Stobart Air Liquidation/ Aer Lingus Regional Operations

[TravelDream]

In continuation from the main aviation discussion thread...

Stobart Air ceased operations on June 11th. Their main operation was as Aer Lingus Regional flying from both the Republic of Ireland and Belfast to the UK as well as some domestic PSO routes in Ireland.

Aer Lingus has given a quick update on replacement operations.
For those not in the know, Aer Lingus and BA are owned by the same parent company.
Emerald Airlines was already expected to take-over from Stobart in January 2023 and it's not clear if/ how/ when this can be brought forward

Further Details of Aer Lingus Regional Replacement Schedule

Aer Lingus will operate six routes until at least the end of August 2021 and is progressing plans for services beyond this date, details of which will be announced shortly. BA CityFlyer has announced that it will operate four routes for the rest of Summer 2021 period.

Operations by Aer Lingus
Belfast - Edinburgh
Belfast - Manchester
Belfast - Birmingham
Dublin - Manchester
Dublin - Edinburgh
Dublin - Glasgow

Operations by BA CityFlyer until at least 31st August 2021
Belfast - Leeds Bradford
Belfast - Exeter
Belfast - Glasgow (starts 2nd August 2021)
Belfast - Newquay (starts 3rd July 2021)

https://www.aerlingus.com/support/flight-disruption-information/

 

[Butts]

Ah the BA Cityflyer Services should have Club Europe unlike the Aer Lingus ones.

 

[YorkshireBear]

Interestingly that means only East Midlands will be losing out it's service from pre collapse come august in terms of the UK routes.

 

[daodao]

Interestingly that means only East Midlands will be losing out it's service from pre collapse come august.

Plus the 2 PSO Irish domestic routes to Donegal and Kerry. Will they return?

 

[YorkshireBear]

Plus the 2 PSO Irish domestic routes to Donegal and Kerry. Will they return?

Sorry I meant from the UK routes. Meant to include that. I believe they are subject to PSO agreements with Aer Lingus. One of them is easier than the other to arrange but can't remember which.

 

[TravelDream]

Interestingly that means only East Midlands will be losing out it's service from pre collapse come august in terms of the UK routes.

The PSO routes and the not yet started Belfast-Cardiff service.

On the PSO routes, the site says 'Aer Lingus is ready to operate the Dublin / Kerry route, subject to an appropriate PSO arrangement being put in place. Aer Lingus is also actively exploring options that would enable the provision of a Dublin / Donegal service'.
Clearly they want more of a subsidy to operate to Kerry. Donegal has a 1400m runway which would make A320 operations difficult as that's basically the aircraft's absolute minima to land and take-off, and perhaps there are other reasons why they can't directly operate there.

 

[daodao]

the not yet started Belfast-Cardiff service.

Eastern Airways already have a service on this route.

 

[Butts]

Eastern Airways already have a service on this route.

Don't expect any bargains with them , as bad as Loganair in the pricing stakes.

 

[daodao]

Don't expect any bargains with them , as bad as Loganair in the pricing stakes.

For curiosity, I have just looked up Eastern Airways' fares on the Cardiff-Belfast route. It is not cheap (about £250 for a round trip), but is not more expensive than in 1995 (allowing for inflation), when I paid £195 for a round trip on a British Airways service on this route, using the same aircraft type (BAe Jetstream 41) still used by Eastern Airways 26 years later. I have always tried to avoid domestic air travel in the UK, except to/from Northern Ireland, because the convenience of flying there over using surface transport outweighs the high flight costs.

 

[Butts]

For curiosity, I have just looked up Eastern Airways' fares on the Cardiff-Belfast route. It is not cheap (about £250 for a round trip), but is not more expensive than in 1995 (allowing for inflation), when I paid £195 for a round trip on a British Airways service on this route, using the same aircraft type (BAe Jetstream 41) still used by Eastern Airways 26 years later. I have always tried to avoid domestic air travel in the UK, except to/from Northern Ireland, because the convenience of flying there over using surface transport outweighs the high flight costs.

Well for comparison if you back just over two years ago I was flying from Cardiff to Edinburgh / Glasgow for around £60/£70 Return on Flybe. I'm sure similar fares were available to Cardiff from Belfast as it was one of Flybes Main Hubs.

It was also on an Embraer Jet .

Eastern Airways and cheap fares are an oxymoron.

 

[TravelDream]

Eastern are really operating for those who have expense accounts to pay the fares.

I think most cost-sensitive passengers will vote with their wallets and head across the bridge to fly with the orange airline from Bristol. Though their fares have been pretty high recently.

Flybe used to regularly offer sub-£100 return fares. The Cardiff base was all Embraer, but the route was operated with a Q400 from Belfast.

 

[TheEdge]

Don't expect any bargains with them , as bad as Loganair in the pricing stakes.

I've occasionally looked at Loganair from Norwich, then immediately stopped looking...

 

[daodao]

Eastern are really operating for those who have expense accounts to pay the fares.

I think most cost-sensitive passengers will vote with their wallets and head across the bridge to fly with the orange airline from Bristol. Though their fares have been pretty high recently.

