When do we reach saturation point with the low cost airlines?

Are we getting close to saturation point with some of the routes operated by the low cost carriers (LCC)? It seems that they are having to search further afield for viable new routes, which was originally said not to work with the low cost model. Take Funchal in Madeira as a case in point. Yesterday easyJet announced two new routes from Stansted and Bristol starting in October. Funchal is about 600 miles south west of Portugal, a fairly traditional and you would think mature travel destination that has happily managed with charter flights and the scheduled services by British Airways and TAP from Gatwick and Heathrow respectively. Now there are to be daily flights from Stansted and three times weekly flights from Bristol. These join the new FlyGlobespan services from Aberdeen and Edinburgh which are once weekly. This means potentially 12 planeloads per week, have the sums been done correctly?
What about flights to Krakow, two new routes yesterday from easyJet. Now to us Krakow is hardly the season's hot tourist destination but easyJet, Skyeurope, Ryanair, Jet2, Centralwings as well as BA all fly there from the UK, on fifteen different routes. We know there's probably more Polish people visiting and working in the UK than the Government is letting on, but that's a lot of seats to fill.
We've also noticed some of the LCC's are dropping routes. They seem to make a lot less fuss about this than when they announce new routes! More planes are coming on stream and they seem to be scratching around for viable new routes to fly. Load factors and prices are down, the only way out seems to be to fly further, so let's try Tel Aviv (Thomsonfly), Sharm el Sheikh (FlyGlobespan), Funchal (see above), or if you're coming from a slightly different model New York and Bermuda (Zoom).

Virgin Atlantic going forward?

There has been recent press speculation that Singapore Airlines, one of the largest airlines in the world, is thinking of trying to offload the 49% of the shares that it owns in Virgin Atlantic. Singapore paid around £600m for the stake in Virgin seven years ago which was of course before the airline world was turned upside down by the events of 9/11. Since then there has been some code sharing between the airlines, but nothing much in the way of dividends, and Singapore are perhaps wondering if they could find a better home for the £600m. Trouble is they might have difficulty extracting the cash, Sir Richard Branson has said that he might buy the stake back, but we're not sure he has that much tucked under the mattress.
Another large airline may be interested, but with only 49% and therefore no controlling interest up for grabs, what would be the attraction?
bmi has been mooted as a partner for Virgin several times in the past, but they seem to be ploughing their own furrow quite nicely thank you after acquiring BMED, which we still can't quite believe BA allowed to be sold from under their noses.
Maybe Singapore will try and float their stake but that could prove more difficult than it sounds, perhaps in the meantime they could try and achieve more on the operational front when the Open Skies agreement kicks in.

easyJetholiday.com website

We see that easyjet has launched a new website, easyJetholiday.com that allows visitors to tie in booking an hotel at the same time as booking an easyJet flight. Not a bad idea you might think for the independent traveller who likes to sort out his own accomodation. Actually it's not a new idea for the low cost airlines, Ryanair and Jet2 for example have accomodation search and booking facilities on their websites and indeed easyJet have the same thing on their main site, so its not exactly a huge leap forwards. It seems you can book the flight and accomodation in one transaction on the new website and there is a map showing the location of the hotels which is quite good. The problem with this site and any other airline's site is that they only show the places that they fly to. The jetnav site gives the independent traveller the complete picture. The routes flown by all the airlines are shown, and hotels can be viewed and prices checked near to all airports, not just the ones served by individual airlines. Jetnav gives you hotels near the departure airport in the UK as well in case an overnight stop is necessary before flying out. Another plus point is that the airport location is shown on the jetnav map as well as the positions of the hotels enabling you to easily get a feel for how far the hotel is from the airport.
Jetnav is the place to start for any traveller wanting to book a flight or accomodation or both.

Open skies not profitable for everyone?

We reported in our main news article posted on the jetnav site yesterday that one of the new transatlantic services from Liverpool to New York JFK operated by FlyGlobespan is struggling to fill the planes. The number of weekly flights is being reduced, and we notice from the website that the proposed winter schedule that was listed has disappeared. Maybe Liverpool is not the airport to choose for a route from the UK to New York, but when the much vaunted open skies agreement kicks in properly and routes to the US are opened up, how many airlines flying how many routes and at what price will there eventually be?

Winter 07/08 Flights on sale now

Look out for the new winter flights that are appearing on the jetnav site almost daily now. Jet2 have released their winter schedule which includes new routes to the popular ski airports of Chambery and Geneva that cover the resorts in the Swiss and French Alps. UK departure airports for the Jet2 routes include Belfast, Edinburgh, Leeds Bradford, Manchester and Newcastle, or look at the Chambery airport page for example to see who flys there and when the route starts. FlyGlobespan also offer winter sports flights, mainly from Edinburgh, and they are also offering a range of winter sun destinations such as Las Palmas Gran Canaria, Lanzarote Arrecife, Funchal Madeira, and further afield to places such as Sharm el Sheikh on the Red Sea and Cape Town in South Africa. easyJet are beginning to announce their winter routes also, they tend to roll out their programme airport by airport so keep checking the site which will be updated as and when the flights are announced

Interactive Google Maps integrated with Jetnav searches

We’ve always believed that a map based approach is the best way of displaying the information that Jetnav provides. Part of the Jetnav philosophy is to present the site visitor with choices and alternatives when a preferred flight is not available, and maps provide the best way to gauge how convenient an alternative arrival or departure airport might be. Fortunately Netizen Digital who have responsibility for design and development of the Jetnav site have a wealth of experience with mapping solutions and their development team were again called into action. Jetnav is now implementing the incorporation of Google maps into the flight search results.

