V-Flyer

Axing ALL Gatwick flights, slots sold to easyJet for £20m.

Story

When I first heard this earlier I thought it would be an interesting move for Little Red to take the Inverness slot, but now looks like a done deal with EasyJet.

That could have a serious effect upon long haul airlines using Gatwick.
No doubt what FlyBe intend.
Travel LHR-LGW is not easy and will certainly be an issue for regional travellers such as from Newcastle.
Yet another advantage for Emirates and disadvantage for VS.

IMHO .... we so need one Big Hub..... fragmentation will be to the detriment of BA, VS and UK I think !

Laphroaig wrote:IMHO .... we so need one Big Hub..... fragmentation will be to the detriment of BA, VS and UK I think !

To an extent some of us already have one: AMS Amsterdam ):

FlyBe returning to it's regional route, exploiting regional airports like Southampton.

http://www.flybe.com/corporate/investor ... y-2013.pdf

Sadly unless you live in the south-east of England, Heathrow and Virgin are becoming more of an irrelevance.

From my base in Renfrew Airport (I live on the old runway!) if I want to go west I’ll take the United (Continental) flight from GLA and change at Newark. If I want to go east I’ll go Emirates via Dubai. 3rd choice is London Airways (BA)/LHR and 4th choice is KLM/AMS. The same situation exists for much of the UK, Newcastle and the NE in particular.

Incidents like Friday’s emergency landing for BA leading to cancellations for UK domestic flights only shows how LHR is gearing itself to being the hub airport of Europe to the detriment of the rest of the UK. Reading the proposed Delta/AF/KLM codeshare agreement adds to this feeling, it looks like Virgin can certainly expand by appealing more to Irish and European travellers through their hub. But am I going to fly GLA-AMS-LHR just to get a flight with Virgin? No.

This is exactly why Virgin launched the domestic service from ABZ & EDH but lack of capactiy at LHR will prevent further expansion. However, apart from FlyBe there is another UK airline operating a significant domestic service, I’m surprised there hasn’t been talks with EasyJet to provide thru ticketing.

Don't necessarily disagree with you.

If I was living back home on Teesside I could fly KLM from MME to AMS but there are no flights to London since BMI stopped the LHR route and BMI Baby the LGW replacement. A new airline was going to fly into LCY but I believe that company was wound up with suspicions of fraud.

But it was BA who decided to cancel their domestic routes rather than LHR. Then again BA do the same if there are weather problems.

If LHR or ATC say 'we need to reduce flights by 30%' it is BA who decide how to implement their share of the cuts and no doubt given the economics they will cancel the domestics first.

tontybear wrote:If LHR or ATC say 'we need to reduce flights by 30%' it is BA who decide how to implement their share of the cuts and no doubt given the economics they will cancel the domestics first.

BA are also likely to cancel more than ATC require as they need to manage their aircraft and crews, also BA are in-charge of their own gate allocations at T5, and are very picky at T1 and T3 (will rather wait for "their" gate to be free than use another gate or remote stand)

And then you hear that the flight involved in the incident on Friday was about 65% full and you think how many flights go out fully booked? And perhaps BA are missing a trick and could be tightening capacity or at least being more creative with it.

Not the only ones... do some airlines not operate empty ghost flights out of LHR otherwise they'll lose their slots?