Flybe used to regularly offer sub-£100 return fares. The Cardiff base was all Embraer, but the route was operated with a Q400 from Belfast.

Don't forget extra surface transport costs, and significant airport car parking charges if using a car, if one travels to a more distant airport to pick up a cheaper flight, without even considering the extra time this involves. One also needs to book well ahead of one's planned trip to pick up the the cheaper deals on both budget and standard fare airlines. Therefore, any comparison has to be individualised to the specific journeys one wishes to make, and how far ahead one is able to book, and needs to include all costs involved in one's door-to-door journey.

When I travelled from Cardiff to Belfast and back in March 1995, my travel costs to get to/from Rhoose airport by local bus/rail did not exceed £10. The surface travel costs in Northern Ireland are difficult to estimate as I hired a car there to visit several places in Counties Antrim and Derry; I stayed for 4 nights in Ballymena. What I also recall on all my domestic air journeys in the 1990s were heavy security checks, including a 5 minute police interrogation on departure from Cardiff in 1995.

It is difficult for airlines attempting to provide point-to-point services between lesser provincial airports to keep their costs sufficiently low to provide attractive fares, given the relatively low demand and thus the use of smaller planes. Stobart Air is only the latest airline of many to have tried and failed.

 

[Meerkat]

So Eastern are allegedly expensive, Flybe were cheap.
Only one of them has survived - I think that shows which had realistic prices!

 

[TravelDream]

I think passengers in South Wales are pretty used to heading to Bristol Airport to be honest given the lack of choice and often high fares from Cardiff.
Pre-Covid, National Express ran an hourly bus from Cardiff to Newport to Bristol Airport that was popular. You also have the rail option of a through ticket to Bristol Airport (by bus) which isn't currently available because someone hasn't uploaded the airport bus schedule into the rail system (it was cancelled, but is now running again).

So Eastern are allegedly expensive, Flybe were cheap.
Only one of them has survived - I think that shows which had realistic prices!

Flybe had a whole raft of issues and you'd need a whole book to write about them. In some regards their fare structure didn't help them, but to say low fares killed them is completely wrong.

Essentially, they made a lot of very bad strategic decisions throughout the late 2000s and throughout the 2010s which left them with a heavy debt-load and a lot of very expensive unnecessary aircraft giving large on-going costs that couldn't be easily jettisoned.
Their debt load became unsurmountable the second bookings started to fall and whispers caused other companies to withdraw credit lines and call in debts.

If flybe had kept things cheap and simple, they'd still be here today. How could they have done that? Well, keep to a simple lower-cost fleet and only use Q400s. Grow slowly and organically looking for the places you can get the highest profit margins. Don't have grand aspirations to be 'Europe's regional airline'. Avoid the big-boys and don't pretend you can compete on price with Ryanair - your competition is rail, BA and the other regional airlines.

 

[TheEdge]

Like @TravelDream says Flybe would still be trundling round the skies today if for some unknown reason they didn't decide to take on everyone with the E-Jets flying to the continent and just remained a domestic (and Irish) airline serving that market with near enough no other massive airline competition.

Didn't one of their Captains get into hot water for sending an open letter/email to the Board saying as much?

 

[AlterEgo]

The PSO routes and the not yet started Belfast-Cardiff service.

On the PSO routes, the site says 'Aer Lingus is ready to operate the Dublin / Kerry route, subject to an appropriate PSO arrangement being put in place. Aer Lingus is also actively exploring options that would enable the provision of a Dublin / Donegal service'.
Clearly they want more of a subsidy to operate to Kerry. Donegal has a 1400m runway which would make A320 operations difficult as that's basically the aircraft's absolute minima to land and take-off, and perhaps there are other reasons why they can't directly operate there.

You can't fit an A320 into Donegal. There's nowhere to park it for a start. It has to be done with something like an ATR or Saab.

 

[YorkshireBear]

You can't fit an A320 into Donegal. There's nowhere to park it for a start. It has to be done with something like an ATR or Saab.

I can Loganair suddenly appearing here. They seem to the ATR regional airline of choice these days!

 

[daodao]

I can Loganair suddenly appearing here. They seem to the ATR regional airline of choice these days!

Loganair is the logical choice. They already fly to Donegal.

 

[YorkshireBear]

Loganair is the logical choice. They already fly to Donegal.

I am sure they could do something by messing with the timetables and doing say Glasgow, Donegal, Dublin, Donegal, Glasgow. Time will tell I suppose.

 

[Brooke]

After a bit of argy-bargy the last couple of days between Irish govt and Ryanair, it seems that Ryanair are taking on the Dublin <> Kerry route on a commercial basis (and demanding fee reductions at both airports, of course!). Time will tell on that too, I suspect!

EDIT:
The Dublin <> Donegal route is now awarded to Amapola Flyg AB, who from the article below are a freight and PSO player(?)

Update on Kerry is here: https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2021/0714/1235048-ryanair-kerry-dublin-route/

And article about Donegal:

Flights between Dublin and Donegal to resume on 26 July

Flights between Dublin and Donegal are to resume on 26 July, after the Government awarded a Public Service Obligation contract for the operation of the route to Swedish airline Amapola Flyg AB.

www.rte.ie