OTish: How to "anchor" a new route/semi charter on a scheduled basis?
 

Sorry for the OTish post, but I'm wondering about the economics of committing to buy a given # of seats on a new route to convince an airline to start it. IT's a route which might be able to get regional backing/financial aid too.

Specifically, I'm thinking of LON-SIR (Sion, Switzerland), which has scant service from Snowjet designed for people going on package ski trips, but nothing catering to the large number of wealthy Londoners who want to ski in Switzerland on winter weekend (With whom I routinely share BA 8767 on Fridays and BA 737 on Sundays).

Service might well be commercially viable on a standalone basis (although of course there are questions about return seats which need to be thought about); especially if airlines want to avoid leaving shorthaul aircraft parked in London and for an airline with greater demand for SH equipment on weekdays. How do I go about speaking to BA/AF/U2/FR/LX about offering to buy a given volume of seats/generally making it happen/further investigating viability (apart from just asking B747-437)?

As an interesting anecdote on viability, LX's "banker's weekend special" LCY-GVA 18:40 departure on Thursday's and Friday's is yield managed to only sell C or Y seats, regardless of how far out you try to book.

Cheers,
Alex

Presumably you're thinking of Friday night - Sunday night?

I suppose there's no reason the aircraft couldn't position over to GVA or ZRH to make use of the empty leg, assuming there was a need there.

LON-SIR-GVA-duty somewhere else for the weekend-GVA-SIR-LON.

But you're asking a lot of passengers to stick to such a rigid charter. What about those who want Thu-Sun or Fri-Mon? Such people would probably rather transfer to GVA, given the wealth of choice that exists there.

You could, of course, let them combine LCY-SIR/GVA-LHR - but would that kill the route?

I was in Gstaad last week. Skied until 1630 - pretty much last lift - and then hoofed it to the station for the 1701 train back to GVA for a 2100 flight. (Thank you to the owner of the hire shop in Chateau d'Oex who agreed to meet us on the platform two stops further down and have two sets of skis thrown at him!)

Can't offer any suggestions as to how many bums you'd need to guarantee. But I suspect the reason it's not been done is the lack of marke. GVA is not quite inconvenient enough.

I'm probably wrong though...

Most airlines have a network development or network planning department, whose job it is to look for new, profitable routes.
Now, I would have thought that unless you are a very wealthy person committing to buy an enormous number of seats at high prices, airlines don't generally start new services because an individual needs a convenient flight to his ski resort. And if that is the case you might as well charter a private jet.

Otherwise it tends to be airports, tour operators/large travel agents, tourism or regional development boards and the like who talk to airlines about new routes. I know those are pretty hard pitches, with rather a lot of detail on catchment areas, expected traffic, yields and profit, fit with current airline network, support etc. If you are indeed in that business, drop me a pm.

Spain is crying out for a XRY-LGW service...

well, quite a few people here are anyway, instead of the useless Liarair service to Stansted that gets one in at a time when all the trains have stopped running.

Couple of idle thoughts...

1) Baboo ran a service from Oxford to Geneva last winter using a Dash-8. Apparently loads were very good with a service running each Saturday. They didn't repeat it as I believe they thinned down their fleet.

2) Eastern tout for this kind of work over their website - they have low utilisation over the weekend but Friday night is still going to be peak for them.

3) I think - in all honesty - if you look where the line lies for the cash rich/time poor, they'll either make do with what they have (like train via Geneva), go to a different resort with shorter transfer from GVA, go for longer, or just get on the phone to Blink/NetJets.

I understand that LCY<>JFK has been guaranteed by at least one of the merchant banks.

So it is probably possible in principle.

But remember that not only would the economics have to be right to support the flight, they would also have to be sufficient to support BA's operations at a new airport. BA operated at both LCY and JFK before the banker shuttle service started and the economies of scale at both these points would have helped make the service viable. No such advantage currently exists at Sion.

Crossair and (I think) later Swiss used to fly weekends LHR-SION