mario

"All services to and from Porto will be cancelled between 30 October 2005 and 26 March 2006."

It seems that Ryanair presence on this route forced GB to leave.

I really can't understand how can they sell flights from 30p + taxes and still make a profit. I heard that the Portuguese government made a deal with easyjet so that they start flying to LIS. Why should they receive any kind of 'compensation' whilst others don't? For how long will this farse will go on?

JimmyTheJock

Disaster...OPO is a superb venue full of places which give you free drink.
Excellent new Sheraton Hotel...and really pleasant people.

A pox on Lyarair.

They can't...but if you drive out the competition you don't have to!

graraps

This sounds absolutely frightening to me....Porto isn't Faro or ALC, the LCC competition is strong but not unbelievable....Let's hope that this isn't the first of a series of destinations to be abandoned due to LCC pressures, and that other carriers won't follow BA in leaving places like OPO.

BAW845_Matt

All Almeria flights for the period have been cancalled and Valencia is dropping to 3x weekly.

Monsieur Linguist

Are people really surprised? This is GB Airways we're talking about, a group of ramshackle incompetants who bring shame upon the BA name.

They chop and change their schedules to regular places such as AGP with ferocious enthusiasm. They announce new routes from MAN and then proceed to dump half of them. Every airline is entitled to make schedule changes as they see fit, but to do on such a high proportion of your services, like GB Airways do, is just not right.

Inflight service on GB Airways may be fine, possibly a notch above BA mainline for shorthaul, but otherwise they make BD look like a company with focus. BA needs the franchise partner to sort their planning out or dump these people. If GB Airways weren't protected by the anonymity they get under the BA name, they would have gone out of business several summers ago.

Swanhunter

Well, if they won't offer decent I class deals to their destinations any more they shouldn't be surprised that no-one wants to fly there.

Rather irritating though, I was looking forward to getting to Porto one day.

nonsoloinglese

Ok, their timetable may chop and change but out of the half a dozen CE flights i have done this year the LGW-FAO had the most professional crew and best service. I took BLQ-LGW one day then LGW-FAO the next and the difference was tremendous.

pennineuk

This is terrible news- as a regular to OPO I'm very disappointed. GB Airways do seem to be going through a rough patch, not least the delayed OPO flight from 1340 to 2300 a couple of weeks ago. Whilst the scheduling is c**p, the service on board is always excellent.

More importantly, BA, and its franchise partners, always scores over other airlines because of its network coverage. Is this the beginning of the end?

Steady-EDI

Sorry to hear about the winter withdrawal from OPO. I agree that it's an excellent destination - a real discovery for me last year.

So that's another reason to hate Ryanair if that's why GB are temporarily pulling out I think we constantly underestimate the extent of the hold that the LCCs have on the public imagination. We like to joke about the chavs, etc, but I work among reasonably well-paid professional people and sometimes it seems like all they can talk about is where they're going next on some LCC or other. I don't think it even occurs to them to consider a "real" airline.

That's depressing, but not objectionable : in the long term, the market will give the public what it wants / deserves (delete according to your point of view). What IS objectionable is if these outfits are being given publicly-funded inducements by local councils, regional development agencies, etc to bring their services to particular areas, while mainstream airlines are told to adapt or die.

Anyway, back to OPO and let's keep things in persective : the withdrawal is only for the winter, isn't it?

graraps

You've got to realise that the difference is much more than cost.
The low-costs give people the chance to visit a number of destinations from their local airport. For example, not only do the people of Coventry not have to trek to London for their weekend getaways, their local low-cost means they can now avoid driving the long 12 or so miles to BHX (from where traditional carriers offer direct flights to about 15 destinations direct, plus a similar number from lo-cos) to catch a flight. And flying LCCs means that there are no connections to worry about, either. Apart from their obvious time drawbacks, connections scare infrequent flyers, probably because they've heard one story too many about delays or lost baggage. This means that the hub-and-spoke system doesn't make much sense to those who want to go somewhere nice for a couple of days but don't mind exactly where they end up or have tertiary destinations in mind. BE has lots of routes between UK airports not served by BA and French airports not served by AF!
We can keep our fingers crossed and hope the current diversity in the market will continue...I am quite confident it will, at least until governments across the globe decide to liberalise air traffic.


BA's network is of course superior to that of BD or VS, but AF, KL and especially LH (with its gazillion *A and *A Regional partners) tend to cover Europe a bit better. However, if BA's network starts diminishing, it'd be a safe bet that the others will also get thinking about it...

House

BACX's reduction or elimination of service to core business destinations (AMS for instance) from MAN is a prime example of what having LCC competition on the doorstep can do. Instead of trying to face down carriers like Jet2, Hapag Lloyd Express, etc they have simply cut routes where an LCC has taken hold, and reduced capacity (down to Embraer 50 seater jets in many cases) on most of the rest.

At this rate, MAN will only have the Shuttle and JFK left in a few years from now - I wonder how the LCCswill price their fares then!

iainbhx

It doesn't have to be LCC's. BHX has lost AMS and MUC in recent years, at the time there was no LCC competition to AMS and there has never been LCC competition to MUC. Just LH and KL flooding the market with proper-sized planes and cheap fares.

Now it's usually £140 to AMS and £200 to MUC. Oh and there's less flights on smaller planes. FRA and DUS are probably next.

There's a rumour floating around than MAN will lose 25% of it's BACX flights next year, but the planes will be heading to BRS, SOU and EDI/LCY. BHX may lose STR, DUS and FCO.

I can see a day soon when BACX BHX will be GLA, EDI, ABZ plus code shares to DUB and BRU. It was only two years ago there were 26 destinations and an annual profit each year.

G-BOAC

Isn't this all rather an over-reaction? I thought this was just a usual seasonal change for the winter schedules? OPO will be back next year. I was sure this happened last year too? I'm sure we'll see plenty of other removals and additions announced at both GB and mainline over the next few weeks.

BTW it's also a place I want to visit should a decent I class come up, so I hope it does return next year.

Phil

spotwelder

I think that OPO has three main markets. Firstly, the business market for the industrial area of Portugal and the fashion industry in the Estrella mountains or whatever it is called. Secondly, there is the tourist market and this is mainly German. Finally, the other tourist market. Now there is some trade on the UK to OPO route in the winter but not enough!

The Ryanair cost base is lower than GB so the fares can be lower. As there is competition and pax choice, they have made it.

As for BA regional, it always was a bit of a hiccup. I remember when there were five carriers on MAN AMS and that was years ago. The problem is the BA pax "requirement" for the Barbie Jet. You could have lots of competitive direct services with Dash 8 400s but you don't want that. So, stick with your expensive little jets and see what happens. Ah, somebody brings LCC into the route structure and the electric pencil cannot compete.

You could always vote for a national airline with the efficiency of say, Ghana Airways. Oh, they are grounded. Sorry...

iainbhx

Speak for yourself, I know plenty of BHX pax who preferred the Dash-8's we had on ABZ's to the Barbie Jets.

Also until 1999, we used to have a reasonable supply of bigger jets which made money.