There are two distinct applications of the maps:
The first relates to when a flight search between two airports gives a blank result. Until now the options were limited to going back to the flight finder page and trying other searches. Now if no flight is listed, a map appears showing all UK airports within 250km of the original choice that operate a route to the selected destination. A single click allows the search to be redone from one of these alternatives. Alternatively you can stick with your original choice of departure airport and view a map of other arrival airports within 250km of your original selection. This can be very useful where a city has more than one airport, or an airline flies to a regional airport a short distance outside the city.
The second application of the maps is on the flight results page where flights have been found and displayed. Below the list of flights is a map centred on the departure airport (or arrival airport if requested) showing the location of hotels and accommodation which may be viewed, checked for availability and booked online. We expect this hotel booking facility in conjunction with the dynamic maps to be popular with businessmen needing to stay overnight near to the airport.
Over the coming months we anticipate adding extra features to the maps with links to companies providing car hire, airport parking and other travel related facilities.

New Summer Timetables

This coming weekend is a busy one for anybody involved with flight schedules. The winter timetable changes over to the new summer season and scores of new routes start up and the winter sun routes start to close down. Planes get shifted around the globe, and flight crews face upheaval until they settle in to the new routine. Jetnav has the latest information on who flies where on their airport route & info pages. Large airlines, small airlines, flag carriers or low cost operators, the route information is all there for anyone flying out of the UK. As has been mentioned before, airlines are great at promoting new routes but poor at flagging up routes they are dropping, so if you see a route on the website that you think is wrong or missing, then drop us a line at info@jetnav.co.uk we'll be most grateful.

FlyBE and BA Connect

I think the sale of the BA Connect business will have major implications for the UK aviation industry and particularly our national flag carrier.
BA has turned itself into a virtually wholly London based operation. Its hanging on grimly to its valuable Heathrow slots but these are under attack via the supposed EU/American open skies agreement. Its no wonder BA keeps putting forward reasons why the open sky talks should fail. Outside of London it still sells flights on its website but these are mainly operated by franchise partners such as GB Airways and Loganair with their planes and staff kitted out in BA livery. BA has allowed one of its franchise partners BMED to be bought by its rival bmi, so losing access to a number of medium and long haul destinations as well as London airport slots.
BA was losing money with BA Connect and judging from the number of routes being shelved by the new owner FlyBE, particularly from Bristol, they saw no prospect of turning them round in the near future. It will be interesting to see if any of the more aggressively "no frills" airlines fancy their chances on the dumped routes. The destinations that have gone can be loosely described as business destinations such as Munich, Zurich, Milan Malpensa, Geneva, Lyon Satolas and Madrid, so maybe easyJet with one eye cocked to the business sector will have a look. EasyJet were already competitors on the Bristol to Milan Malpensa route for example and of course Geneva is one of their hubs.
Maybe it's the way forward for BA, cut your short term losses and rely on code shares and alliances, but maybe it's not. As usual time will tell.
As usual jetnav.co.uk keeps you up do date with the latest flight and route availability information.

Flight Schedules that change

It would be nice if flight schedules were cast in stone, fixed months in advance, and almost never changing. Of course we live in the real world; money, politics, natural events all conspire to mess up the airlines' best laid plans. Here at jetnav we try and keep up with the changes as best we can, we are constantly updating the flight database, and although we have our feelers out for all that's happening in the world of air transportation, occasionally things slip under the radar. Airlines are quite good at advising of new routes, but they never seem keen to let us know about a service that they're dropping. If anyone out there spots a route that we don't know about, or finds that an advertised route has become defunct, then please let us know. A short email to info@jetnav.co.uk should do the trick, and we'll be very grateful. Of course if you've any other gripes or observations, drop us a line and we'll take them on board and get back to you if you want us to.

Jetnav and Google Maps

Jetnav has implemented the first phase of incorporating Google maps into the flight search results. This first phase relates to when a search for a flight between two airports gives a blank result. Until now the options were limited to going back to the flight finder page to try another search, or going to another site to check out if a charter flight was available. Now if no flight is listed, a map appears which shows UK airports within 250km of the original choice that operate a route to the requested destination. A single click enables the search to be redone from one of these alternative airports. If your original search was confined to direct flights only, indirect flights can be viewed with one click.
Also there is an option to go directly to the airport information page which will show which airline is operating the route.
Alternatively you can stick with your original choice of departure airport and view a map showing destination airports within 250km of your original choice, with the option to redo the search to one of these alternatives etc. This can be useful where a city has several alternative airports for example Milan, or where an airline flies to a regional airport nearby, for example Ryanair to Girona rather than Barcelona.
We hope to be rolling out other Google map applications over the next couple of months.