KLM

[Aviador]

I think the E190 is on most flights now ethan.

 

[ethanegcc]

I think the E190 is on most flights now ethan.

Thank you! Does anybody know the load factors on the flights roughly?

 

[White Heather]

Hopefully someone will know Ethan, but from what I understand the load factors are consistently excellent.

 

[ethanegcc]

Hopefully someone will know Ethan, but from what I understand the load factors are consistently excellent.

Great to hear. Ì suspect there is great competition going on for connections between KL and BA. I would love to see more expansion from them in the future. Would a *A carrier I. E. Lufthansa increase connectivity and be of detriment to KL/BA?

 

[LBA787]

Great to hear. Ì suspect there is great competition going on for connections between KL and BA. I would love to see more expansion from them in the future. Would a *A carrier I. E. Lufthansa increase connectivity and be of detriment to KL/BA?

No doubt in my mind LBA could support additional hub carriers but it would come at a cost to them. Very simply put why would Air France or Lufthansa operate lets say 4 daily A320's into MAN and additionally 3-4 E190's into LBA when they know they can just operate 4 A321's into MAN. Cost saving's yet still attracting the pax volume due to the Leeds city region being very much in MAN catchment.

I sometimes wonder what LBA would be like had MAN been a little further away. I look towards NCL for the answer then imagine what the extra million population would have added. Possibly a GLA size airport...

 

[jason1-11]

For all intents and purpose, Manchester is the airport that serves Leeds and the Greater Yorkshire region and this is not going to change anytime soon unfortunately. Our much vaunted catchment area and the success of the greater Leeds conurbation counts for nothing if the product isn’t made available in the first instance. I hope one day that the continued success of the KLM route acts as a magnet to other operators to seize the opportunities that lie over this side of the Pennines as having only Amsterdam and Dublin as regular international business routes is quite frankly appalling.


Without a significant amount of capital being spent on the terminal, access and runway and the difficult challenge of changing people’s perceptions then I see no changes in the short to medium term, but hope to be proved wrong.

 

[a300boy]

So true ! and like our football team we are in the second division with noe prospects of ever getting into the top flight.

 

[Aviador]

I agree with your sentiments but you only have to look at how Glasgow and Edinburgh have developed as airports that are side by side to see what is still achievable for LBA. Who would have ever thought Jet2 could operate a 10 plus aircraft base on both sides of the Pennines?

I agree with Jason, when LBA finally gets around to significantly improving facilities and access, it will become increasingly difficult for the remaining big hub carriers to ignore Leeds. Look at what happened when Shaheen came to Leeds. PIA took note and were straight in there when things went pear shaped for Shaheen. The only thing that stopped PIA from continuing flying from LBA was LBA.

 

[cmj]

We had a (very) short-lived star alliance 'service' with SAS. I say service, twice a week to Copenhagen wasn't really going to get far.

 

[lbaspotter]

And not forgetting we had a very successful 4x daily RJ85/100 service to Brussels with Sabena until they went belly up after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in USA.

After that bmi regional also tried with daily Copenhagen along multiple daily connections to both Paris Cdg and Brussels.

 

[rmac]

The only difference when comparing LBA/MAN with GLA/EDI is the fact that the Scottish airports have basically developed in tandem as the years have gone by, but MAN was away out in front in terms of passengers and services years before LBA/LPL/EMA were of any real significance. My grandfather came down from Dundee to fly from Manchester to New York in 1958! Added to that MAN is in the middle of LBA/LPL/EMA. so starts off from a good vantage, whereas GLA and EDI are on their own with a limited population.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

The only difference when comparing LBA/MAN with GLA/EDI is the fact that the Scottish airports have basically developed in tandem as the years have gone by, but MAN was away out in front in terms of passengers and services years before LBA/LPL/EMA were of any real significance. My grandfather came down from Dundee to fly from Manchester to New York in 1958! Added to that MAN is in the middle of LBA/LPL/EMA. so starts off from a good vantage, whereas GLA and EDI are on their own with a limited population.

