Great Western Coffee Shop

From FlyBe ... from my mailbox this morning:

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/be_cdf_lcy.jpg)

3 flights each way per day ... with the advertised price next available from Cardiff at lunchtime on Monday 26th; prices up to £100.99 for morning flight for next couple of days.  3% credit card surcharge.

Probably a sensible alternative for some who live on the west of Cardiff and who have Docklands business, but the route capacity will be very limited, and with only 3 flights a day it won't work for everyone.

These flights have been on sale for some months.

Some recent operational difficulty for them here as they were to sub-contract these flights to a small Belgian airline, VLM, who have since gone bust and ceased operations.

From what I can tell, the first flight left Cardiff at just after 8 this morning, using one of their own Q400 aircraft (usually these have 78 seats).
It arrived at London City at 0910 (source: Flightradar24)

The advert appears to suggest it is a temporary arrangement during the Severn Tunnel works - any indications if it is intended to become a more permanent fixture? Base line prices versus the current price suggests reasonable demand is there. I wonder if this might, ahem, take off? Interesting bit of competition for GWR if it did as LCY is also rather convenient and well connected for visits to the Square Mile and other central London locations

Normally with flybe the dates stated are the offer dates. It has been going for some months so maybe more permanent.

Flights are being offered for sale up to and including 21st October (at present). Booking calendar greyed out beyond that point.

As far as I know it's only for the tunnel closure period - Flybe online timetable would appear to confirm as such.

The first return flight from LCY this morning shows an airborne time of only 40 mins, despite a slightly circuitous routing around some of the busy London holding areas.

one guy in our Cardiff office has used it to get to our London office (Holborn).  The convenience seems to turn on how easy it is for him to drive to Cardiff Airport because he lives South of Cardiff and would have to get in the car anyway to get to the station.  A colleague living in a valley North of Cardiff is driving to BPW, and one living in the city centre is getting the train via Gloucester. 

Hi All,

Might give this a try all I need is a reason to go up to London, had a quick look and on a couple of weekends it only works out £4 more than a GWR return, must have the larger plane in use and spare seats. Even during the week there are some cheap fares. Have a look at month view.

Basset

A follow up article from BBC Wales here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-37276134 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-37276134)

Cardiff's business community seem to be quite keen on this flight and also rail electrification - last 3 paragraphs contain a few interesting, but somewhat vague, opinions on the price of rail tickets and quality of service provided by GWR.

Quite possibly, as the route would have originally gone on sale based on a 50 seat approx Fokker 50 (operated by the now-defunct VLM), but for reasons already explained is now being operated by Flybe themselves with a 76-78 seat Bombardier Q400.

Flybe have announced these flights are to continue "while demand exists":

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-37671714 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-37671714)

plus how long to get to the airport, minimum check-in times and, if Canary Wharf isn't your destination, another 30+minutes at least.....train wins. I can't see it lasting

No harm in a bit of competition though - even if it eventually fails.  I suspect it will struggle massively when when IET's knock 15 or so minutes off the current timings, but might survive in the intervening years.

Minimum check-in at London City is 20 mins but I'd allow half an hour.

When there were direct flights from London City to Plymouth (before the Landlords pulled the plug), I could leave my office in Southwark at 1700 and be back in Plymouth by 1900, If I had done the equivalent by train I would be lucky to be in Plymouth by 2130, providing there was no problems on the 2 tube lines I used, and I always got a seat on the plane......tended to be no signal failures either  ;)

Sounds like Cardiff is even quicker. Plane wins every time if you want to get there reliably and quickly. Good luck to them.

indeed, certainly quicker on the London/Cardiff leg.

Plus time to get to station (equal to Cardiff airport for many in S.Wales travelling to London), collect tickets, travel from Paddington to final destination...

I hope it succeeds.

You didn't mention the frequency.... :-)

I wonder why.

Not surprised this is continuing for a while....although it's possible we'll see what has happened with the EXT-LCY service, where Flybe started with 3 round-trips a day and gradually shrank it to the "up" (railway terminology!) in the morning, and "down" service in the evening that generally seems to operate at the moment.

The Q400 is known in aviation circles for it's fuel efficiency, and relative speed. I've tracked this flight a few times and it's quiet common for the LCY-CWL sector to be flown in 35-40 mins. The "up" is a bit slower, as it includes a very long arrival route into LCY, which usually includes a tour of north and east Kent!

No reason whatsoever, you didn't mention frequency either...

The target market for these flights is business customers, who are most likely to be interested in an arrival before 9am and departure after 5pm - hence why early morning and late afternoon trains and motorways are also at their busiest.

Flybe strike me as a pretty sorted company and unlikely to commit resources on a whim. Plenty of short haul flights are successful at frequencies of 3 return journeys per day or less. Has it struck you they may not be trying to compete directly with the railways, but by running these flights for a trial period have identified a discrete and workable market for themselves?

we'll see, won't we.....

