VLM (SHS Antwerp Aviation) news 2018 - 2019

[Passenger]

VLM abandons ALL routes, except LCY and ZRH. It will also develop charter and ACMI activities, putting permanently one F-50 with crew at the disposal of The Aviation Factory.
https://www.aviation24.be/airlines/vlm- ... ctivities/

Reasons for those cancellations are probably multiple:
- there was too little time between announcement and first flight:
- there is simply no market for those routings (Antwerp-Maribor?!);
- launch was done just before annual holiday season;
- perhaps some doubt about relability of the airline (cfr Harm Prins).

[sn26567]

VLM abandons ALL routes, except LCY and ZRH. It will also develop charter and ACMI activities, putting permanently one F-50 with crew at the disposal of The Aviation Factory.
https://www.aviation24.be/airlines/vlm- ... ctivities/

Reasons for those cancellations are probably multiple:
- there was too little time between announcement and first flight:
- there is simply no market for those routings (Antwerp-Maribor?!);
- launch was done just before annual holiday season;
- perhaps some doubt about relability of the airline (cfr Harm Prins).

- lack of marketing
- poor visibility (GDS?)
- ...

[ironspan]

Thx DIBO, Passenger, Andre, finally some reactions on the real issue: the poor management capability of VLM.
No surprises here, if you announce flights at the same time as when you start flying them, if your website was not working for a long time, if you make hardly any promotion or advertising, if you select destinations (Maribor, Rostock?) with no cultural or economic connections with ANR, if your changingbyour CEO every x months, if you are not reachable by phone (try to find a number of VLM, not a call centre!), if you communicate with the press through a press release (not even face-to-face), if you fly relatively old prop aircraft and then if you finally almost never fly on time to MUC or ZRH (delays of 1 to 2 hrs for the evening flights is standard, flying on time is exceptional), then you should not be surprised. This has NOTHING to do with Antwerp Airport, on the contrary, it is the 2nd time in 3 years that VLM succeeds in creating a negative image of the airport, which, of course in an election year, is a nice gift for SP’A and Groen!...

[ironspan]

One more thing, maybe time for Mr Buelens to urgently look for a more trustworthy operator for the LCY-ANR route (BA or FlyBe?), just in case... It is great to have a ‘home’ carrier, but when this home carrier is negatively impacting the image of your airport, it is time to change. Also all the negative press articles, will definitely scare pax away. I already repeatedly said this before, EGIS needs to actively look for other operators at ANR (and OST)...

[Haplek]

Lucky me. Today on the flight to Maribor, coming back on friday. Just before they cancel the route

So we were on the same flight
16 or 17 PAX on MUC-MBX leg, 3 entering in MUC

[koninckske]

Those are dramatic cutbacks, are they?

I think it was a correct decision to put VLM back on track before they go down like they did last time. From what I have been reading is that they had to reduce their fleet to 4 from 5 F50 since one aircraft became simply to old to operate/repair in the near future. They received 1,6 million Euro extra capital in July.

They were unable to perform all (profitable) charter requests in the last months with the Fokkers busy doing their scheduled flying. So this is the business they want to increase. They already operate 1 F50 like this at he moment, increase will mean at least 2.

This leaves only 2 F50 to operated the schedules. Of course they will continue the 2 most profitable or close to being profitable high frequency routes: LCY and ZRH

Routes remaining:
ANR-LCY (16x weekly)
ANR-ZRH (10x,11x weekly from winter schedule) increasing loads at good fares
Routes cancelled:
ANR-ABZ (3x) good loads at rather low fares due to leisure passengers during holidays, low bookings afterwards
ANR-BHX (5X) low load/fares and inconvenient flight times
ANR-CGN-RLG (5x) costly operation due to positioning flight ANR to CGN
ANR-MUC (10x) increasing loads, but rather low fares. Had potential to become a good route in future.
MUC-MBX (2x) never made any sense, operated for former owners and owner from MBX airport
Postponed (?):
ANR-MAN-OST

Destinations from 8 (MAN never started) to 2: -75%
Weekly departures from ANR from 49 to 27: -45%
Monthly passengers from ANR from 8000 to 5500: -31%
Looks less dramatic in numbers then stating VLM is cancelling everything except ZRH and LCY. 'Only' 30 % of their ANR passengers being affected.