Also remember that EDI and GLA see a very large number of passengers to and from the London airports.

Looking at CAA stats for 2015 EDI handled nearly 3.5 million London passengers and GLA 2.5 million. LBA handled around 149,000.

In fact, without its London passengers, in 2015 EDI would have seen over 2 million fewer passengers than BHX that year (BHX has no London links - it's too close to the capital). GLA would have been half a million fewer than BRS, again because, like BHX and for the same reason, there is no London link from there either.

 

[Jerry]

Wonder if Flybe could be tempted to do CDG using their codeshare agreement with Air France? 3 to 4 daily Q400 flights? That would give LBA access to 4 hubs.

 

[JakeS]

I hope one day that the continued success of the KLM route acts as a magnet to other operators to seize the opportunities that lie over this side of the Pennines

I agree. With KLM's success at LBA it still puzzles me why we've never seen their associate Air France operating Paris CDG. A Hop! E-Jet would be perfect however the business model ties all E-Jets up in Central Europe (Aberdeen & Edinburgh the exception) whilst standard Air France operate UK destinations with A319's/A320's/A321's which is then overkill.

Wonder if Flybe could be tempted to do CDG using their codeshare agreement with Air France? 3 to 4 daily Q400 flights? That would give LBA access to 4 hubs.

My sentiments exactly... CityJet codeshare too.

 

[Jerry]

I agree. With KLM's success at LBA it still puzzles me why we've never seen their associate Air France operating Paris CDG. A Hop! E-190 would be perfect however Hop's business model ties all E-Jets up in Central Europe (Aberdeen & Edinburgh the exception) whilst standard Air France operate UK destinations with A319's/A320's/A321's which is then overkill.

They do codeshare with KLM so maybe they don't want to dilute that or there is some sort agreement between KLM and Air France that means Hop! and Cityhopper don't clash at certain airports in the UK?

 

[imagineif]

AF/KLM have fallen out with Flybe after it started dipping into the UK-AMS market too much. It is dropping code share agreements all over. KLM is operating its own Dublin flights from next week, ending a decades old code share with Aer Lingus and rumor has it KLM will upgrade it's E190's and operate into LCY next summer now that CityJet is not part of the group.. there won't be a tie up with Flybe happening on a CDG.

 

[imagineif]

One of the last few Fokker 70's was in last week in case you missed it! With it not night-stopping for obvious reasons it normally operates the afternoon services if there are delays within the network!

In case you didn't know it's actually very simple to just operate the Fokker into Leeds as all the crews that were Fokker trained are all Embraer qualified too so it really doesn't make any difference to them..

There are currently 13 Fokkers remaining and they will be flying a number of those until this time last year (that is the current plan). Only the cabin crew are dual aircraft trained so when the Fokker night stops they need to bring Fokker flight deck in for the early flight too as no LBA pilots are Fokker trained now - they are all Embraer and can not fly the Fokker. Also true of Humberside, all HUY pilots are now Embraer trained and operate rotations from Leeds... the Fokker at HUY night stops with flight deck crew to operate the early out as there are no longer Fokker based pilots at HUY.

 

[oldendays]

Fokker 70 PH-KZD is with us this morning.

 

[LBAYORKIE]

Flying out to AMS first flight on Weds. As there will be no bags, plan to turn up as late as possible. Cant find latest time to be at gate on KLM web-site (assume half an hour), but just wondered how busy security will be at this time and if Fast Track would be advisable. Hopefully someone will know. Thanks.

 

[LBAYORKIE]

Flying out to AMS first flight on Weds. As there will be no bags, plan to turn up as late as possible. Cant find latest time to be at gate on KLM web-site (assume half an hour), but just wondered how busy security will be at this time and if Fast Track would be advisable. Hopefully someone will know. Thanks.