Bristol: TUI Airways Route News & Base Updates

[TheLocalYokel]

Does BRS usually keep the 738 for winter? Does it stay at 3 aircraft? Or lose one of the 757s?

It's only one 757 for a lot of the week, in mid winter especially, although on Fridays and at weekends in the ski season there are two and a 737-800 helping out, or at least there were last winter. I haven't looked in detail at this coming winter.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Summer 2018 and Winter 2018/2019

I've had a look at the TUI timetable and booking website and all the new flights seem available.

Egypt

Hurghada begins on 5 March and will operate through next summer and winter 18/19 on Mondays. Incidentally, the new Thomas Cook route to Hurghada begins next May and will operate on Tuesdays through the summer but currently is not shown operating in winter 18/19.

Cape Verde

Boa Vista begins in November next year and will operate through winter 18/19 on Fridays, and Sal will continue its Wednesday summer 2018 schedule through winter 18/19.

Iceland

Keflavik begins in November next year and will operate through winter 18/19 on Wednesdays and Sundays. I wondered if they were using easyJet but a test booking shows TUI flight numbers.

Morocco

Marrakech begins in November next year and will operate through winter 18/19 on Tuesdays.

 

[Marko1]

The winter schedule calls for 2 based aircraft for 18/19 as is usual .
Mon - hurghada and las palmas
Tues - Tenerife and marrakech
Weds - Keflavik and sal
Thurs - lanzarote and from April 19 las palmas
Fri - Boa Vista and Tenerife
Sat - fuerteventura plus ski / Alicante
Sun - Malaga and Keflavik

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Have you had a chance to see how winter 17/18 is looking as regards fleet utilisation, Marko?

 

[Marko1]

No sorry although I'm guessing it would be the same 2 b757s that usually stay for the winter .

 

[TheLocalYokel]

No sorry although I'm guessing it would be the same 2 b757s that usually stay for the winter .

Looking at last winter's Mayfly only one 757 was needed on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays for much of the winter and for part of the winter Wednesdays had no flights at all (in the gaps between the Paphos ending in late November and returning in February and the Christmas Season Kittila). Two 757s were needed on Fridays and at weekends in the ski season with a 737 joining in on Saturdays as well for the ski market.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

I was reading a post on another website this evening and someone wondered how TUI could make BRS-RAK (Marrakech) work if easyJet couldn't.

Good question but with loads always being very high year-round on RAK since it was started by easyJet in late 2013 it's difficult to know why they didn't get the yield right.

This summer for example load factors for June, July and August were respectively 95.7%, 92.7% and 95.4%.

I suppose that with TUI's holiday packages the maths are different and anyway we were told recently on the BRS easyJet thread that RAK might not have been dropped. It was very late being brought back into the booking engine for summer 2017 having apparently been dropped for that season.

 

[Marko1]

Tuesdays Palma flight next summer will be flown by albastar and Thursday Malaga flight will be flown by air europa

 

[Foxlimayankee]

4th based short haul aircraft for Summer 2018. 2x 737, 2x757 and part based 787.
All flying brought in house. All the previous W patterns on TOM aircraft, TBA's, AEA and FHY flying now on TOM metal and some time changes to the new late night flights now brought earlier.
Total of 61 flights per week peak summer.

 

[Marko1]

Will there be extra flights added as there are gaps on weds thurs fri sat and sun at the moment. Dlm and ant still showing TBA plus Verona remains as neos . V good news tho for tui commitment to brs

 

[Foxlimayankee]

Full utilisation. VRN will move to based aircraft. There' 2 RHO flights on a Wednesday. DLM and AYT operated Thu and Fri.
On sun there was a W pattern FAO that moves to AM and the ACE operated by AEA takes the FAO afternoon departure.

 

[forest1979]

Excellent news. Does that make bristol TUI’s 4th largest base outside of LGW, MAN and BHX?
Re the 787, I’m assuming based 5 days a week with three long haul, Sal abs Boa Vista?

