New airline with 3 new flights in Liege airport

Acid-drop · Post by **Acid-drop** » 01 Feb 2006, 13:38

Heard today on RTBF (french speaking belgian tv)

Seems that Liège airport will welcome Aer Arann, a company from Ireland.

3 destinations from Liège :
London (lutton)
Birmingham
Lorient (France)

http://www.aerarann.ie/

Source : rtbf (link in a few hours) and
http://www.lecho.be/actualite/ligneinfo ... dice=64437

regi · Post by **regi** » 01 Feb 2006, 14:31

a bit strange destinations from Liege. But what did we think at the beginning of Ryanair?
You can bet on it that it will attract quite some German travellers as well.

Acid-drop · Post by **Acid-drop** » 01 Feb 2006, 15:07

There is only one reason to not have ryanair : liege airport cannot be called brussels east.

And ryanair like pretend they land close to the capital even when it's not true, there are many examples.

Yes, those are quite strange destinations for liege. Actually Aer Arann wants to develop in continental europe, that's why they choosed liege, but I wonder if it will work. These are not really the destinations people are dreaming about.

iechist · Post by **iechist** » 01 Feb 2006, 15:36

I would imagine London would be reasonably popular destination. Lorient is likely to be just a once or twice a week summer-only destination. They have reasonably good ties with Lorient airport.

Birmingham is the strange one. I can't see a huge amount of tourist potential on the route and business travellers are more likely to just use Brussels where there are multiple daily flights available. Also, the only other destination they serve from Birmingham is Cork, so they're not a big brand in the region.

Still, I wish them good luck with the venture.

Acid-drop · Post by **Acid-drop** » 01 Feb 2006, 15:42

More interesting info about the company :

http://news.google.be/news?hl=en&q=aer% ... a=N&tab=wn

an-148 · Post by **an-148** » 01 Feb 2006, 16:48

Good news!
Aer Arann studies new routes so carefully that you can trust them for the future of the links!
I can't remember that they opened a new route to cancel it later on!
Good luck AER ARANN
Good luck LGG

Acid-drop · Post by **Acid-drop** » 01 Feb 2006, 18:52

More info in french (video):

http://www.rtc.be/index.php?option=news ... e&sid=3646#

Summary :

2 flights a day to london
1 flight a day to Birmingham and Lorient

Plane : ATR 72 (66 seats)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATR_42/72

Humberside · Post by **Humberside** » 01 Feb 2006, 20:28

an-148 wrote:I can't remember that they opened a new route to cancel it later on!

IOM-PIK
DUB-NOC (Loganair won the PSO contract from Aer Arran)
LPL-NOC (dropped due to loosing the DUB-NOC PSO)

Acid-drop wrote:2 flights a day to london
1 flight a day to Birmingham and Lorient

1 daily to BHX isn't much use for business passengers. They might as well serve some where like EDI where there is some tourist demand at that frequency.

Hopefully LGG will get Aer Arran soon

Acid-drop · Post by **Acid-drop** » 02 Feb 2006, 12:06

Many more details :

London and Lorient : starting in april
Birmingham : starting in may

both London and birmingham will have 2 rotations a day :

liege-london : 7.00 and 15.15
london-liege : 7.55 and 16.15
everyday exept saturday

liege-lorient : 10.55
lorient-liege : 16.40
only week days

liege-birmingham : 7.00 and 19.10
birmingham-liege : 8.10 and 20.25
everyday exept saturday

Source in french : http://www.proxiliege.net/index.php?pag ... 00&idrub=3

Post by **sn26567** » 02 Feb 2006, 13:34

The airline uses both the ATR42 and the ATR72.

Lorient is a destination already served from Luton and from 4 Irish cities. It ia a place where many British and German citizens own rich villas, and therefore the Liege-Lorient route could attract a lot of German passengers.

As for Liege-Luton, I'm sure that former Ryanair passengers from Charleroi to Stansted will switch allegiance.

Liege-Birmingham might be a little more risky, unless Comet embarks on that new airline and destination in Belgium?

an-148 · Post by **an-148** » 02 Feb 2006, 14:02

Germanwings decided to cancel Cologne-Birmingham (an A319 with ca 120 seats is more difficult to fill than an ATR 72 with 66 seats!): so there are also potential clients for this route!
the planers of Aer Arann are clever, imho.

an-148 · Post by **an-148** » 02 Feb 2006, 14:04

in addition, I would say that Comet is warmly welcomed

Humberside · Post by **Humberside** » 02 Feb 2006, 19:57

Im surprised there are no Saturday (or Sunday) flights to Lorient, since it is a tourist destination

an-148 · Post by **an-148** » 03 Feb 2006, 09:06

me too!
I guess that the planes are due to be available for special charters like for football matches, a.s.o.!

iechist · Post by **iechist** » 03 Feb 2006, 12:54

5x weekly to Lorient seems optimistic. I wonder if Nantes might have been a better option, but it seems that Aer Arann have some kind of deal running with Lorient Airport.

There's an obvious gap in rotations for the aircraft that operates the Birmingham route. I wonder if we can expect to see and extra destination added?

As for Aer Arann scrapping unprofitable routes...

The have done it. As well as the ones above, some of the ones I can remember...

Dublin-Belfast
Galway-Birmingham
Derry-Birmingham
Derry-Manchester

Acid-drop · Post by **Acid-drop** » 03 Feb 2006, 18:38

liege is expected to become the continental hub of aer arann if the experience is good.

hopefully, it will be good

Humberside · Post by **Humberside** » 03 Feb 2006, 19:30

iechist wrote:There's an obvious gap in rotations for the aircraft that operates the Birmingham route. I wonder if we can expect to see and extra destination added?

I could see future flights to MAN, EDI and ORK, although not DUB due to FR at CRL

iechist · Post by **iechist** » 04 Feb 2006, 11:25

Humberside wrote:
iechist wrote:There's an obvious gap in rotations for the aircraft that operates the Birmingham route. I wonder if we can expect to see and extra destination added?
I could see future flights to MAN, EDI and ORK, although not DUB due to FR at CRL

How would LGG-ORK work out rangewise for an ATR?

It would be great for me personally, because ORK is the closest airport to where my parents live and the trip to AMS is annoying when I'm going back to visit.

an-148 · Post by **an-148** » 04 Feb 2006, 14:07

If we have a good look to the schedules of LGG-LRT and LRT-LGG, we can see a gap of almost 3h40':
that seems to be ideal to extend the flights from LRT and back to either ORK or WAT (seems really to be possible!
Than arise one question to any frequent AER ARANN frequent flyer: do they propose only point to point routes or does it happen that passengers can book the following leg of a plane and have the luggage kept in the plane at the first landingplace?
anybody to know the reply?
If yes, there would be AUTOMATICALLY one (i.e.ORK) or two (i.e.ORK and WAT) more destinations bookable from LGG and instead of the three inaugural routes there woulb be in fact 4 or 5 !!!!!!
B.T.W. for those who have seen the cockpit DVD of Aer Arann, the approach for Cork is BEAUTIFUL ! (If you fly to Cork, try to have a window seat, it's worth it!)