I see wizz has just announced a big entry into Southend this morning. Any likelihood we will see any expansion again from wizz at brs ?
The Southend announcement might be to take a bit of pressure off Luton.It must be a night mare in Luton at times with Easyjet and Ryanair in the mix.If I remember correct Wizz have rocked up in Brum fairly big.The brum airport could affect BRS. Wizz cut 2 routes from BRS back along and have stuck at just the 1 route from BRS.They have also more routes into Doncaster and Liverpool airports.The UK airports Wizz serve have all had extra routes added except BRS. With allthats gone on in the UK I would say not much of Wizz expansion in BRS, now with that in mind Southend got routes with no hint of that. I hope im wrong saying no Wizz extra routes,as strange things happen in airlines and routes.
Wizz had four routes at BRS at one time with Katowice the only one now remaining.
Kosice (Slovakia) operated from 2015 to 2017 and was the worst performing in terms of passenger loads. It was a strange choice and Kosice now only has one Wizz route (Luton) having had several at one time and a Wizz base that was closed last year.
Sofia operated from 2016 to 2017 and generally had very good monthly loads, as did Warsaw Chopin (WAW) that also operated from 2016 to 2017.
The axing of the Warsaw Chopin route has given rise to one of those airline passenger numbers phenomena that are sometimes difficult to explain. In 2017 Wizz carried 28,607 passengers between BRS and WAW against Ryanair that carried 73,841 between BRS and Warsaw Modlin (WMI). Yet in 2018 when there was no Wizz service Ryanair carried 71,276 between BRS and WMI. What happened to the 28,000 odd who used WAW the previous year?
It looks as though Jerry's explanation is probably correct. Despite good loads (except Kosice and even they weren't disastrous) the yield was not good enough or better yields could be obtained elsewhere, yet Ryanair seems happy with Poland (for the most part) and the likes of Kaunas (Lithuania) and Bucharest (Romania), and presumably Wizz is happy with Katowice (which Ryanair wasn't - see below).
To an outsider (like me) airline economics might not be one of the black arts but it certainly borders on the arcane. No doubt an insider finds everything perfectly simple and obvious.
Some good news - Katowice is now on sale three times a week for the entire summer 2020 .
This year the Wizz Katowice route has thrown up some strange figures:
January 3191 v 3637 in 2018 down 12%
February 2663 v 3293 down 19%
March 2849 v 3726 down 24%
April 4490 v 3650 up 23%
May 3931 v 3418 up 15%
June 5583 v 3772 up 48%
Despite Ryanair's strong and fairly extensive Polish network from BRS, Katowice is a route they tried more than once before giving up: 2007-2009; 2011-2014. Wizz took it on in 2015.
Ryanair has six Polish routes at BRS, all year-round, and they've been operating for a number of years in that way:
Warsaw Modlin
Gdansk
Krakow (against easyJet)
Poznan
Rzeszow
Wroclaw
Not all Polish routes have succeeded with Ryanair though. Lodz was tried in the summers of 2012 and 2013 and Szcecin (Stettin) in 2008-2009 and 2013-2014. The shortest duration of the lot was Bydgoszcz that began in May 2010 and ended at the end of June 2010 with load factors respectively of 61% and 71% in the two months the route operated. With Ryanair's usual Polish monthly load factors from BRS well into the 90s%, usually in the high 90s, they must have decided very early that Bydgoszcz was never going to make it.
