easyjet at BRU

[cathay belgium]

Hi,

Seems SN's strategy at BRU is working .. too good ( for me, as I had to reshedule )!

Got this morning a flight shedule change of Easyjet to Geneva ,
seems they cancelled all their evening flights backwards from Geneva ( 2-3-4 ),
business pax may only return same days on monday' and fridays ?
Guess this downgrade will have a big effect on the total pax for the Geneva routings..,no ?
I could understand that they cancel the afternoon flight but the evening flight..
If SN could drop their fares until let's say 70 euro's ( what's only 20 euro's less than their average
cheap fares to GVA, and as GVA is a nearby route guess that this is possible as this is the same cheap
fare as BCN-LIS-.. ) I may think they could fill 2 more A319 on this route and will blow easyjet out of BRU on this route with eeh .. easy

CX-B

Note : same with Berlin ! ( but guess SXF is cheaper then TXL but that problem will be solved next year with BER ,no ? )

[Established02]

"Seems SN's strategy at BRU is working .. too good"

It's hard to determine the real causing factors for these U2 cutbacks.

I notice that U2 has made similar cutbacks on AMS-GVA, taking out their latest evening rotation on TUE and WED. Similar to BRU, on these days people can no longer make a decent day return on AMS-GVA-AMS, as the morning flight arrives in GVA at 10h30 and the last departure for AMS is already at 15h30.

"business pax may only return same days on monday' and fridays ?"

Business pax can still make a convenient day return out of GVA. 06h45-17h20
Perhaps for easyJet the Swiss market is more important regarding business travellers.
The Belgian market may be slightly more leasure oriented and likely to fly regardless of schedule.

But a remarkable cutback indeed as easyJet was expected to target more the business traveller segment, especially since the introduction of their new Flexi fares.

[tolipanebas]

Interesting move from U2.
Independent pax flow figures on the BRU-GVA route show not only SN to be eating up ALL of the growth on the BRU-GVA route (+/- 5,000 pax per month compared to last year), but also that they are increasing their overall market share on the route far beyond what could be expected from winning all the organic growth on the route, so U2 is taking a SERIOUS beating on BRU-GVA for sure and probably is acting as a consequence to them losing quite a lot of their customers by cancelling all of their evening flights except on MON and FRI.

As from next autumn, even more GVA flights will be rolled over to A319/A320, so things will get even worse for U2 at BRU over the next few months!

BTW, I've heard they are having a really bad time at BRU ever since SN adopted their new strategy, not only on GVA, but indeed also on their other routes, so I wouldn't be too surprised to see them cut back on other routes too...

[Established02]

Never underestimate your enemy, Tolipanebas.

Another element that expectedly hurts both easyJet and SN is the negative development of the CHF/EUR currency rate, which has a major impact on tourism in Switzerland.

"Belgen vallen achterover van peperduur Zwitserland"
http://www.standaard.be/artikel/detail. ... witserland

[tolipanebas]

Never underestimate your enemy, Tolipanebas.

I am not doing so, however, cold facts and figures show U2 has won ZERO new pax on the BRU-GVA route (despite it seeing substantial growth) AND has even lost some additional market share. That's quite a shocking result actually and definitely not such good news for them and neither is this latest frequency cutback as it means they'll have an even harder time attracting corportate customers with it, which was their new target market, after their introduction of flex fares. After all, what's the point of paying for flexibilty with the schedule they'll now have???

[fcw]

As from next autumn, even more GVA flights will be rolled over to A319/A320, so things will get even worse for U2 at BRU over the next few months!

BTW, I've heard they are having a really bad time at BRU ever since SN adopted their new strategy, not only on GVA, but indeed also on their other routes, so I wouldn't be too surprised to see them cut back on other routes too...

The only difference being easyJet posting a 300 000000€ benefit whilst BruAir will be happy if they can keep their losses below 100mio! So I am not sure there is much to smile about.
The big loser however will be the passenger when he will be paying ZRH fares on the GVA route the day easyJet stops flying it.

[OO-ITR]

The only difference being easyJet posting a 300 000000€ benefit whilst BruAir will be happy if they can keep their losses below 100mio! So I am not sure there is much to smile about.
The big loser however will be the passenger when he will be paying ZRH fares on the GVA route the day easyJet stops flying it.

maybe first wait until the year will be over before making judgements. And in this case, SN making a big loss isn't that bad...it makes them more attractive for LH next year!!!

