JOVAN wrote: ↑08 Jan 2018, 23:33
Now there is a super HUB airport, but SN prefers to fly to Corfu,Sharm al Sheikh etc.
Connecting Business destinations is what brings money. And volume.
Not cheap 'Sunny destinations' .
Do you have any clue what you are saying actually?
1. SN is not choosing for cheap sunny destinations 'instead of'. The Thomas Cook contract increases the number of aircraft in the fleet + an increase in fleet utilization of several percents (yes that's a lot) which is not only an expansion but also a cost saving.
2. SN is guaranteed(!!) of a profit on those "cheap sunny destinations" without having to sell even one single ticket itself as 70% of the additional volume is already paid for by Thomas Cook (whether TC actually fills those seats or not, they buy them as bulk).
3. Do you think LHG is throwing in billions of Euros in the expansion of the EW project (which is still mainly a company serving those cheap sunny destinations) because there is nothing to earn there?
4. Do you think SN is not expanding on business and transfer routes? Maybe check some data before saying something like that. A small hint: the average number of seats per flight this year will be almost 50 seats more than a few years ago thanks to the phase out of the Avro fleet and larger wet-lease aircraft. Yes that came in some cases at the cost of frequency, but still overall growth in business and transfer markets is double digit.
5. Transfer traffic is continuously growing with double digit numbers well beyond the BRU average and there is no sign that this is going to stop at all.
I can continue like that for a while, but I hope the idea is clear already. Some are just completely blind of the capacity that SN has put on the market over the past years (volume wise but especially percentage wise) in ALL market segments. More would just absolutely kill the yields which are already so much under pressure in Brussels, or do people think those transfer and business pax just fall out of the air in BRU.
Btw, if you think BRU is a super hub airport...sorry but think again. SN even has to delay flights exactly because BRU is just not that and pax don't get through in peak times in the promised minimum connecting time.