NCL

[egpffqtv]

Eurowings certainly see some value in the North East as DUS has been going for some time now too, I always thought it could be due to Army presence in the area. Perhaps it also serves the inbound market for Germans visiting Peak/Lake District.

Perhaps, although MAN is surely closer to the peak district and parts of the lake district (with direct trains too) - and given EW would appear to believe ve they can serve the whole of Scotland through EDI, you might have thought they'd think the same wrt existing DUS services at MAN.

Has UK army presence in Germany not been substantially reduced?

It's a shame GLA hasn't snt been able to regain DUS service. LM were never the right fit and I have have a very vague memory when EW stopped there was some suggestion from someone in the know that it was for an odd reason.

I know that when EW moved the DUS service from EDI to GLA for the brief period that they were here, the airline (or maybe it was the airport, I can’t recall), said that there were more G postcodes booking on the EDI flight so it made more sense to move the service to GLA. I personally never bought into that, because, when was the last time you disclosed your full address to an airline when making a booking? I also never bought into that, as a lot of travellers, especially corporate, don’t necessarily pay for their own flights, their company does, and the company address is more likely to be associated to a booking as opposed to the traveller’s address.

I don’t know what the suggestion was though for the service moving back to EDI.

If I were to hazard a guess, it could possibly be because EDI host all LH Group airlines and they probably have better handling agent provision over there?

[southflyer]

When DUS-GLA started it was still being operated by Lufthansa on the CRJ, presumably targeting business pax more than leisure. When DUS-EDI was launched it was with EW on the A320. I suspect the target markets were very different and the Eurowings takeover changed that.

I do recall EW announced SZG-GLA a few years ago but it didn't actually launch.

[egpffqtv]

When DUS-GLA started it was still being operated by Lufthansa on the CRJ, presumably targeting business pax more than leisure. When DUS-EDI was launched it was with EW on the A320. I suspect the target markets were very different and the Eurowings takeover changed that.

I do recall EW announced SZG-GLA a few years ago but it didn't actually launch.

Yes, DUS-GLA was with LH CRJ but that changed to EW A320 and when that was lost, LM and one of their jungle jets stepped in

[Iain]

When DUS-GLA started it was still being operated by Lufthansa on the CRJ, presumably targeting business pax more than leisure. When DUS-EDI was launched it was with EW on the A320. I suspect the target markets were very different and the Eurowings takeover changed that.

I do recall EW announced SZG-GLA a few years ago but it didn't actually launch.

Yes, DUS-GLA was with LH CRJ but that changed to EW A320 and when that was lost, LM and one of their jungle jets stepped in

I have a vague memory as well that just before it stopped it was also operated by a Dash-8. Indeed there was maybe some discussion about Eurowings having a shortage of Dash-8s to continue operating the route.

LM just wasn't the right airline for it and I think they generally found Germany unprofitable - I think they also dropped EDI-HAJ.

If you look at the pattern of pax numbers I think it appears that when LH started FRA (and at the time MUC too) it probably took a significant amount of connecting pax off the DUS route that had been connecting over that airport but then switched to FRA and MUC, which are more set up for connections.

Nevertheless the historic numbers would seem to suggest there should be at least some market for 2 or 3 flights per week in summer. I guess slots at DUS, plus no FR - and virtually no EZY - at DUS also kind of limits things.

Just to pivot back to BER, it's interesting looking back in the figures to see that in Jul 2018 there were 17k passengers on GLA-SXF, and this Jul there were 3k. I guess more than 80% of the Passengers on these flights were actually traveling to Edinburgh.....

[southflyer]

FR were operating the route daily at the time I believe. It really is a joke that we see only 3k pax per yer to Berlin. Eurowings would be a great addition for BER, easyJet are pre-occupied hoovering up the former TCX routes and Ryanair are nowhere to be seen.