Route Development & Rumours

[White Heather]

Apparently one of the air bridges is unserviceable because someone left it open to the elements after the aircraft departed and during heavy rain, which got in and fried the electrical system. A very expensive mistake. One wonders if they still have a job at the airport?

 

[whoshotjimmi]

Is there any point in serving Brussels? I worked at LBA during the period Sebena and BMI served Brussels. After 9/11 the flight was only used by members of the European Parliament so there's not much point in flying there after Brexit.

I think there is a definite point in considering all of the major hubs as they all offer something different. Whether there is enough demand to set up 2/3 daily services to said hubs alongside the offering from Manchester is another story. What I will say with regards to that is the absolute chaos that is the train service to Manchester Airport at the moment. I'd be interested to know just how many people have been catastrophically delayed as a result of the rail pandemonium and I reckon a lot more people will be looking at LBA as a better option.

I mentioned the different hubs have something different to offer. Madrid is the gateway to Spanish speaking Latin America. Lisbon to Portuguese speaking Latin America. Paris has many flights to the French Carribbean. The Middle East hubs have Asia and Australasia pretty sewn up.

Brussels has a heck of a lot of flights to Africa due to historical connections and I know many people who visit Africa who use Brussels as the hub. Indeed, Brussels Airlines has really focused on its connections to Africa.

Furthermore, there is a reasonably decent market for short breaks to Belgium at the moment. The mini-cruises from Hull, for example, are well patriated. The right marketing and the right pricing would get Brussels back and kicking again - European parliament or no European parliament. Lastly, after 9/11, the entire aviation industry went into crisis and there were a lot of casualties. It's a lot of years since 9/11, the world is a very different place, airline related terror incidents are almost none-existent and more people fly these days than even before 9/11.

 

[leedslad]

Brussels is also very well connected to other European business cities. If we had frequent well timed flag carrier flights it would open up a huge range of these routes for business... I semi regularly connect through there for business even from Manc

 

[Aviador]

I think there is a definite point in considering all of the major hubs as they all offer something different. Whether there is enough demand to set up 2/3 daily services to said hubs alongside the offering from Manchester is another story. What I will say with regards to that is the absolute chaos that is the train service to Manchester Airport at the moment. I'd be interested to know just how many people have been catastrophically delayed as a result of the rail pandemonium and I reckon a lot more people will be looking at LBA as a better option.

I mentioned the different hubs have something different to offer. Madrid is the gateway to Spanish speaking Latin America. Lisbon to Portuguese speaking Latin America. Paris has many flights to the French Carribbean. The Middle East hubs have Asia and Australasia pretty sewn up.

Brussels has a heck of a lot of flights to Africa due to historical connections and I know many people who visit Africa who use Brussels as the hub. Indeed, Brussels Airlines has really focused on its connections to Africa.

Furthermore, there is a reasonably decent market for short breaks to Belgium at the moment. The mini-cruises from Hull, for example, are well patriated. The right marketing and the right pricing would get Brussels back and kicking again - European parliament or no European parliament. Lastly, after 9/11, the entire aviation industry went into crisis and there were a lot of casualties. It's a lot of years since 9/11, the world is a very different place, airline related terror incidents are almost none-existent and more people fly these days than even before 9/11.

For the same reasons you have stated above I would love to see an airline make a success of flying the Brussels route once again but BMI, Eastern and Flybe are unlikely to be able to make the route work.

The problem we have here is not just having the right sized aircraft for the number of passengers you anticipate, it's also having the right aircraft type that enables interlining and connecting passengers who invariably carry substantially more luggage. Aircraft such as the Embraer 145 and 135 are great for point to point business routes because passengers generally only take carry on baggage, but they're not fit for purpose if you want a decent balance of business and interlining transiting passengers.

From memory In it's hayday prior to September 11th, Sabena subsidiary DAT was operating upto 4 times a day operating 85-100 seater Avro aircraft. The majority of the passengers were connecting flights operated by Sabina World Airlines who operated a fleet of over 80 aircraft on a substantial number of routes. Today Brussels Airlines operates around 50 aircraft on a much reduced network but they are the only airline that can realistically make a success of the route if they can be persuaded to operate into Leeds knowing it will likely reduce their yield from Manchester.

