Is British Airways really just London Airways?
Jun 26, 2019, 5:36 am
#31
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Coming back to the title, BA operates from City, Heathrow and Gatwick. Geographically Gatwick is not in London, so calling it London Airways would offend the people of Sussex.
Jun 26, 2019, 5:38 am
#32
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Manchester is in the regions, it has an airport, what sort of airport is it then?
Jun 26, 2019, 5:50 am
#34
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Unless, I am mistaken,it is a little more than one a day (10/week), But, in any event, this might have something to do with the fact that there are trains between Leeds and London every half hour that do the trip in a little over 2 hrs. The vast majority of the traffic between the Leeds Bradford area and the London area is by train rather than by plane.
Jun 26, 2019, 6:02 am
#35
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Totally agree - Talking of which.... the obvious bit missing in the discussion (or in the landscape for that matter) is HS2. In principle at least, it would make a lot more sense to have Heathrow as "The UK airpor" between 0.5-2 hours of most large English cities and barely more to Scotland than have BA duplicate efforts by starting lots of long haul flights from MAN or BHX. The reason why, say, AF can afford not to fly at all to Lille or Strasbourg or for that matter Brussels from Paris is that it codeshares on fast nonstop trains from those cities to CDG. For all practical purposes, you could make the argument that CDG is Lille's second (or rather first) airport. The UK is a lot smaller than France in terms of surface area and in practice that situation could be true of most of the country's largest cities.
Jun 26, 2019, 6:04 am
#36
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I may be wrong, but I thought I read a while ago about restarting some BHX operations. Does anyone know if BA still plan on operating anything out of BHX?
Jun 26, 2019, 6:12 am
#37
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UK regions on KL into AMS versus BA into LHR
Correct me if I'm wrong, but BA don't really offer "one-stop" pricing from domestic outstations - whereas KL/AF fares are generally similar for all UK origins [which [i]is priced as "ex-NL/FR" to entice people into the connecting itinerary].
I guess BA have a reason for doing this [possibly just lack of slots at LHR], but the lower volumes are presumably reflecting the fact that if you have to connect anyway, why not save money via AMS/CDG...?
I guess BA have a reason for doing this [possibly just lack of slots at LHR], but the lower volumes are presumably reflecting the fact that if you have to connect anyway, why not save money via AMS/CDG...?
Aberdeen ABZ: 2x 737, 3x Embraer, 5x Total
Birmingham BHX: 4x 737, 1x Embraer, 5x Total
Bristol BRS: 1x 737, 3x Embraer, 4x Total
Cardiff CWL: 0x 737, 3x Embraer, 3x Total
Durham Tees Valley MME: 0x 737, 3x Embraer, 3x Total
Edinburgh EDI: 4x 737, 0x Embraer, 4x Total
Belfast City BHD: 0x 737, 1x Embraer, 1x Total
Glasgow GLA: 3x 737, 0x Embraer, 3x Total
Humberside HUY: 0x 737, 3x Embraer, 3x Total
Inverness INV: 0x 737, 2x Embraer, 2x Total
Leeds Bradford LBA: 0x 737, 3x Embraer, 3x Total
London City LCY: 0x 737, 9x Embraer, 9x Total
London Heathrow LHR: 6x 737, 5x Embraer, 11x Total
Manchester MAN: 4x 737, 2x Embraer, 6x Total
Newcastle NCL: 3x 737, 1x Embraer, 4x Total
Norwich NWI: 0x 737, 4x Embraer, 4x Total
KLM operates 737-700s, 737-800s and 737-900s on UK routes which have broadly similar capacities to BA's A319, A320 and A321 fleet. However KL also has it's Cityhopper fleet of Embraer 175 & 190s which operate on lower demand, high yield routes (as well as some obvious LHR slot sitters) which have between 92 and 104 seats each.
If we look at BA, they have no (or minimal) spare slots at LHR to provide for extra UK domestic services. Even if more slots were to become available, The smallest plane in BA's LHR fleet is the A319 - which has 143/144 seats, allowing for 5 rows of CE, this means 133 or 134 sellable seats - substantially more than KL's modern Embraers.