Flybe have got a very popular and successful route from Exeter to London City too.....I agree that they are not consciously directly competing with the railways right now, it will always be niche/discrete however it won't hurt GWR to get a kick in the arse to make them look over their shoulder when a proportion of their premium 1st class customers start moving from rail to air.

Am I right in thinking that, apart from Exeter to London City once a day, the only other flights out of Devon and Cornwall to London are from Newquay to either Stansted or Gatwick three or four times a day?  Devon and Cornwall are very poorly connected by air if that is the case!

I think it's been a case of use it or lose it - along with Plymouth's City Council's decision on it's airport - but I guess the same might have applied?.

Correct II, 3 daily (2 at weekends) between NQY and LGW, year round. Daily at present between NQY and STN, but that is a seasonal route which ends (with the airline world's switch of seasons) just before end of October. Flybe haven't published their Summer '17 timetable yet, so don't know if the latter will return next year.

Only other regular, year round, connections from NQY are to Manchester (MAN), and Dublin (DUB, new for this Winter and not daily), not forgetting Skybus to the IoS.

Thanks for that.  Sad in a way that there isn't more competition from the airlines as that would keep GWR on their toes more.  Looks like the demand just isn't there?  Looking at a couple of links on-line it appears that Plymouth airport was being kept open for just one operator a couple of times a day, so no wonder it closed.  Increases in rail frequency (and a very modest decrease in journey times) when the AT300s replace the HSTs, and improvements to the Cornish roads, specifically the A30 and A38, will only make that uneven playing field even more uneven in the bias towards rail/road for anything other than a tiny number of air routes.

It certainly wasn't a lack of use, there was a huge rise in passenger numbers using Plymouth Airport between 2008 - 2009 and the London City flights were phenomenally popular..........I must have used them at least two dozen times and I can rarely recall spare seats............the idiocy on behalf of the operators was selling the London City slots for a fast buck and moving all the "London" flights to Gatwick, which increased journey times into town hugely and also check in times etc.

Most Businesses in Plymouth agree on two things - the airport was vital to the city's prosperity and that road/rail links, particularly to London and the South East are poor.

The flights to destinations other than London never really worked out, but if the airport can be reopened (not particularly likely despite lots of noise) Heathrow may well be prepared to invest - sadly, the land is ideal for housing which is likely to be far more attractive to the (inept) leaseholders/Council looking to make (another) quick buck!

A more forward thinking Council than PCC would have looked to develop the airport and increase flights, but that's Plymouth I'm afraid! (I speak as a Janner myself!)

Some of the points you raise here apply to Cardiff, but in the opposite sense - as many may know the Welsh Assembly Government took over ownership of the airport a couple of years ago and they are very, very keen to increase passenger numbers (somewhat surprisingly they've had some success with this) and to compete with Bristols current stranglehold as the main regional airport, so I suspect the CWL-LCY flights might well receive support, even just moral if not financial, from the WAG.

It should also be noted that the vast majority of air routes and airports are operated on a purely commercial basis and receive few of the subsidies that the railways receive.

Chrisr_75 I wish Flybe and the Welsh Assembly every success - LCY is a great airport and a real gateway into London without being the vast security warehouse of LHR and the package tour hell that is LGW!

I sincerely hope it is a success, I've been of the opinion for a while that a new (there once upon a time used to be a CWL-LHR flight) flight from Cardiff to London and that there is a market there to be exploited. I think it's the kind of headline grabbing service the WAG will be keen to retain as long as it works commercially.

I travelled from CWL in May this year to Munich (for onward journey to the Dolomites) and found it to be a most pleasant experience - 50 minute bus ride from my front door to airport, bus stop a 10 minute stroll from terminal door. Check in to departure lounge took all of 5 minutes (yes, seriously!). A few of the 'charter flight' types (sorry for the stereotypes, but you know what I'm getting at...) in the bar but mostly well behaved.

I was deeply sceptical when they first took over, but good work so far WAG!

Plymouth airport was served by AirSouthWest, owned by Sutton Harbour Holdings. They are also the leaseholders of the airport from Plymouth City Council. Seems anti competition.

Flybe have announced that the CWL-LCY service is going to continue through the 2017 Summer flights season to October (at least).

Some positive voxpops for the service within the above press release (esp. from the big business world).

I've been checking it's punctuality from time to time and it appears to be fairly good. Actual flight times are often around 40 mins.

Now announced that they're to end in October

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-40873067 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-40873067)

Whether it be trains or planes you've got to fill 'em to make them pay. Unless the government is paying of course  ;)

Shame about this service ending though.

And with certain exceptions (such as Westray to Papa Westray) the short hops and a thinnish schedule don't compete well with other modes of travel on offer.

I'm surprised it's folded quite so quickly.

It was doomed as soon as they stopped passengers taking sheep on board.