BeOnTop Airlines - Liège Airport

[Acid-drop]

I guess they count on the very narrow-minded, not-willing-to-drive-far, single language brain of their local clients ...

[convair]

I guess they count on the very narrow-minded, not-willing-to-drive-far, single language brain of their local clients ...

That is quite a big drop of acid!

[airazurxtror]

Perhaps another venture of Tecteo, which likes to have a finger in every pie at Liège ?

[cnc]

maybe the complete service package will stand out if compared to the rest.
no need to be negative nancy here, if they succeed all the better

[Lyulka]

The site doesn't look credible considering the amount of typo's/mistakes compared to the amount of words used.

[Passenger]

The site doesn't look credible considering the amount of typo's/mistakes compared to the amount of words used.

Indeed :

Which is your périod to fly to Sicilia?

Op welke periode vertrekt u naat Sicilië ?

[CTBke]

maybe because their target passengers are Italian and the quickly translated it into other languages ...

Brussels Airlines also made some mistakes in thousands of newspapers not so long ago

[Desert Rat]

I guess they count on the very narrow-minded, not-willing-to-drive-far, single language brain of their local clients ...

Can you be a little bit more explicit?

What do you mean by this?

[Acid-drop]

Well if you are walloon you know it as le nombrilisme principautaire
If you are flemish, it looks close to people from antwerp who beleive they are the only city of belgium and the rest is parking

Liege people like to stay local and speak their dialect.

[jan_olieslagers]

le nombrilisme principautaire

Thanks for extending my vocabulary, but I will have to find the finer nuances of meaning and/or intention

As for Antwerp and its parking, I can only confirm - having started life in the Antwerp periphery but since taking some distance, both physically and mentally...

But, err, aren't we drifting slightly off-topic...?

[liege-bierset]

Well if you are walloon you know it as le nombrilisme principautaire
If you are flemish, it looks close to people from antwerp who beleive they are the only city of belgium and the rest is parking

Liege people like to stay local and speak their dialect.

Nombrilisme = egocentrism.
Acid: are you okay ? Too much "peket", maybe.
..."One bridge too far" my friend

[Flanker2]

It seems clear that Beontop is being launched by or with a Limburg-based Italian immigrant who thinks he can tap the immigrant base to fill his planes lucratively...

Well, we already concluded on that... It's a waste of megabytes to discuss it.

[Desert Rat]

Well, at least someone's trying...

[Passenger]

The person behind be-on-top has experience in both Belgian and Italian aviation:

http://be.linkedin.com/pub/marc-hendricks/24/945/ab7

[Flanker2]

Aviation is a business wherein you take all the odds on your side, find yourself a very nice niche, invest a lot of money, do everything right, and only then MAYBE you can succeed, without any guarrantees that your success will be of long duration.

If you go against the odds from before you start, have a "niche" that is served by 10 carriers within 100 square kilometers, that's not what I call trying, that's plain stupid. I hope for their sake that they have more up their sleeves.

For those who don't know the Italian immigrant market: June-early July southbound, late July-September northbound. The opposite legs are half-empty at low yields. Too expensive fares? With 5 in the car, Swiss vignette for 40 euro's, and off they go. Remember that most of these people also prefer to have their car over there, instead of having to rent one. Winter? forget it, only when someone of the family is sick or dying.
Yep sure if you're on one of those high season flights it does look like the flight is full and profitable, unfortunately, you can't teleport the empty plane on the way back.

A reverse hub in Catania? Same story. Even after the failure of Maffiajet, aka Windjet, there are new projects taking shape: http://www.tgcom24.mediaset.it/cronaca/ ... ost-.shtml

[Passenger]

Sicily is a low season holiday destination. Off course there is a peak (thus with high yield) during the European summer months, simply because lots of people only can travel during school holidays (example families with children, example those who’s factory closes for three weeks).

Everybody in the travel trade knows that the weather during off season is much nicer there, and Sicily therefore has a good yield during low season also. On top of that, competition from road transport is low because access by car is difficult (+2.000kms) and expensive (overnight stop, fuel, toll roads, ferry).

