by connecting at King's X/St Pancras, Victoria, London Bridge, Clapham and/or Blackfriars. Both LGW and LTN allow larger planes than LCY and charge lower airport fees, they are far less subject to weather disruption (I tend to avoid LCY throughout the winter season when possible, too risky), DLR disruption (it regularly doesn't run for part of the weekend) and adds much easier non-London connections by train (South East and Midlands+North-East respectively) and plane.

orbitmic

Indeed. My sense is that the route made little sense for BA, but i personally wouldn't be surprised if IB/Air Nostrum gave it a go at some point, although again, the relatively long flight time is a bit of a handicap.

NickB

It seems to me that you are underestimating LCY somewhat. Even if it takes a bit longer to get to from some parts, the fact of being able to turn up 1/2hr before rather than 1.5 hr before as well as being able to exit the airport far faster than at LGW or LTN significantly counter-balances extra time taken to get to the airport (not to mention that some people have a pure and simple aversion to LTN ).

Secondly, there could be room at LCY for thinner holiday destinations which the bigger boys do not think it is worth their while to serve with larger planes from LGW or other large LON airports. TLN (for the St-Tropez area) is a case in point. It works enough for WX for them to increase their offering this summer season whereas it did not work for FR who have pulled out of the STN-TLN route altogether.

As San Gottardo says, however, this on its own is not going to be enough to survive on.

San Gottardo

What I have in mind are quite significant number of people working East of Holborn who would love to fly out to a skiing weekend on Friday evening to Sion and hit the Verbier slopes on Saturday morning, instead of going home to the places where you rightly point out they live, and from there track to Heathrow or Gatwick, fly to Geneva, and arrive at the final destination on Saturday afternoon.

obviously, the majority of people do the Saturday to Saturday holiday rental or hotel and fly on lower fares from Gatwick during school vacation. But there is a niche market which is ready to pay higher prices to get to their own holiday home in Verbier or Crans-Montana. You are right, these people do not live in the city or Canary Wharf, but that's not where they want to travel from.

orbitmic

That's definitely a big advantage on business flights, but I'll admit that I am personally not convinced that it matters as much for leisure flights. It's perfectly possible that I am wrong.

I guess the key thing to me regarding TLN and AVN is that rightly or wrongly, I would think that the routes are not so much there because that's the 'right' airport per se but because there is no other London route going there and WX happens to have those planes that they need to use anyway so LCY it is I suppose, just like BA have to find use for their Cityflyer jets in summer weekends, although even they actually ended up choosing to fly more routes from MAN and STN rather than keep as many of the planes that they could (curfew permitting) at LCY.

To rephrase my thought, I do not think that if BE had decided to open LGW-TLN instead with one of their E90s, it would have been any less successful that LCY-TLN is. You are right that U2 or FR might find it hard to fill a 738/319 from one of their airports, but it seems to me that this is a case for regional jets on thin routes, and not specifically for LCY.

It just happens that currently nobody is flying the route so it gives WX a couple of airports on which they can have an exclusive London link so good for them, but I'm not personally convinced that if someone opens LGW/STN/LTN/LHR-TLN, LCY will give WX a comparative advantage let alone a compelling one.

I take your point, but I suppose my reservation is that this is a pretty small pool because people with partners, families, etc won't be able to see that as particularly helpful (for all practical purposes, it will be easier for Mr or Mrs Finance to an 'inconvenient' airport than for partner and kids to come with the bags to LCY. I would also point out that it takes 45 minutes nonstop from the City to Stansted by train which is not a bad alternative (DLR to LCY would be a bit faster, but with Friday evening traffic, a cab may well not be).

Anyway, I guess time will tell as low cost airlines continue to develop their network, including BE with smaller aircrafts, and it is quite possible that one will open summer routes to secondary Provence airports or winter routes to secondary Swiss Alps ones, at which stage it will become clearer whether LCY departures are an advantage, a disadvantage, or neither on such routes.

PS: fair enough on the LTN allergy not to use any other word! And in fairness, LTN has ridiculous access because the convenience of the Thameslink is counterbalanced by the stupid need for a payable add on bus journey from the station.

