EGPF Forum

Well, first flights for over 2 years took my wife and me down to Bristol last weekend

No £40 pre-booked car parking available just under 48 hours before departure and not willing to pay the £88 turnup rates (more than my return air fare!) and no family 'taxi' available it was public transport - leave house 1430, catch once an hour bus into town (it fortunately turned up on time!), just missed 500 so 20 minutes wait then onto M8 which was very slow for a mile or so due to a breakdown, arrive airport two and half hours later at 1700

Terminal 'ticking over' with the later Emirates flight on a Friday considerably boosting the footfall

EZY406 A320 G-EZOI - A320 flight #104 and a new airframe for the book
On time, 95%+ full, almost obligatory crosswind landing at Bristol

Couple of days in and around Bristol - a popular UK break destination but a word of warning book a restaurant well in advance for your evening meal (our second night reservation was cancelled due to staff COVID - substituted by Tesco sushi and fruit!)

Bristol Airport serves a wide area of southwest England and has substantial easyJet and Ryanair bases as well as Jet2 and TUI . . . it overtook Glasgow for passenger numbers in 2019 (of course it has no London traffic) and certainly it looked to be recovering with busy onsite and offsite car parks

A visit to Cotswold Airport (Kemble) for lunch and a quick look from the outside at ex BA B747 G-CIVB (not one of the 6 G-CIV. series aircraft I've flown in) and the other stored / scrapped airframes

EZY407 A320 G-EZTT - A320 flight #105 and another new airframe for the book
On time, 95%+ full, including a number of rugby union fans who had transited Bristol from Rome

Flights #44 & #45 with easyJet although technically one was in a sub-chartered Titan Airways A320 G-POWI

Back into Queen Street on the 500 then onto a train for Westerton where one of our daughters had parked our car

Cost of public transport to/from GLA £2 (one advantage of old age!)

Who knows when our next flight will be? Still have Barra on the bucket list

Good trip report, Bearsden.

Car parking charges at AGS are exorbitant, ABZ was also very expensive, circa £80 for a five night trip. Thankfully we left our car at our best friends house instead.

It’s interesting to note how BRS has shot up the league table over the years ever since it became the HQ of Paramount Airways, who remembers them? That’s something which has been GLA’s greatest failure - the ability to lure a UK charter or leisure airline to locate its HQ there acting as a catalyst to attract more traffic. CWL was also successful in this respect with Inter European Airways the subsidiary of Aspro Travel.

We are just back from a short trip to Northumberland meeting up with friends near Hexham and popped into NCL on our return journey. Even in winter they have two based TOM where GLA has one. NCL catchment area must be far less than GLA yet they also have a fairly large LS base in addition to non based FR flying.

atuk wrote: ↑Thu Mar 17, 2022 5:09 am
We are just back from a short trip to Northumberland meeting up with friends near Hexham and popped into NCL on our return journey. Even in winter they have two based TOM where GLA has one. NCL catchment area must be far less than GLA yet they also have a fairly large LS base in addition to non based FR flying.

1 x Based TOM 737 during winter normally (there is an all white a/c that has been stored at NCL for a few months though), and some 'w' pattern flights from MAN. TUI basing 4 x 737 and a shared 787 with GLA this summer, LS up to 10 based aircraft

GKirk wrote: ↑Thu Mar 17, 2022 11:45 am [quote=atuk post_id=6084 time=<a href="tel:1647493786">1647493786</a> user_id=75]

We are just back from a short trip to Northumberland meeting up with friends near Hexham and popped into NCL on our return journey. Even in winter they have two based TOM where GLA has one. NCL catchment area must be far less than GLA yet they also have a fairly large LS base in addition to non based FR flying.

1 x Based TOM 737 during winter normally (there is an all white a/c that has been stored at NCL for a few months though), and some 'w' pattern flights from MAN. TUI basing 4 x 737 and a shared 787 with GLA this summer, LS up to 10 based aircraft
[/quote]

Thanks GKirk.

So TOM and LS at NCL exceeds GLA in their core IT/leisure market.