When you have to save a business and you focus on the 2 profitable parts (2 profitable or close to being profitable destinations and the charter business), that actually makes some sense to me. This should put them in a position to stabilize and grow from there in future.

New fleet next year is likely going to be ATR. ATR42 to replace the F50 and hopefully an ATR72 as well to cater for bigger charter groups and peak demand in scheduled flying to LCY and ZRH. A mix of 3 ATR42 and 2 ATR72 would be a great start. ATR72 has a bigger potential for wet lease contracts too.

Just my 5 cents, but I think this decision was good and needed.

[sn26567]

Thanks for this nice analysis, koninckske. Let's hope that their decision was the right one to put them back on the track of profitability.

[sonic boom]

Lucky me. Today on the flight to Maribor, coming back on friday. Just before they cancel the route

So we were on the same flight
16 or 17 PAX on MUC-MBX leg, 3 entering in MUC

I was in 11b and my gf in 11a, So probably you sat in front of me

25+2 pax ANR to MUC 2 pax didnt get on the plane because of a pasport issue. 18 pax MUC to MBX with indeed 3 from MUC

[Mr Frost]

Another problem with those f50 are spare parts, if you can find them the prices are extreme...
These planes are just to expensive to operate.
even they are not even on half of the max flight hours
So they are going to sell VLN (probebly it goes to amapola)
and 1 they will use as spare parts.
to cut costs in parts untill they have a new aircraft.

i think they better buy a small jet and start competing againt tui on holiday destination

[PttU]

Routes remaining:
ANR-LCY (16x weekly)
ANR-ZRH (10x,11x weekly from winter schedule) increasing loads at good fares
Routes cancelled:
ANR-MUC (10x) increasing loads, but rather low fares. Had potential to become a good route in future.

What's the difference between "good fares" to ZRH and "rather low fares" to MUC? Wasn't it 59eur one way for both? Which seems to be cheap compared to SN.
SN/LH has 7 flights/day to MUC, Swiss has 5 daily flights to ZRH, so why can't VLM make both routes work...

i think they better buy a small jet and start competing againt tui on holiday destination

Competing against a tour operator which is much bigger and can link their flights with a hotel etc. Seems like a bad idea to me.
I kinda liked what they were doing: serving business routes at business times, competing against BRU-based alternatives both by price and swiftness using the small-scale ANR-advantage. Especially if there's no LCC serving the same route from BRU/EIN/CRL/... Too bad they didn't get enough traction.

[luchtzak]

While Air Belgium is promoting their route to Hong Kong on social media (and on this site), I didn’t see a single ad for VLM routes...

[koninckske]

What's the difference between "good fares" to ZRH and "rather low fares" to MUC? Wasn't it 59eur one way for both? Which seems to be cheap compared to SN.
SN/LH has 7 flights/day to MUC, Swiss has 5 daily flights to ZRH, so why can't VLM make both routes work...

Starting fare is indeed 59 EUR for both, but after those have sold the fares on the ZRH (100-150-190-240-280-380) are increasing faster than on the MUC (69-110-151-193-230-...). The pax loads are higher on ZRH. So selling the tickets at 190, 240 or 280 happens on many flights. Due to lower loads on the MUC the more expensive tickets are not selling that often.

Also MUC is a longer flight: more fuel, more maintenance, more ATC... costs.

[CTBke]

Routes remaining:
ANR-LCY (16x weekly)
ANR-ZRH (10x,11x weekly from winter schedule) increasing loads at good fares
Routes cancelled:
ANR-MUC (10x) increasing loads, but rather low fares. Had potential to become a good route in future.