 

[AirBingley]

It's worth remembering that BMI already operate this kind of SN code share arrangement at other UK airports (including our sibling airport Newcastle) and its been around for some time.

 

[White Heather]

I tend to agree that Brussels is still a good route and could do well if the aircraft was suited to the carriage of interlining passengers and their luggage, so I also agree that Brussels Airlines is probably the only one that could really make it work, although I would be very happy to be proved wrong. Paris is another good option. The Jet2 offering on the route is totally inadequate, but, if we are talking about interlining to such as the French Caribbean, many of these flights operate out of Orly, rather than CDG. In fact my sister, who owns a home in Guadaloupe (close to where Death in Paradise is filmed) has just flown out there today, out of Orly. So a flight to CDG in competition with Jet2 would be of limited use. For me, Madrid or Lisbon would make a lot of sense, especially Madrid given it's interlining options to South America and internal flights within Spain. Iberia Express perhaps? I wish LBA and the airline would make their announcement as I hate having to wait to find out. I never did have much patience.

 

[White Heather]

Surely BMi Regional with its Embraer 145s, will have the same problem on CDG as they would on BRU - inadequate space for the additional hold luggage that long haul passengers often carry. British Midland themselves used the same aircraft on the route and didn't make a very good job of it. Something bigger is required on the route in my view and I am hoping (very much) that it is NOT BMi regional that are going to be announced.

 

[leedslad]

If AF partners KLM can fly from almost every UK airport and make it work surely AF can manage Leeds and Manc?

 

[White Heather]

If AF partners KLM can fly from almost every UK airport and make it work surely AF can manage Leeds and Manc?

Course they can. It is just a question of having airport management and airport facilities that can persuade them to bother. Hopefully we now have the airport management and again hopefully, before too long, we will have a terminal that works and will attract airlines such as Air France. I do know that both Air France and KLM Mainline have been to LBA to look around and meet management, but there again, so have other airlines. Translating such exploratory visits into contractual commitments to fly from here is the difficult bit!

 

[Finger66]

Surely BMi Regional with its Embraer 145s, will have the same problem on CDG as they would on BRU - inadequate space for the additional hold luggage that long haul passengers often carry. British Midland themselves used the same aircraft on the route and didn't make a very good job of it. Something bigger is required on the route in my view and I am hoping (very much) that it is NOT BMi regional that are going to be announced.

Whilst something bigger would be good the ERJ145 is the perfect sized aircraft to start building up pax numbers almost from scratch. Something flybmi are already (won't say successfully) Doing from other airports already providing those interline/onward pax for SN and LH

 

[ex_crew]

Am I right that Sabena were successful on this route during the good days, using just a small banderante ??

 

[a300boy]

No it was an Embraer Brasilia then a Dash 8 they operated

 

[lbaspotter]

Am I right that Sabena were successful on this route during the good days, using just a small banderante ??

You correct, it was started using the Embraer 120RT Brasilia operated by DAT for Sabena. Then the Dash 8's. The route at its must successful point we had 4x daily flights between Leeds/Bradford and Brussels consisting flights operated by the Avro RJ85 and larger RJ100's.
When Sabena went bust the new airline that was formed SN Brussels Airlines was going to restart the Leeds-Brussles route using Dash 8's, but for some sad reason it never materialised..

Hence we then ended up with bmi regional stepping in to operate a replacement 3x daily service using a mix of Embraer 135 & Embraer 145.
They struggled from the off-set as they didn't have the interlining agreements in place with other airlines to offer long haul for connections from Brussels. It took a good while for bmi regional to eventually get a code-share agreement with Brussels Airlines, by the time the did it was already down to 2x daily Embraer 135 service, with lot of cancellations.

 

[ex_crew]

Is it assumption or official that the route will be Brussels , I am trying to catch up here

 

[TheLocalYokel]

You correct, it was started using the Embraer 120RT Brasilia operated by DAT for Sabena. Then the Dash 8's. The route at its must successful point we had 4x daily flights between Leeds/Bradford and Brussels consisting flights operated by the Avro RJ85 and larger RJ100's.
When Sabena went bust the new airline that was formed SN Brussels Airlines was going to restart the Leeds-Brussles route using Dash 8's, but for some sad reason it never materialised..