[RoMax]

maybe first wait until the year will be over before making judgements. And in this case, SN making a big loss isn't that bad...it makes them more attractive for LH next year!!!

Indeed. Actually it doesn't really matter how much they loose (of course it does, but... ), but why they loose money. The only people that will be unhappy with a big loss are the current shareholders because LH will pay less for SN. But for SN and LH itself it is much more important to see why they are losing money. Is it because of unexpected things, heavy investments,... or is it because they are just doing something seriously wrong, so a wrong strategy. If SN would be very profitable now and LH not really, LH would hesitate longer to take over SN. If SN ends this year with a heavy loss, LH will take over SN as soon as they can because SN will be very cheap at in that case.

[Flanker]

by MR_Boeing » 45 minutes ago

OO-ITR wrote:

maybe first wait until the year will be over before making judgements. And in this case, SN making a big loss isn't that bad...it makes them more attractive for LH next year!!!

Indeed. Actually it doesn't really matter how much they loose (of course it does, but... ), but why they loose money.

Well sorry, but B*LLCR*P.

To say something like that, you both clearly have no grasps of the financial situation of SN.
After this year's losses, what will SN be worth? Take the balance sheet, do the math.
Oh and please don't stupidly start spreading panic, it won't help anyone.

And in this case, SN making a big loss isn't that bad...it makes them more attractive for LH next year

It doesn't work like that.
Whatever LH pay less to buy-out the other shareholders, they're going to find less on the balance sheet of SN. Quite to the opposite, if the loss is too large, it will come down to how committed LH is to buying SN out in 2012.

Tolipanebas, really, still bragging about the volume strategy?

Easyjet? They're down market share everywhere, not only in BRU, after they ran a chaotic operation in 2010 and lost the premium pax due to acute punctuality problems (reaching less than 50% average on several routes). SN is doing a good job at beating a dead horse that fell off the cliff.

[tolipanebas]

Tolipanebas, really, still bragging about the volume strategy?

Yeah we now: a massive fleet of Q400s to operate -amongst others- 12 times daily to GVA would have been so much better, right?

Nobody in this industry is buying your idea on flocking the skies with Q400s since it is indeed overly naive, as evidenced by the fact even well established Q400 operators aren't as keen on operating their turboprops all over the place like you think they should from your ill-informed outsiders view.

As we have just come to see on the BRU-MAN route for instance, even BE are continuing to move away from operating Q400s on routes which see stiff competition for exactly the reasons I've explained you a thousand times already: with smaller and also less comfortable planes, you just can't keep pace with your competitors during the ticket purchase cycle and you loose out on all sorts of passengers, not only the low yielding cheap charlies (as you need to hold some seats back for later), but also and often more so even on the high yielding last minute pax (as they don't show up after all, or as you haven't held back enough even): the idea you hand pick passengers is dead wrong and has been disproven multiple times already: your concept is only valid if you'd sell capacity on a Q400 as if it were an A319 and then only accept the 70 most lucrative pax at the gate! Luckily for pax, that is not how it works, so you needn't only focus on the cost aspect of the matter like you are obsessed with, but also on the revenue side of the equation which you completely ignore and that's where Q400 operators have found out that the overall ballance between the 2 isn't exactly tipping over in the direction of the Q400 on routes which see competition, to say the least....

Try 'consulting' on tiny little airlines like Danish Air Transport, City Airlines or VLM first and once you've fully understood how they work in their often competition-free niches where the revenue side of the equation is pretty much frozen and you can thus fully play the cost game, gently move over to the big boys like the LH group or U2, which do happen to be able to stimulate demand and thus revenues by adjusting capacity: it's going to be a massively more complex situation for you just to grasp.

The volume strategy is pushed very hard by LH itself, one of the best run airlines in the world and heavily involved in aviation consultancing, yet Mr NCB knows it all better, right? Oh, yeah, up until 2 weeks ago, you didn't even know a Q400 can't dock at either one of the BRU's terminals, but you still maintain to have much more in-depth insight in this matter than LH does, do you?

http://www.lhsystems.com/solutions/airl ... /index.htm