LBA morning rotation dropped from Feb '18?
 

I've been looking at flights for next March, and the morning rotation to/from LBA seems to have disappeared

Has this been published anywhere?

Are you sure? I just looked at some random weekday dates in February, March, April, and May and the morning rotation is still shown on BA.com.

I have a few booked and no notification. They have chopped the early pm flight in the winter before which is why we avoid it.

I have it booked in March- you are indeed right- it is missing on the 14th but in in flight from London is still there as is the pm in flight So unless BA are flying an empty plane somewhere or flying from LBA to somewhere other than LHR is must be a glitch.

There are some odd changes coming through today. From what I can tell the LBA route will have the following flights in early 2018:

1-14 Jan
Morning and midday rotations only Mon-Fri, & Sun
Morning rotation only Sat

15-28 Jan
Morning and evening rotations only Mon-Fri, & Sun
Morning rotation only Sat (except Sat 27 which has morning and midday)

29 Jan - 4 Feb
Morning and midday rotations only Mon-Tue
Morning and evening rotations only Wed-Fri, & Sun
Morning rotation only Saturday

5-11 Feb
Morning and evening rotations only Mon-Fri, & Sun
Morning and midday rotations Sat

12-26 February
Morning, midday, and evening rotations Mon-Fri, & Sun (except Sun 25 which has midday and evening only)
Morning and midday rotations Sat

27 Feb - 24 Mar
Midday and evening rotations only Mon-Fri, & Sun
Midday rotation only Sat

25 Mar onwards
Back to normal, with three rotations Mon-Fri, & Sun and two on Saturday

Still begs the question as to what BA are planning with all the slots being freed up here

How is LBA performing when it is operaring as per normal ?

cs

I was thinking that too, seem to be a lot of slots/aircraft/crew being freed up with things like ORY and BHD and this.

Growing every year and at a decent rate. I still think passenger numbers need to keep growing before the route could be considered secure though, if number plateau now I would be worried it wouldn't be a sustainable route as far as BA are concerned. A night-stopper would be a massive improvement, an arrival in to LHR before 0800 would open up lots of connection possibilities, whereas now the morning southbound arrives around 1045. I appreciate that morning arrival slots are scare though.

Percentages are increases compared to the same month in the previous year.

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/128...924/168Saz.png

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/640...922/pDTa3E.png

And it's normally 19 weekly ? On an A319?


cs

I really don't see this route lasting long-term. I suspect that BA will be looking for an excuse to drop it. I used to use it fairly often, but all the messing around with flight times (e.g. lack of an evening flight from LHR at the moment) means it just doesn't work for me.

While the passenger numbers might be growing, given the low pricing on this route, even when booking near to departure, I can't believe it is profitable. Or if it is that there aren't other routes that slots could be used for that would be more profitable.

I actually quite like the airport. But my wife refers to it as "Leeds ToyTown" airport!

Normal should be 3 rotations Mon-Fri & Sun, and 2 rotations Saturday. All A319. However, we still seem to get occasional rotation drops for a month, for example the Friday late rotation was dropped for July.

I agree this can be self fulfilling when they mess with the schedule like this - there have been reductions in January and February before but 2018 changes seem all over the place. People don't book because the flight they want isn't running and then BA see passengers numbers don't grow which leads to further cuts.

I have noticed the last minute availability of O class seats has dropped a lot over the last few years. I am often now looking at flights several weeks out where O has long gone and we are in to more expensive ET selling classes.

I have always believed that LBA can grow to sustain what should be the normal frequency of 3 every day apart from Saturday which has 2. The target from BA was 160,000 for this route which we got to last year and it seems 2017 should be heading to 170,000 or more. Another point about this route is that it has the highest percentage of connecting passengers compared to BA's other domestic routes. In part I think this is because the times aren't good for people doing day trips to London for meetings/work, the position of LBA on the road network, and the strong competition from the train when doing point to point. I am not sure whether having lots of connecting passengers helps or hinders the route profitability - guess it depends on how you allocate the fare.

We are coming up to the 5th year anniversary of the route this December. In terms of a growing route this is still doing well based on the year on year increases. But unless it keeps growing and gets to a sustainable level the fear is BA cancel it as they can easily use the slots and aircraft for other routes.

BA has stated its intention to reduce the A319 fleet by 40% (from 44 to 26) by 2021. Don't know how quickly that will happen, but would it have an effect on the frequencies to LBA?

I think they start retiring them gradually from next year(?). LBA is exclusively A319. If the route is still going by 2021 I think one would hope passenger number would have grown sufficiently that some A320s on the route would be justified anyway.

Having a night stopping aircraft at LBA would increase costs on the route so doubt it would be a viable option.

It's normal for capacity to be trimmed slightly in the quieter months at the start of the calendar year.

Hi Down Low. I think there have been genuine discussions about a night stopper before between the airport and BA. I also even heard that when the route was stared there was some commitment to do an night stopper at some point. This is all third hand information though so whether it is remotely true who knows. I happened to be looking at the originally proposed timetable which came out about 7 months before the route started and there was a night stopper included - by the time it did start that had been dropped though.

I agree there would be costs, but I guess the question would be could it give increased passengers/profits which would outweigh the cost. It would really open up connection possibilities as atm you can't really connect on to anything departing LHR before midday. Early morning arrival slots are at a premium though so I suspect that more than anything will stop it happening for a while.

Yes, you are right on winter trimming, we have certainly had that before like a few other routes. The trimming for 2018 seems a bit unusual since it seems to change almost from week to week.

The extra traffic and revenue it would need to generate would first of all need to cover the night stop costs. On top of this you'd be taking a night stop away from another European destination to use the slot, so the money being made from LBA would need to be more than BA could make somewhere else. I'm not sure the business case would stack up, but happy to be proven wrong one day!

The trimming of the schedule will be affected by the maintenance work which goes on in the winter which is now conducted in quite a few different locations across Europe and is therefore very fluid. Hence why there seems to be no real pattern to the cancellations.

Something to keep in mind is the short haul densification programme gets going this winter meaning a number of aircraft offline. This will also be a factor behind the schedule changes mentioned here and on another thread regarding BHD.