Bristol Airport - General Thread

[Aviador]

Many of these kinds of airport reports are created by external companies. I would hazard a guess the above was one of them. I guess fact checking details such as aircraft types might not be so important to an office administrator.

 

[Jerry]

Both types have landed at Cardiff this year and in the past. Maybe they mistakenly thought they'd landed at Bristol instead when they compiled the data.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

I suppose a 350 could land on a 'promotional' visit for the type but eight landings and eight take-offs? I don't know whether the PCN at BRS will take a 340, even an empty one. Fully laden 330s have operated so perhaps a 340 could if it was lightly loaded, but it would mean three landings and three take-offs in 2016.

What is incorrect beyond doubt is that with two TCX A321s based for much of the year there would have been many more movements than the 76 shown. Even if the stats were compiled by an external source does no-one at the airport read them before publication under the airport's name?

As with the CAA, if stats are incorrect what is the point in pubishing them and paying people to compile them into the bargain?

 

[TheLocalYokel]

https://www.acl-uk.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Start-of-Season-Report-BRS-S18.pdf

ACL slot allocation for summer 2018 now published.

Movements and number of seats up on summer 2017.

 

[Sierra3]

TLY thanks for posting - very interesting read & a lot to digest.

ATMs for the whole 30 week season - have assumed slot pairs 1 ATM for arrival and 1 ATM for departure
Aer Lingus down by 119 ATM
Aurigny up by 32 (? extra week end flights?)
BMI is up by 622 BUT Brussels Airlines is down by 730, so some shrinkage somewhere?
Flybe is down by 41
BA up by one flight a week

Ryanair only up by 170 which is approx. 6 extra ATMs (3 pairs) per week on average - not a lot
Thomas Cook and TUI both up a ranking place to relegate BMI from 3 to 5 on ATMs, but assume this is due to additional based aircraft; which in turn reduces the Air Europa, Titan etc
Easyjet 2.24m more seats than RYR

Think BRS could do with a few more carriers

 

[IanFarquharson]

Bristol seats for S18

1. easyjet = 3,661,182 (up 337,620 on S17)
2. Ryanair = 1,423,926 (up 32,458 on S17)
3. Tui = 648,804 (up 143,452 on S17)
4. Thomas Cook = 427,440 (up 101,520 on S17)
5. BMIR = 224,674 (up 28,892 on S17)
6. KLM = 166,776 (down 4,928 on S17)
7. Aer Lingus = 125,568 (down 8,006 on S17)
8. Eastern = 43,400 (down 116 on S17)
9. FlyBe = 33,456 (up 4,644 on S17)
10. Auringey = 31,248 (up 2,736 on S17)

Total 6,887,325 (up 494,159 on S17)

Decent % increase for Bristol in 2018

Ian

 

[TheLocalYokel]

TLY thanks for posting - very interesting read & a lot to digest.

ATMs for the whole 30 week season - have assumed slot pairs 1 ATM for arrival and 1 ATM for departure
Aer Lingus down by 119 ATM
Aurigny up by 32 (? extra week end flights?)
BMI is up by 622 BUT Brussels Airlines is down by 730, so some shrinkage somewhere?
Flybe is down by 41
BA up by one flight a week

Ryanair only up by 170 which is approx. 6 extra ATMs (3 pairs) per week on average - not a lot
Thomas Cook and TUI both up a ranking place to relegate BMI from 3 to 5 on ATMs, but assume this is due to additional based aircraft; which in turn reduces the Air Europa, Titan etc
Easyjet 2.24m more seats than RYR

Think BRS could do with a few more carriers

Re your detailed atm breakdown:

Aer Lingus is flying 2 x daily on Tue and Wed instead of the 3 x daily of summer 17. The rest of the schedule seems the same as summer 17, ie 4 x daily on Mon, Thurs and Fri; 2 x daily on Sat; 3 x daily on Sun. Ryanair is flying 5 additional DUB rotations each week in June and July compared with summer 17. Cork seems the same as summer 17 - daily.

Aurigny seems daily as in summer 17.

I understand BRU will operate as a BM flight until September after which the airline will revert to operating the route for SN. That probably accounts for the apparent discrepancy.

Flybe/Blue Islands seems daily to JER as in summer 17 so I don't know why the air traffic movements are down.

BACF will operate Malaga 2 x weekly instead of the 1 x weekly of summer 17.

