Leeds Bradford: New Route Development & Rumours

[752]

Looks like Loganair are closing the recently new SOU base, with MAN getting the axe.

My thoughts are I highly doubt the Blue Island x2 daily would of preformed to expectations. I feel the UK domestic market is ever shrinking and hard to make any money.

The only realistic new routes I see from LBA to be successful are: ABZ x6 weekly, NQY x3 weekly, IOM x2 weekly & LHR x2 daily.

 

[YorkshireLad]

Looks like Loganair are closing the recently new SOU base, with MAN getting the axe.

My thoughts are I highly doubt the Blue Island x2 daily would of preformed to expectations. I feel the UK domestic market is ever shrinking and hard to make any money.

The only realistic new routes I see from LBA to be successful are: ABZ x6 weekly, NQY x3 weekly, IOM x2 weekly & LHR x2 daily.

If SOU wouldn't succeed ABZ certainly wouldn't - Eastern pulled the plug on ABZ but retained SOU back in 2018, and SOU was always the stronger route. Not to mention Flybe giving up on it before biting the bullet on SOU

I think NQY can do better than 3X weekly. Don't see IOM working really, especially on such a low frequency. I can absolutely see a BA codeshare working at 2X daily, or even more if they do it right

 

[Finger66]

Yep the UK domestic market is pretty much shot to bits. Wonder what our esteemed new PM will make of his beloved MAN losing those connections? Hope it makes him realise something needs to be done re UK APD, especially domestic flight related

 

[752]

If SOU wouldn't succeed ABZ certainly wouldn't - Eastern pulled the plug on ABZ but retained SOU back in 2018, and SOU was always the stronger route. Not to mention Flybe giving up on it before biting the bullet on SOU

I think NQY can do better than 3X weekly. Don't see IOM working really, especially on such a low frequency. I can absolutely see a BA codeshare working at 2X daily, or even more if they do it right

Fair points, was more thinking oil and gas. SOU perhaps some cruise pax demand but I don't see the demand for x2 daily that Blue Island did plan.

Agree again on NQY & LHR.

IOM long weekend trips / weekly trips, perhaps ADHOC for the TT. but yes overal I would say the domestic market is very hard at the moment. worrying times for Loganair.

 

[Aviador]

I know I'm pretty much on my own in thinking this but I think the government needs to do more to salvage what is left of the domestic market. If domestic flying is to move to electric it needs to have something left to transition.

 

[Finger66]

At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, APD, APD, APD. Ok it's not the only reason, long check-in times and currently Geo political. circumstances. But also whilst the LCCs have opened up flying to the masses, they have killed frequency on domestics

 

[michael]

I think if you basically draw a box from London to Bristol, north to Glasgow, across to Edinburgh and back south to London, anywhere in that box is basically a non starter for resurrecting old routes from LBA. I can leave home in the Dales at 0630, catch the fast train at Skipton just before 7am and be at Kings Cross for 10am. I'd struggle to do that from LBA, MAN, or LPL even if I lived near an airport. NCL is different for LHR, it's only 15 mins more flying time but significantly longer on a train and a longer drive.
I firmly believe further afield from LBA could work with the right product at the right price, though what that product is I'm not sure. Anywhere south of London and the M4 is a significantly longer drive and is infinitely more difficult to get to by train. Business is still business, meetings still take place but Teams meetings and the like might be more of a killer to domestic aviation market than APD.

 

[pug]

I think if you basically draw a box from London to Bristol, north to Glasgow, across to Edinburgh and back south to London, anywhere in that box is basically a non starter for resurrecting old routes from LBA. I can leave home in the Dales at 0630, catch the fast train at Skipton just before 7am and be at Kings Cross for 10am. I'd struggle to do that from LBA, MAN, or LPL even if I lived near an airport. NCL is different for LHR, it's only 15 mins more flying time but significantly longer on a train and a longer drive.
I firmly believe further afield from LBA could work with the right product at the right price, though what that product is I'm not sure. Anywhere south of London and the M4 is a significantly longer drive and is infinitely more difficult to get to by train. Business is still business, meetings still take place but Teams meetings and the like might be more of a killer to domestic aviation market than APD.

This is the reason why domestic air routes in the U.K. have fundamentally collapsed. It’s not higher costs or APD, it’s the vast reduction in face to face meetings. Businesses can cut travel costs exponentially by moving focus to platforms like Teams. That same day business demand that used to exist, where ticket prices were no barrier, that’s all but gone. If you want to service inter-UK now you have to do it on a large aircraft with lower cost per seat and lower frequency because the leisure and VFR traffic is cost conscious in the face of land based alternatives.

