SNBA launches flights to Frankfurt and Nice,abandons Glasgow

dna · Post by **dna** » 11 Jan 2006, 15:39

I saw this on Belga today:

SN Brussels Airlines is to relaunch flights to Nice starting March 24. And from March 27, SNBA will operate to daily return flights between Brussels and Frankfurt. At the same time SNBA will abandon its Brussels to Glasgow route.

Dave

fostro · Post by **fostro** » 11 Jan 2006, 15:55

Yes, read it too, but on "De Standaard Biz Online".

Concering the Nice-flights, I think they will be operated by Virgin Express as they fly already to it.

Nice to read that SN opens a new route (Frankfurt), which will be flown by own metal and not another codeshare agreement...

At the moment LH has a very big monopoly on this route! Will we see a German-Belgian battle?

Atlantis · Post by **Atlantis** » 11 Jan 2006, 17:07

The route BRU - FRA will be flown by an Avro or an A319. Two reasons why they are starting this route: 1) Belgian companies and customers of SNBA are asking for years a link between those cities flown by SNBA!!
2) It was impossible to start up earlier because the arrive and departing slots were very bad.

The route to Nice will be flown by an Avro of SNBA together with Virgin Express. So SNBA and Virgin are going to fly both to Nice. Virgin three times a day, SNBA four times a week.

Source: travel magazine

Sabena_690 · Post by **Sabena_690** » 11 Jan 2006, 17:08

fostro wrote:Concering the Nice-flights, I think they will be operated by Virgin Express as they fly already to it.

Correction: the 4x weekly BRU-NCE flights announced today will be operated by SN Brussels Airlines.

Flights will operate on Monday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday with the following schedule:

Brussels - Nice
1-----7 18:45-20:35 SN3619
----5-- 11:10-13:00 SN3617
-----6- 09:40-11:30 SN3617

Nice - Brussels
1-----7 21:15-22:55 SN3620
----5-- 13:40-15:20 SN3618
-----6- 12:10-13:50 SN3618

Brussels - Frankfurt will operate 12x weekly, with the following interesting schedule (both for business passengers, as they will be able to make a daytrip, as for transfer passengers):

Brussels - Frankfurt
123456- 06:30-07:35 SN2607
12345-7 17:15-18:20 SN2613

Frankfurt - Brussels
123456- 08:15-09:20 SN2608
12345-7 19:15-20:15 SN2614

Regards
Frederic

Zorba · Post by **Zorba** » 11 Jan 2006, 17:29

Hours are great for a day of spotting, but I think that would be a very expensive one.

Anyways I'm glad finaly we have another operator on the FRA route.

Atlantis · Post by **Atlantis** » 11 Jan 2006, 20:04

Were the flights to glasgow not good enough? According to SNBA they will need the current capacity and that's why they will give up the daily flights to Glasgow.

It look strange to me. If I'm not wrong they served Glasgow 9 times a week.

Established02 · Post by **Established02** » 11 Jan 2006, 20:35

Brussels - Frankfurt
123456- 06:30-07:35 SN2607
12345-7 17:15-18:20 SN2613

Frankfurt - Brussels
123456- 08:15-09:20 SN2608
12345-7 19:15-20:15 SN2614

Lijnvluchten van Brussel (BRU) naar FRANKFURT (FRA)
Vluchtnummer Dagen Vertr. Aank. Type Geldigheid
LH4593 1234567 07:10 08:10 733 3010-2503
LH4571 1234567 08:45 09:45 319 3010-2503
...
Lijnvluchten van FRANKFURT (FRA) naar Brussel (BRU)
Vluchtnummer Dagen Vertr. Aank. Type Geldigheid
LH4570 1234567 07:10 08:05 319 3010-2503
LH4572 1234567 09:05 10:00 320 3010-2503
...

With the current LH schedule, SN2607 will be the first flight to FRA out of BRU. A departure of 06:30 is probably convenient for the connecting long haul traffic ex Africa. However an arrival in FRA at 07:35 may look pretty early for a regular business passenger. The other 3 schedules look pretty good. How difficult was it to get such a kind of slots at FRA?

Currently you can book a return flight with LH as from 334.98 EUR (all incl.). Obviously LH will have the financial power to selectively match or undercut the SN fares. On the other hand SN will have an advantage in offering one way fares, something which LH is not doing currently.

Avro · Post by **Avro** » 11 Jan 2006, 20:47

It's a great news to hear that SN finally managed to get slots for FRA.

Let's hope they'll do well on the route, although I fear for LH's reaction.