Assuming that Bergerac and Reus do return for peak summer 18 as has been suggested (Bergerac has now appeared today in the Ryanair calendar but not yet available for booking) below is the difference between the number of weekly departures each month compared with the similar figures for summer 17. Obviously to get the total atms multiply by two.

May 120 (+ 4 on May 17)
June 120 (+ 5)
July 124 (+ 3)
August 127 (- 4)
September 123 (+ 2)

This is roughly the 3 ( x 2) atms per week you mentioned. I haven't looked at April or October.

NB Prepared before I read Ian's post.

 

[Sierra3]

Bristol seats for S18

1. easyjet = 3,661,182 (up 337,620 on S17)
2. Ryanair = 1,423,926 (up 32,458 on S17)
3. Tui = 648,804 (up 143,452 on S17)
4. Thomas Cook = 427,440 (up 101,520 on S17)
5. BMIR = 224,674 (up 28,892 on S17)
6. KLM = 166,776 (down 4,928 on S17)
7. Aer Lingus = 125,568 (down 8,006 on S17)
8. Eastern = 43,400 (down 116 on S17)
9. FlyBe = 33,456 (up 4,644 on S17)
10. Auringey = 31,248 (up 2,736 on S17)

Total 6,887,325 (up 494,159 on S17)

Decent % increase for Bristol in 2018

Ian

So the total seats for BRS available is up 7.7%
The devil is in the detail. The top 5:
EZY up 10.2% (to give 53% of total)
RYR up 2.33% (20.7%)
TUI up 28.4% (9.4%)
Thos Cook up 31.1% (6.2%)
BMR up 5.8% (3.3%)

Which gives almost 93% of the total, the remainder are of limited statistical value.
Over half of BRS seats are with one carrier, best part of 75% with 2 carriers. I was a shareholder in Court Line! BRS was decimated by that collapse.

The other thing that makes me nervous is approx. 30% increase in seats from Thos Cook and TUI - is this sustainable? If not then the top two's % goes up.

Difficult to manage any company (let alone an airport) when over 50% of your business are reliant on one customer, almost worse when the top 2 customers are competitors with basically the same strategy (LoCo) represent 75% of your business.

Truly hope I'm being too negative, but IMHO the only way out of the position is more carriers even if it does irritate the incumbents.

 

[Marko1]

The question is who ?

 

[TheLocalYokel]

So the total seats for BRS available is up 7.7%
The devil is in the detail. The top 5:
EZY up 10.2% (to give 53% of total)
RYR up 2.33% (20.7%)
TUI up 28.4% (9.4%)
Thos Cook up 31.1% (6.2%)
BMR up 5.8% (3.3%)

Which gives almost 93% of the total, the remainder are of limited statistical value.
Over half of BRS seats are with one carrier, best part of 75% with 2 carriers. I was a shareholder in Court Line! BRS was decimated by that collapse.

The other thing that makes me nervous is approx. 30% increase in seats from Thos Cook and TUI - is this sustainable? If not then the top two's % goes up.

Difficult to manage any company (let alone an airport) when over 50% of your business are reliant on one customer, almost worse when the top 2 customers are competitors with basically the same strategy (LoCo) represent 75% of your business.

Truly hope I'm being too negative, but IMHO the only way out of the position is more carriers even if it does irritate the incumbents.

I agree about relying too much on one customer being a potential recipe for disaster in any business and have said so more than once in this forum when speaking of easyJet and BRS. easyJet seems content to continue its BRS growth of the past 15 years but no-one can foresee what's around the corner.

There does seem a never ending procession of people wanting to fly from the airport and the existing major carriers seem to be seeing increasingly higher load factors if that's possible in many cases given the large number of sell-outs that have been a feature for a while now. Of course, yields might be compromised as more seats become available.

BRS isn't alone with an over-reliance on one customer. Locally, EXT only has Flybe providing its scheduled services, apart from a tiny input from Scilly Skybus in summer, and its only real charter customer is TUI with one of its B737-800 aircraft based there. CWL too now seems to have over half its seat capacity provided by Flybe.

If easyJet scaled back because somone else came on board in a significant way I think it's likely that some easyJet routes would go and not be replicated by anyone else. That would be bad for passengers. The trick must surely be (although currently the airport doesn't seem keen on this idea) to entice other airlines on board gradually in order that easyJet, Ryanair and the others are not inclined to react negatively. Very easy to say of course but much more difficult to achieve.

Given the 12 mppa projection by 2025, to rely on existing carriers alone to service that number of passengers would increase the disproportionality even more.