I don’t think those routes and the airlines that operate them will be coming back. It’s only really viable in the Highlands and Islands, linking up to Ireland and the Channel Islands.

 

[Bigman]

Where I used to work, one of our consultants had to fly down to Southampton twice a year for a face-to-face meeting with a client. A whole day taken out just to visit 1 client. Once this was sensibly switched to an on-line Teams meeting, he pretty much gained a whole day back. Times have changed. At least on a train you can log-in to the WiFi and do a couple of hour's meeting prep

 

[Aviador]

Where I used to work, one of our consultants had to fly down to Southampton twice a year for a face-to-face meeting with a client. A whole day taken out just to visit 1 client. Once this was sensibly switched to an on-line Teams meeting, he pretty much gained a whole day back. Times have changed. At least on a train you can log-in to the WiFi and do a couple of hour's meeting prep

Well I can categorically say that isn't always the case plus there are huge numbers of people who continue to visit family and friends and despair options by rail.

 

[Finger66]

There are still plenty of face-to-face business meetings still happening. Yes times have changed and whilst the LCC's have opened up flying to the masses it has killed the regional airlines. Now whether that is for the better or not is clearly up for debate. Like everything I suppose - times change

 

[YorkshireLad]

If I recall correctly, just after COVID (2021-2022) Eastern appeared to struggle to bring Southampton up to a 2X daily frequency, despite in 2019 a 3rd daily rotation being added. This was the point where air travel was properly back alive and kicking as well, right up until the breakdown of their relationship with LBA

This is considering that Flybe and Eastern once competed on the route (admittedly not very well), and after this Eastern ran the route 4X daily (for a period all flights were on the larger Saab 2000)

 

[Ian Gratton]

Domestic flights are struggling, not helped by APD, Loganair have just announced they are closing their SOU base and their DND base plus stopping DND-LHR and MAN-SOU & EXT from 20Aug26

 

[Aviador]

Domestic flights are struggling, not helped by APD, Loganair have just announced they are closing their SOU base and their DND base plus stopping DND-LHR and MAN-SOU & EXT from 20Aug26

In the UK, rail passengers have grown so used to sub-standard service that poor performance is now just accepted as the norm. In stark contrast, the aviation sector has been unfairly singled out for 'green taxation', despite domestic flights contributing a negligible fraction of co2 emissions, a figure that was remarkably low even before the decline in the domestic aviation market.

 

[Silvercity]

In the UK, rail passengers have grown so used to sub-standard service that poor performance is now just accepted as the norm. In stark contrast, the aviation sector has been unfairly singled out for 'green taxation', despite domestic flights contributing a negligible fraction of co2 emissions, a figure that was remarkably low even before the decline in the domestic aviation market.

I wonder is the developments of electrically operated aircraft will change the fortune of short haul domestic flights.

 

[YorkshireLad]

I feel like the increase in aviation taxes made more sense as a political move at that time, when there appeared to be a more concerted effort to tackle the climate crisis from all angles. In the past few years, however, efforts seem to have stalled with the political shift rightwards socially and economically in many countries, coupled with the rise of generative AI and the mass construction of data centres, and the seemingly more brazen nature of the billionaire class, the latter two of which has convinced me that there’s no real point in trying at this point as any CO2 savings we make will be dwarfed by the GenAI boom and whatever the billionaires decide to do next. I think the question right now is if these activities are allowed to go ahead, does domestic aviation really do so much damage compared?

In an ideal world I am fully against domestic aviation (at least until green alternatives come forward), but given the poor infrastructure and situation that I have just discussed, I feel this world hardly classes as ideal

 

[Aviador]

In an ideal world I am fully against domestic aviation (at least until green alternatives come forward), but given the poor infrastructure and situation that I have just discussed, I feel this world hardly classes as ideal

The government’s decision to introduce Air Passenger Duty effectively killed off the domestic aviation industry, and it will take far more than green technology to restore it to its former strength. The fundamental issue is that you need a viable industry to transform in the first place. Investors simply won't touch it with a barge pole if they believe there is no longer any profit to be made. Scraping APD is essential to give domestic flying a fighting chance to recover; only then will the sector be in a position to seriously invest in green tech.