I agree about this one, EIN is probably economically more attractive, because its better situated for the southern part of the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany is handled by their local agents which use LGG and DUS/CGN. Looking back, 10-15 years ago, MST was in a far better position in the south for charter flights, EIN/LGG only had a few flights, but they lost it over time. But still with a local based travel agent/charter airline at that time with focus on this region things could have been a lot better.LJ wrote: The only reason why many airlines moved to EIN is because it is just a better market. As mentioned before, there is not much economic activity around MST and Eindhoven is much more intersting for airlines than MST. Thus not ignorance but economic motive.
As far as I know problems with Air Exel started after the CEO change, KLM pulled out when there were already problems. Untill the management change specially london/amsterdam flights were doing well.LJ wrote: Yeah right, are you not forgetting why they went bankrupt? Apart from the issues surrounding the CEO, I recall they were bleeding (especially when KLM ended the co-operation with Air Exel). As the smallest aircraft in KLs fleet was the F50 (remember the SAABs were already gone), they couldn't do better than flying 3 daily . Or do you wanted them to fly more (half)empty F50s? Axing MST was the best thing to do as it freed up valuable AMS slots for more important flights.
KLM made a mess of it. I arrived several times on flights from the states, arrival was somewhere in the morning, next flight to MST was around 17:00, so 5-6 hours later, in Air Exel times schedules were much better. Also when they had to cancel a flight because of a problem with one of the F50's or weather related, it's very easy to give the MST passengers a train ticket instead of cancelling another destination, which happened a lot.
ET wanted to fly from AMS, then MST and finally went to LGG, because they didn't got the required rights to fly from AMS/MST. They were flying to BRU before their move. See http://www.hortibiz.com/detail/article/ ... ort-costs/LJ wrote: Your example of ET doesn't add up. ET flew to AMS prior to the move to LGG. Thus the move has nothing to do with KL/MP. QR is also a bad example because you probably know QR will be flying EBB-AMS as of June 5th (and judging from the reaction of KL/MP they're not happy). The only issue is here with NBO-AMS, but look how many airlines are already serving that market (SQ and EK).
Turkish also had trouble with getting rights to MST from Africa. And I heard of others before having the same trouble, also on different routes.