JOVAN2 wrote: 18 Aug 2025, 11:24
With catchment area of 25 million in the richest area of Europe it should be possible to fill several l/h flight to destinations in Caribbean and some places on Latin America.
But again it is management problem of not beingable to find successful formulas to attract PAX..
The issue is not to fill in planes, but how to make these ops profitable.
One delay of more than 3 hours and the company has to pay huge compensation to holiday passengers, 500€ each (x300).
The cost of these EU compensations make tiny long haul operations unprofitable. Margins are way too low to compensate.
Long haul routes by TUI were there as a prestige project and to push away competition from their market.
The group accepted this until things completely changed during & after covid. The group level management now decides of the local AOC fleet, bases & so on based on profitability.
TUIfly BE is severely hit by those decisions. The group cancelled new planes orders during COVID, got rid of plenty of 737's, now face huge delays for new aircraft deliveries and have to rely on lousy wet-leases companies that are bloody expensive & unreliable for their summer ops. There is a reason for their poor financial results, and it's not really due to a change of demand/market.
On top of that, TUI is extremely expensive compared to competitors.
Ask passengers opting for TUI out of LGG, they'll meet plenty of Belgians in the same hotel who opted for Luxair for way less money and a much better service on board. Guess what they do for their next holiday.
Demand has never been that high, TUI is just too expensive compared to the competitors (who are more and more present on the market).