Now, a third runway at LHR would open up a whole lot more slots, with some ringfenced for domestic services. Would BA be interested in running LHR routes to places like HUY and MME (maybe GCI too) if there were more slots available? Yields would be strong of course but the evidence of LBA suggests that BA would struggle to fill these routes using their current fleet. If U2 then start operating some of the juicer domestics (LHR-EDI especially), it could really put the squeeze on BA's domestic feeder network and make it harder to fill the existing planes. I read somewhere that the union agreement prevents BA CF from operating into LHR but maybe these are exactly the sort of planes that BA will need to operate on domestic routes if/when the third runway is built.
Just to comment on the pricing, KL's pricing can vary tremendously and in my experience can be extremely expensive to fly out of a business focused UK airport (HUY, MME) compared to a busier airport (NCL or MAN) as the smaller capacity routes do not seem to have that many tickets for sale in the cheaper ticket buckets (plus KL have no competition here). On these routes, point-to-point pricing into AMS can be horrendously expensive as well (MME-AMS-DUS return is normally 40% cheaper than MME-AMS).
Jun 26, 2019, 6:15 am
#38
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Good memory, I had totally forgotten this. and my predictions were clearly a little off. DUB and AGP still the only Ryanair routes AMS. Still, I've made it to GRQ from SEN 
To get back on topic - agree with the comments from NickB and orbitmic. And KL Cityhopper did used to have some flights from RTM, including LHR.
Jun 26, 2019, 6:19 am
#39
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Indeed but what makes this possible is the integration of the TGV station to the airport at CDG, which is something that has been ruled out in the case of HS2, since you will have to get off the train at Old Oak Common, then take Crossrail to Heathrow. The UK does not do integrated transport and intermodality.
Jun 26, 2019, 6:21 am
#40
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Jun 26, 2019, 6:43 am
#41
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@ tigertanaka - that sure is a helluva big operation that KL runs from the UK.
I guess UK Country Manager for KLM is a top-ranking role within their corporate structure !
I guess UK Country Manager for KLM is a top-ranking role within their corporate structure !
Jun 26, 2019, 6:52 am
#42
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BA have invested in T5 and LHR slots, I just don't think they would look to change that, they still have a lot of 747's that need filling, only LHR can get that kind of traffic.
Personally I wouldn't mind the London centric policy if BA had genuine feeder flights from the regional airports to LHR, it's a market that the likes of KLM have had to themselves besides the token MAN,LBA & NCL routes. I mean KLM can make running 3 sometimes 4 flights a day from my local HUY to AMS pay, so surely their is business to be had with regionals.
Ive always assumed it because there isn't the runway capacity at LHR rather than commercial appetite.
Personally I wouldn't mind the London centric policy if BA had genuine feeder flights from the regional airports to LHR, it's a market that the likes of KLM have had to themselves besides the token MAN,LBA & NCL routes. I mean KLM can make running 3 sometimes 4 flights a day from my local HUY to AMS pay, so surely their is business to be had with regionals.
Ive always assumed it because there isn't the runway capacity at LHR rather than commercial appetite.
Jun 26, 2019, 6:52 am
#43
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Just to comment on the pricing, KL's pricing can vary tremendously and in my experience can be extremely expensive to fly out of a business focused UK airport (HUY, MME) compared to a busier airport (NCL or MAN) as the smaller capacity routes do not seem to have that many tickets for sale in the cheaper ticket buckets (plus KL have no competition here). On these routes, point-to-point pricing into AMS can be horrendously expensive as well (MME-AMS-DUS return is normally 40% cheaper than MME-AMS).
I was thinking more of the "nicking holidaymakers" business out of the larger cities like BHX, MAN, etc - i.e. long-haul connecting traffic. High fares direct to AMS are the expectation, in the absence of [and sometimes even in the persence of] direct competition. It's the one-stop options to places like SIN and HKG where, AFAIK, BA doesn't seem to compete on the basis of being a one stop option - unlike they clearly do from AMS, for instance.
Jun 26, 2019, 7:06 am
#44
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It also just reflects the very different kind of airlines that BA and KL are. Given the small size of the Netherlands, KL is crucially dependent on transfer traffic, so they have no choice than to go after that transfer traffic relentlessly and I suspect that their conception of an acceptable passenger yield is probably lower than for BA.
Jun 26, 2019, 7:10 am
#45
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indeed. Plus nowhere else in the UK is economically productive enough to justify a separate hub - Manchester and surrounding regions aren’t quite in the Munich and Bavaria league.