But the most important factor that could lead Be on Top to be successfull, is that Ryanair is killing itself with its new luggage policy. Some people don’t mind to travel with hand luggage only, but the average holiday travellers (who bring in the auxiliary revenue) need a suitcase and backpackers need their backpack. The recent profit warning from Ryanair proofs that tourists are turning their back towards Ryanair. And O’Leary is too proud to admit any failure (let alone understand his failure).

So if Be on Top goes for wet lease only, thus no own aircraft, it can work. I'm sure they did their homework.

(and a personal message for the Be On Top guys here: apart from changing “which is your périod” in your questionnaire into decent Inglese, please also amend Sicilia into Sicily).

[Flanker]

Everybody in the travel trade knows that the weather during off season is much nicer there

Everybody knows that you are full of *&^!,.
Sicily is not on the equator, nor is it Florida. What would you go to Sicily for in January? To the beaches? Sicily is rainy and cold during the low season and there is no such thing as high yield in Sicily.

On top of that, competition from road transport is low because access by car is difficult (+2.000kms) and expensive (overnight stop, fuel, toll roads, ferry).

Yes that's right. The transportation infrastructure is so good in Sicily, it reminds me of Japan. A train every 2 minutes, a bus every 5 in each village and town. A metro that runs between Siracusa and Palermo and rows of cheap desperate taxi cabs in even the smallest town of Sicily. Oh let's not forget those cheap old Fiat Panda Young's that you can rent for 3 euro's a day.

Despite all that, all my Sicilian friends drive all the way there each and every year, they must be really stupid In fact if you go to Sicily in the summer, you will see a lot of foreign license plates, including the Belgian ones. They must be stolen cars.


If you already faced the dilemma, you would have figured out that the car trip would come out much cheaper than any plane trip, as most people don't travel alone but with the whole family.
Last but not least, a lot of people take a ferry out of Genoa, Civitavecchia or Napoli, even if it costs 800 euro's or so. It beats renting a car for a month at 1000+ euro's on top of the plane trip for 4 or or 5 for 700+ euro's one-way.

Sicilian emmigrants have done this trip for more than half a century. The only people who take the planes are the people from in or around the cities or the low yield tourists who go there for a short visit, or the few that have made it to success. Historically the majority of immigrants came from the smaller villages and towns where there wasn't much hope to find work in other industries than agriculture.

[Flanker]

Well here we are, people who know what they're talking about, versus people who suggest wet leasing to operate a start-up out of a questionnable market...
We can share opinions, but let's keep a minimum standard and not discuss how gold would be more efficient a fuel than kerosene to run the new airline. Is Santa the captain again?

Something tells me that Passenger is starting an airline and it's gonna be based out of LGG... It's such an honor to have you among us.

[Stij]

Flanker,

I m sorry, but is it your period or something? Such a sarcastic tone...

Cheers,

Stij

[Flanker2]

Well Stij, I must admit it but here we are again making obvious remarks regarding this airline using new information available to us, when this guy comes along and make comments with no substance, just to go against me and others.

Don't you find it annoying when someone starts saying that "if it's a wetlease, it could work"?
I get nausea, very deep nausea when I read something like that. It's so wrong that it's immoral, even arrogant to write it.
Wetlease is the most expensive, unprofitable way of operating aircraft. Combine that with the time it takes to build the revenues to an acceptable level and the airline is dead on arrival.

If you want the best example, I suggest you to research the recent example of Flyoristano, which was very well documented as it was a political endeavor launched by a reputable management consultancy...well the consultancy were really a bunch of amateurs who wetleased a F50 from Denim and the politicians who were funding it, were so proud to see it fly with their regional titles, they were posing all around it with pride, forgetting about the financial aspect. Well... months later, after the elections, as predicted by all who had a basic understanding of aviation, the airline and the airport were in bankruptcy, tens of millions were drained into the operation and hundreds of people from employees to smaller creditors feel the impact of this incompetence even today.

The aircraft were carrying 3 or 4 pax per flight, against the huge cost of the wetlease, which despite being a F50, was very expensive at 300.000 euro a month for ACMI (fuel excluded obviously).
Source: http://www.regione.sardegna.it/j/v/491? ... 2&c=27&t=1

Don't come around here with no "wetleasing is even better". That does not exist.