Chris

AFApresident · Post by **AFApresident** » 11 Jan 2006, 23:26

Good Luck to SN!

tolipanebas · Post by **tolipanebas** » 11 Jan 2006, 23:49

It is not particularly hard to see this route will do quite well for SN.

On weekdays, LH has 9(!) daily flights with A319/A320/A321. That means that on a daily basis, there are over a 1,300 seats offered.
Loadfactor on the route is reported to be quite high, so a needed capacity of 1,000 a day seems a good guess.

It should not be too wild a guess to imagine SN capturing roughly 10% of the market through taking them away from LH (competition on price, service, corporate contracts) and of course finding passengers new to the route through offering new connections from FRA, which means about 100 pax a day.... good for 2 RJ flights.

Yield on FRA is known to be good, so not only a good loadfactor, but also a decent yield can be expected.

Very wise decision and proof that SN will keep on focus on business travel in the future too...

Post by **sn26567** » 13 Jan 2006, 10:07

Sorry for my late reaction due to heavy workload. Here are my comments:

1) Pity to see Glasgow, the only Scottish destination of SN abandoned after only a few months. I guess the load factors were too low, which shows the need for smaller planes than the Avro: bmi flies the Brussels-Edinburgh route with ERJ145s, better fitted for the capacity.

2) Strange strategy for Nice: first SN flies this destination twice a day in competition with VEX. After the merger with VEX, it first reduces the schedule to one daily flight, then completely abandons the route in favour of VEX. What is the point in coming back?

3) Last, but not least, Frankfurt. Great to see some competition on that route. Launching prices for a day return are at 158 euros, way below the 700+ euros charged by Lufthansa. But what about the threat of Lufthansa to retaliate on the Brussels market if ever SN deared to come to Frankfurt? Did the European Commission's Competition authorities finally do their job properly?

And I cannot resist the idea that the discussions on this forum about the extortionate prices of Lufthansa have helped launch this route...

SN_fan · Post by **SN_fan** » 13 Jan 2006, 10:55

wow, If find it quite nice from LH selling seats at 700 euro and having quite a lot of flight to BRU. So this must be a profitable route.
Let's hope SN will make a lot of profit on this route, with high loadfactors. Then they maybe can consider to put a larger plan on that route (hopefully a extra one added to the fleet) after a few years.

Avro · Post by **Avro** » 13 Jan 2006, 11:37

jan_olieslagers wrote:
Strange indeed. If there are about a thousand people every day willing to pay 700+ euro's, why does not SNBA charge 400 or so? They would make more profit, for customers it would still be a good deal, and LH would be less annoyed with them.

It's maybe a promotional fare for the start of the route

Don't worry I'm sure Sn will rapidly increase the fares if they see they can fill the plane with the higher fares.

Chris

Airbus330lover · Post by **Airbus330lover** » 13 Jan 2006, 16:28

But, don't forget, LH can easy drop the fares below the 400 EUR of SN.

Humberside · Post by **Humberside** » 13 Jan 2006, 21:49

As far as GLA is concerned I think FR will be reducing the yields with their PIK-CRL flights

EDI is further away from PIK than GLA and also has more political and business ties with Belgium, hence why bmi seem to keep going on EDI-BRU

DannyVDB · Post by **DannyVDB** » 14 Jan 2006, 09:40

Hi,

Good news on FRA ...

Maybe Nice is not 'unlogical' neither. SNBA and VEX offering both flights could give them the benefit of putting the right metal, i.e. smaller and bigger planes. I was in November last year in Nice for business and the flight was far from full.

Glasgow is a pitty, but the good thing is that sooner or later they can go back there, especially if they would have some smaller jets (in the medium run). The way of working: starting a route, but discontinue when it seems not to give the right results is better then continue the route and making a lot of losses.

Danny

snwebbie · Post by **snwebbie** » 14 Jan 2006, 12:53

Now with the new early-booking fares, you can already book a return trip to FRA for 142€ incl taxes & all fees (76€ one way)
:angel:

Bob_Marcotte · Post by **Bob_Marcotte** » 14 Jan 2006, 23:52

Some of my thoughts on the FRA route

1) 99% of the pax in economy on LH have a connection out of FRA (most of the time also on LH or Star alliance), how on earth does SN think to convince any of those pax?

2) Business class pax on LH can be very demanding (trust me, I know 8) ), they want flexibility - they want to be able to take an earlier / later flight for whatever reason (meeting finished early,...)

2 flights a day doesn't allow much flexibility, does it now?

Don't get me wrong here, I hope SN will do very well on this route, yet I'm skeptical