 

[Severn]

Excellent news. Does that make bristol TUI’s 4th largest base outside of LGW, MAN and BHX?
Re the 787, I’m assuming based 5 days a week with three long haul, Sal abs Boa Vista?

Thats correct.

TUI's bases in size order in Summer 2018 will be
LGW - 13x Shorthaul
MAN - 11x Shorthaul
BHX - 7x Shorthaul (1x Longhaul based all week),
BRS - 4x Shorthaul (1x Longhaul based 4 days operating PUJ, CUN, SFB & SID)
EMA, NCL - 3x Shorthaul (EMA - 1x Longhaul based 2 days per week / NCL - 1x Longhaul based 2-4 days per week alternating with GLA)
CWL, DSA, LTN, STN, GLA* - 2x Shorthaul
*(GLA sees 1x LH based 2-4 times per week alternating with NCL)
EXT, EDI, BFS, BOH, LBA, NWI, ABZ, DUB - 1x Short-haul

 

[TheLocalYokel]

This appears to mean that next summer there will be the following based aircraft:

easyJet - 15 based on timetable
bmi regional 5/6 - I'm never quite sure because I think they keep a spare at BRS at times
Ryanair 4
Thomson 4 + B787 - latter part based
Thomas Cook 3 - based on timetable
KLM also night stops

That means there is the potential for having up to 34 aircraft parked for part of some nights.

This might also be the reason for the recent approval of BRS as a Level 3 partially coordinated airport (between 2300-0700) next summer. With the fourth based TUI replacing 'W' routings it will mean the final inbound each day is more likely to be after 2300 than it would have been with a W routing.

With extra TCX and easyJet aircraft also likely to be coming in within the night period there is clearly a perceived need for coordination.

 

[Marko1]

Dalaman seems to have been removed from summer 18. I understand it was due to be slotted in on thurs but not available. A glitch ? Also I note the pmi Friday flight has a big gap where the air europa used to fly for Scottish holidays. Will the based tom fly through July ?

 

[Jerry]

Dalaman seems to have been removed from summer 18. I understand it was due to be slotted in on thurs but not available. A glitch ? Also I note the pmi Friday flight has a big gap where the air europa used to fly for Scottish holidays. Will the based tom fly through July ?

It looks like the Monday and Saturday flights will be with Easyjet and the Thursday flights with Thomas Cook. On the calendar there is a Friday but nothing comes up for it.

 

[Severn]

In Summer 18 the Monday IBZ has moved to 22:30 from its early morning departure time (meaning it will now be a third rotation of the day for one of the BRS based aircraft). This leaves a Monday morning slot now empty as well as a Thursday afternoon slot both yet to be filled.
TOM don't "do" aircraft sitting around for half a day (except for their standby aircraft at LGW and MAN) so expect these to be filled with extra rotations etc.
Last year the Friday PMI was operated by AEA, Monday TFS by TCX, MLA by AMC and AYT, BJV and DLM were operated by FHY. The schedule now shows that all flights next summer (except MLA with AMC) will be operated by based TOM aircraft so these have all moved in house with BRS based aircraft.

 

[Marko1]

I've been watching tui closely over the last few days but I haven't noticed the change again to mondays Ibiza. At the moment then there's two slots to fill plus I cannot imagine an aircraft sitting on the apron on a Saturday evening after returning from Verona. I wonder whether we will see more dalaman services filling which incidentally are not on offer at the moment.

 

[Jerry]

They have added more Dalaman flights to CWL and i believe more Antalya flights to BHX so Turkey will probably get more flights.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

I hadn't realised how few Thomson (TUI) flights to Dalaman there were this summer. I make it only one per week operated by a Freebird A320. Thomas Cook had three flights each week as did easyJet.

The CAA stats for August, as an example, show a total of 11,829 passengers, with 10,387 shown as scheduled passengers and 1442 charter passengers. I assume the Thomas Cook flights were classed as scheduled along with easyJet, with the Freebird the one shown as charter. The 1442 passengers gives an average load of 180.25 (the CAA includes under 2s). I can't imagine it was any of the Thomas Cook flights as the A321 isn't likely to have had such a low average load in August.