I recall saying three or four years ago that I could not see how BRS would reach 8 mppa in the next few years let alone the 9-10 mppa being spoken of then. They have done and I would not bet against the 10 mppa coming along in fairly short order. I remain uneasy about the continuing dominance of easyJet from a busienss perspective but from a routes provision standpoint they are a boon to local travellers. My only criticism on that score is that increased frequencies on some routes would be even more useful to passengers.

I remember Court Line with its 1-11s painted in what looked like an undercoat and its associated tour operator Clarksons, although I never flew with them. When Court Line ceased to trade in August 1974 it dealt BRS a huge blow (as it did a number of other airports). BRS passenger figures in 1974 dropped to 184,000 from 289,000 in 1973. It wasn't until 1983 that BRS again handled over 289,000 passengers in a year. So there is a lesson there.

 

[forest1979]

I’ve agreed on more than one occasion on here about the orange domination at Bristol. Looking at the likes of Glasgow, BHX, Luton, you could also argue that they two at times have had over reliance on one or two carriers and when something happens it does leave a dent. I think bristol have to have a model going forward that looks to attract in new non based carriers to fill some of the gaps and push a bit if competition, particularly routes where there is a monopoly.. Other airports are doing this and doing it well. A good mix has surely got to be a sensible sustainable plan?

 

[Marko1]

The only thing with a plan like that is who are the airlines that they intend to target. The likes of wizz and wow were unsuccessful and blue air was a non starter ( still find that very strange). I doubt vueling would be tempted and Norwegian has retracted from uk regions. So who is left ?

 

[Jerry]

The only thing with a plan like that is who are the airlines that they intend to target. The likes of wizz and wow were unsuccessful and blue air was a non starter ( still find that very strange). I doubt vueling would be tempted and Norwegian has retracted from uk regions. So who is left ?

It would have to be carriers like Turkish, Swiss, Finnair, SAS, Eurowings, Blue Air and TAP and many of them would face stiff competition from Easyjet and Ryanair. Honestly the only airline that i can see realistically coming to BRS in the future is Jet2.

 

[Marko1]

I agree with you on the jet 2 solution but I feel Ryanair could be helping a lot more too. There are a number of European bases that Ryanair use that could feed flights into Bristol at off peak times such as Rome madrid and Berlin for example.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

The policy of sticking with existing carriers to drive future growth first came to light nearly a year ago in an article with the then CEO Robert Sinclair in Airports of the World magazine. I can't remember it being publicly stated before that.

It was never part of the existing master plan so we are unlikely to get a sense of whether this will underpin growth in the years ahead when the new draft master plan is published later this spring.

With the airline industry continually contracting with airline failures and airline mergers the options for new carriers are lessened every year. So perhaps it will become the norm for smaller airports to have to rely on one or two main airline customers and the airport is merely recognising reality. I don't suggest there is no room for new entrants with smaller presences - the fact that they are likely to be non-based would help the daily movements flow - but as others have pointed out it's difficult to see where a major new presence could come from.

 

[Marko1]

One to think about is ba city flyer. Could they be tempted to base permanently ?

 

[Jerry]

One to think about is ba city flyer. Could they be tempted to base permanently ?

I suppose it depends on where they see themselves going as an airline in the future. If they do in the long term open a base then i'd have thought routes like AMS and CDG would have to be on their radar and would they attract newer customers that wouldn't neccesarily fly with KLM or EZY?

 

[TheLocalYokel]

One to think about is ba city flyer. Could they be tempted to base permanently ?

Probably a long shot. The positive note is that BRS was included with bigger airports at BHX and MAN when BACF was looking to do something with their aircraft at weekends when LCY was shut. So if the airline does expand in the future BRS might be in with a shout given it's already firmly on the radar.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

One to think about is ba city flyer. Could they be tempted to base permanently ?

Probably a long shot. The positive note is that BRS was included with bigger airports at BHX and MAN when BACF was looking to do something with their aircraft at weekends when LCY was shut. So if the airline does expand in the future BRS might be in with a shout given it's already firmly on the radar.

 

[forest1979]

It would have to be carriers like Turkish, Swiss, Finnair, SAS, Eurowings, Blue Air and TAP and many of them would face stiff competition from Easyjet and Ryanair. Honestly the only airline that i can see realistically coming to BRS in the future is Jet2.

Totally agree. They offer up more also by way of connections and alliances. Loco’s have their place but there has to be a mix. BA cityflyer expansion would be welcomed by me