Hence we then ended up with bmi regional stepping in to operate a replacement 3x daily service using a mix of Embraer 135 & Embraer 145.
They struggled from the off-set as they didn't have the interlining agreements in place with other airlines to offer long haul for connections from Brussels. It took a good while for bmi regional to eventually get a code-share agreement with Brussels Airlines, by the time the did it was already down to 2x daily Embraer 135 service, with lot of cancellations.

Near identical historical scenario at Bristol Airport. The difference being that when Sabena went bust SN Brussels contracted Flybe to operate a Dash-8-400 painted in SN Brussels livery to operate BRS-BRU on SN's behalf. I think they did the same at Newcastle.

Later bmi regional (now flybmi) took over from Flybe and continued the route as a Brussels Airlines aircraft (3 x daily as with Flybe) with an E145 that carried the Brussels Airlines name painted on the side but not its full livery. In the past year flybmi has been operating the route at the same frequency but with a BM flight number instead of an SN flight number. I presume it's a code share with Brussels Airlines but I'm not sure why the route was switched from flybmi flying for Brussels Airlines to flybmi flying in its own guise but with the code share.

The route has certainly grown - from 31,000 in 2009 to over 60,000 in 2017 so there should be no reason why LBA could not replicate this sort of growth.

The one snag is flybmi's unreliabiity in maintaining schedules across its network and the Brussels route does suffer from time to time.

 

[Bigman]

If the new route deal was signed last week, why is it taking so long for an official announcement to come out?

 

[White Heather]

If the new route deal was signed last week, why is it taking so long for an official announcement to come out?

We were told that AMP Capital had 'signed off' the deal with the unknown airline on the unknown route, which is not the same thing as the deal actually being completed with the airline. Once AMP had signed it off, I would think that LBA management and the airline management will need to get together and formally sign the contract, with any announcement being made shortly after. It shouldn't take long, but bear in mind it is only 4 working days since AMP approved it.

 

[armadillomaster]

So Doncaster has a flight to USA starting May 2019. We have 0 long haul.

 

[a300boy]

I think the sleeping giant is creeping up on us !
They have it all going for them, lots of space , a decent runway , new terminal and roads.
I believe it will become a credible option for being the major Yorkshire Airport in the future.
In South Yorkshire many believe it should replace Lba and that is not what I
want to happen.

 

[lbaspotter]

I think the sleeping giant is creeping up on us !
They have it all going for them, lots of space , a decent runway , new terminal and roads.
I believe it will become a credible option for being the major Yorkshire Airport in the future.
In South Yorkshire many believe it should replace Lba and that is not what I
want to happen.

Well lets hope LBA catches up. Oh we are on 4 million pax a year to DSA's 1 million, So the is no need to play catch up when we are that far ahead. I agree LBA needs to up its game and it looks like under this Aussie management we going to see some big changes at long last that will improve the passenger experience 100%

• Terminal Extension on its way to be completed by 2020.

1. New enlarged Arrivals Hall, will be able to accommodate aircraft with up to 300-400 seats.
2. New enlarged departure lounge with more seating and facilities.
3. Existing terminal layout to be change so to make things a whole lot simpler between Check-in and Security.
4. New walkway so to stop mixing departing and arriving passengers.

• Jet2 to start 5x new routes within next 6-7 months. Turin, Krakow for winter 2018/19 and Izmir, Crete-Chania & Bourgas for summer 2019.
• Jet2 adding 17th based aircraft for summer 2019
• Thomas Cook Holidays announced new route to Enfidha-Tunisia for summer 2019
• TUI announce new routes to Dubrovnik, Verona & Antalya for summer 2019
• New airline to open up new Hub route to a European airport
• New unannounced airline to possibly have a based aircraft at LBA next year 2019
• Possible more new stands to be built between 2020 & 2022
• Parkway/Park & Ride Rail station to be built and hopefully completed by 2024
• A65/A658 Link Road to be hopefully built and opened by 2026

So it's not all doom & gloom. Look to the positives, instead of being negative..