What's the difference between "good fares" to ZRH and "rather low fares" to MUC? Wasn't it 59eur one way for both? Which seems to be cheap compared to SN.
SN/LH has 7 flights/day to MUC, Swiss has 5 daily flights to ZRH, so why can't VLM make both routes work...

i think they better buy a small jet and start competing againt tui on holiday destination

Competing against a tour operator which is much bigger and can link their flights with a hotel etc. Seems like a bad idea to me.
I kinda liked what they were doing: serving business routes at business times, competing against BRU-based alternatives both by price and swiftness using the small-scale ANR-advantage. Especially if there's no LCC serving the same route from BRU/EIN/CRL/... Too bad they didn't get enough traction.

don't forget both LH and LX have connecting passengers on both routes and a lot of codeshares .. so it's easy to fill planes, offer low long haul flights and let them connect through both HUBS something VLM doesn't have .. they only offer point to point

[PttU]

What's the difference between "good fares" to ZRH and "rather low fares" to MUC? Wasn't it 59eur one way for both? Which seems to be cheap compared to SN.
SN/LH has 7 flights/day to MUC, Swiss has 5 daily flights to ZRH, so why can't VLM make both routes work...

Starting fare is indeed 59 EUR for both, but after those have sold the fares on the ZRH (100-150-190-240-280-380) are increasing faster than on the MUC (69-110-151-193-230-...). The pax loads are higher on ZRH. So selling the tickets at 190, 240 or 280 happens on many flights. Due to lower loads on the MUC the more expensive tickets are not selling that often.

Also MUC is a longer flight: more fuel, more maintenance, more ATC... costs.

Although the difference is only about 100km, or about 15min flight times, that kinda makes sense... But what about making triangles? ANR-ZRH-MUC-ANR: would that see an increase in LF combining passengers from ANR to both ZRH and MUC, or would that increase the travel time too much and scare off potential passengers for both destinations?

[Haplek]

Lucky me. Today on the flight to Maribor, coming back on friday. Just before they cancel the route

So we were on the same flight
16 or 17 PAX on MUC-MBX leg, 3 entering in MUC

I was in 11b and my gf in 11a, So probably you sat in front of me

25+2 pax ANR to MUC 2 pax didnt get on the plane because of a pasport issue. 18 pax MUC to MBX with indeed 3 from MUC

True, I was on the 10A

[carllegein]

Doing our best but please bear in mind the new CEO is very competent and doing a great job. With Vizion Air we will send them a big pile of charter flights, because we love VLM, the Fokker 50 and the crew are fantastic.

[AAI]

i hope to see some charters out of ANR too

[Flanker3]

It's back to reality I guess.
I was surprised that they launched all these routes, but now we see that it was just madness.
Good to see the cutback and trying to become sustainable.
LCY and ZRH make sense.
If Vizion Air is giving them enough lucrative work, it makes sense to pursue that.

ANR could in theory sustain a major regional network.
In practice though, with BRU just around the corner, it needs to create additional selling points and lower fares.

The ATR42 is a lot of aircraft compared to a F50.
I don't think that they can operate that profitably out of ANR.

Whatever happened to their plans to get A330's, etc? How about the A320's they took over from TCB?

[KriVa]

Regarding A330s and A320s: not the same company, as far as I'm aware. VLM (SHS Antwerp) versus VLM Brussels.

[CTBke]

It's back to reality I guess.
I was surprised that they launched all these routes, but now we see that it was just madness.
Good to see the cutback and trying to become sustainable.
LCY and ZRH make sense.
If Vizion Air is giving them enough lucrative work, it makes sense to pursue that.

ANR could in theory sustain a major regional network.
In practice though, with BRU just around the corner, it needs to create additional selling points and lower fares.

The ATR42 is a lot of aircraft compared to a F50.
I don't think that they can operate that profitably out of ANR.

Whatever happened to their plans to get A330's, etc? How about the A320's they took over from TCB?

two different companies, VLM brussels will go for an Airbus fleet (A320 OO-TCT/A321/A330)