paul4040

I'm thinking this is stretching "BA Mainline" a bit far...hence my new thread

fredandgingermad

Will explain the increased noise from the airport, I only live down the road!

Calchas

There's only one flight per day each way

Tim1975

Not cheap, but Sunair economy is half way between ET and CE. You get a decent meal and ice cream for example.

Steve_ZA

That would be better than CE then

fredandgingermad

It's been a quiet winter

Ldnn1

SAS has announced it's moving its GOT service from LHR to STN from 25 Oct. This is clearly to compete with the BA service for Astra-Zenica commuters. It actually looks far more attractive than BA's service as:

- AM and PM deparatures each way on weekdays, versus BA's rather pointless once a day each way

- service on Sat and Sun for those positioning on weekends

- STN is actually more convenient than CBG in my view - it offers easy connectivity to London and other places (not everyone will be going straight to/from the AZ Cambridge office) whereas at CBG there's very little other than local taxis.

Will be interesting to see if BA ramps up their service in response... or ends up dropping it.

atmorris

But isnt the service Sun-Air / BA providing exactly what AZ have asked for? and are contributing and filling up a set number of seats per trip..

So not sure why its pointless...

Ldnn1

Well they might have asked for a double daily service and not been able to get it, so had to make do with what BA offered.

It seems very likely that AZ has also contracted with SAS for the STN service.

shefgab

I think actually that it's clearly to use their LHR slots for better things (they go for rather ludicrous sums of money*). The fact that BA offer some 30 seats a day on the "route" (same area, different airport) is a very minor point, and I presume STN offered a better deal than LGW did to attract SK. SK wouldn't move both daily services (and some 300 seats) from LHR (and thus loose any XXX-LHR-GOT connections) just for the sake of trying to knock BA/Sunair off this very marginal route.

* SK sold a slot pair for $60 million recently (probably to a US or ME3 airline), followed by another to TK for $22 million to go into effect....25 Oct! Maybe the launch of STN-GOT isn't such a mystery now!

Ldnn1

I didn't say it was to knock BA off the route. What I meant was they will compete with BA for what looks like some very lucrative business from AZ.

There are two issues here - ceasing LHR and launching at STN. Obviously any airline can sell its LHR slots and make lots of money from them. But that doesn't mean they'll launch at STN instead. Whereas SAS have clearly seen an opportunity to benefit from the AZ business to support the route switch. The press release makes this fairly obvious:

BApilotinsider

SAS will no doubt find it tough to find the right yield in STN, as many have done before them. However, they need the money for the LHR slot.

Good news for BA and their GOT route from LHR

shefgab

It's a press release! They're hardly going to say "we made a load of money selling our LHR slots, so GOT now has to make do with STN (or another secondary London airport)". They have to put a positive spin on it. If STN was such a good idea in the first place, they could have run flights in tandem with LHR. Economic realities means that they won't. What major airline has ever made a successful move from LHR to STN? I know LH were there many years ago as were AA - both gone. Looking at the carrier list now, the only "respectable" airline there with regular scheduled flights are Germanwings (if that even counts). The rest is no-frills, seasonal, charter or random (Air Moldova anyone?). I don't think AZ and the "Cambridge economic corridor" is really pulling in that many high paying customers.

The press release also doesn't make it clear that the GOT route is also getting smaller aircraft than is currently seen on the LHR-GOT route (B73G and B738 changing to the B736, loosing between 20 and 60 seats per flight). Clearly they're not envisaging growing passenger numbers!

SK sold out, pure and simple. The slot sales obviously made more than the LHR-GOT route did, but there's still enough O/D sales to make (hopefully) STN-GOT a profitable route.

Interestingly, SK also pulled their BGO flight from LHR, moved it to LGW, then discontinued it. SK are also now going to be running STN-GOT in direct competition with Ryanair, who also flying the route twice a day. I'd wager that within a year or two, LON-GOT will either be pulled altogether, or be back at LHR.

Calchas

So that's why AZ were so keen on getting BA*EZ to offer CBG-GOT.

They saw the alternative was FR

I bet deal came as some relief to a few CBG/GOT commuters

Ldnn1

But that's exactly my point! Ordinarily the route wouldn't work for SK and they simply wouldn't bother with it. HOWEVER if they have secured a contract with AZ for X number of seats per day, then that might well support it - so allowing them to continue to serve GOT-LON while cashing in on the LHR slots.