San Gottardo

My niche is even smaller than that. I don't have families with kids and lots of luggage in mind. What I have in mind is the younger affluent crowd that jets out to somewhere on the Continent for the weekend (In Winter they love going to Verbier) and comes back to work on Monday morning. Or the somewhat elder that have family but where the family has done the "let's take all the luggage for the week of ski vacation" flight from LHR to GVA and they themselves just join them for the weekend. What more convenient than hopping on a flight to Sion at 5pm, land there and be at the Nevai Bar at 9pm-9.30pm and hit the slopes on Saturday morning, ski/after ski on Sunday till 4pm or so, take a flight from Sion to London at 7pm and be home that same evening, even if on the way back they must go from LCY to their home somewhere that is possibly closer to LHR.

That is a small niche, but as I said big enough to fill the plane during a couple of weeks on Friday if departure is between 5pm and 7pm. Rest of the time nothing. And hence the problem of finding something productive to do with the plane during the rest of the days/weeks/months.

NickB

I would certainly choose LCY over LTN or even LGW in a heartbeat. The point I was making though is that LCY is not quite as inconvenient as you make it out to be when you consider everything.

I agree up to a point. If WX was based at, say, SE, STN or LGW, they would fly from there. But they are at LCY. I note though that BE fly to TLN from SOU but not from LGW. In fact, BE has almost no flights from either LGW, LTN or STN beyond a couple of domestic routes. I am not sure that large cumbersome airports are best suited for airlines whose network consist primarily of thin, regional routes.

It seems to me that the STN flights are directly related to the curfew. Without curfew at LCY, I am pretty sure that most of the flights, at any rate the STN ones, would be operated from LCY rather than STN. MAN is perhaps a little different but even then it is clear that flying from MAN enables to pack very dense schedules for their flights throughout the whole weekend, something which would not be possible at LCY owing to the curfew.

I do not think that there is any route on which WX has a compelling advantage so, yes, whenever somebody jumps on a thin route, then WX will flee. That is what they have always done, it is not?

orbitmic

I think we fully agree on that!

I think that history is important here. Bear in mind that till very recently, BE was never interested in London at all. It built itself explicitly as a regional point to point airline. Despite not having a hub per se, its main historical airport has been Southampton, with two other big bases in Exeter and Cardiff. Then it added more bases later (BFS, GLA, etc) but none in London and its slots at LGW were only for domestic flights, and they have since sold them to U2. They only started to add flights from LCY about 2 years ago (I think late 2014 or early 2015) and that has been explicitly to focus on business routes.

In that sense, maybe my mention of BE was a poor example at least as things stand.

Fair enough. In my case, my order would be 1) LHR, 2) LGW 3) LCY, 4) others. I suspect that for each of us, this will be partly influence by where we live of course. That said, I was not suggesting that LCY was 'that inconvenient', but just that to my mind it does not have a clear convenience advantage for leisure routes.

My basic point was that LCY has a great convenience advantage for business flights because it is close to where many of the most heavy business flyers work and because for business travel, the extremely short check in deadline and fast immigration are a huge plus. Conversely, my point was that it does not have the same advantage for leisure flights. I am not saying that it is massively inconvenient, just that it is not on many direct public transport routes from where most affluent leisure travellers live, particularly on weekends when work on the DLR is not infrequent, has higher landing charges which have to impact ticket prices (and people are more price-sensitive for leisure travel). I was also pointing out, in specific answer to San Gottardo's very tempting Sion suggestion, that unfortunately, in the winter, LCY is more prone to cancellations than any other London airport. LHR, LGW, STN, etc will be majorly disrupted when there is fog or snow, but LCY can be entirely shut down several days every winter. Having been a direct victim of it several times, I tend to avoid the airport in the winter if I can especially for early morning/evening flights as I do some others (e.g. FLR). I still get the odd BA1 because added convenience is worth the risk especially if I have to work at the office before but for many other flights I tend to choose LHR or LGW over LCY more often than I used to, and more often than I do in the summer.