Spain Is Significant Exception from Its Home Base in Dublin; Five While Demand for International Air Services Continues to Grow Strike in December
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Issue 54 Monday 10 February 2020 www.anker-report.com Contents Domestic air travel falls in Europe in 1 Domestic air travel falls in Europe in 2019; Spain is notable exception. 2 Ryanair serves over 100 destinations 2019; Spain is significant exception from its home base in Dublin; five While demand for international air services continues to grow strike in December. As a result the German decline in domestic new routes added for S20. strongly across Europe, the same can not be said for domestic demand may be rather overstated, especially in the last quarter 3 Passenger trends for 2019 in air services. The recent near collapse of Flybe in the UK has of 2019. Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. helped highlight some of the challenges facing airlines Finally, UK domestic air traffic, after a positive start in Q1, went 3 Airlines serving only one UK airport operating in Europe’s domestic markets. into decline from April onwards. The positive growth in Q1 can this summer (other than London The ANKER Report has collected passenger data from a range of be attributed to Ryanair which had cancelled its biggest UK Heathrow) revealed. sources to look at how domestic air travel has been evolving in domestic route between London STN and Edinburgh in W17/18 4 Jet2.com overtakes easyJet to 2019. In Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK national statistics are because of the pilot holiday issues it had encountered, but was already available for all airports in those countries. However, back operating up to 4-daily flights on the route in early 2019. become leading Newcastle airline; French national data is not yet available. Here, Aéroports de The traffic decline from April onwards was also driven by Lufthansa is newest carrier. Paris (ADP) figures for domestic traffic from Paris CDG and Paris Ryanair’s decision to cut UK domestic capacity by almost 60%, 5 Europe to Saudi Arabia market Orly have been used, as these two airports account for a partly as a result of its Boeing MAX delivery issues, as well as a grows 500% since 2004; links from significant proportion of French domestic air travel. 6% cut in Flybe’s domestic capacity. During that period British Turkey dominate. Spain up, Germany and UK down Airways (+2%) and easyJet (+1%) both increased UK domestic capacity marginally. 6 European route launch news and For the purposes of this analysis we will refer to the UK as an analysis covering 13 airlines and 24 EU country as it was a member throughout 2019. Among the Turkey and Nordic countries see domestic drop new services since mid-January. top five EU domestic markets only Spain reported consistent Looking at passenger data from other European countries 8 Ryanair launches flights to Armenia, domestic traffic growth throughout 2019, never falling below shows that domestic air travel was also in decline elsewhere. In 4% and almost reaching 10% in June. Overall, the number of Turkey domestic passenger numbers fell by 11.3% to 112.9 Wizz Air and airBaltic to follow. 9 Mini airport profiles of Bodø in Norway, Brest in France and Kos in Greece. Welcome The domestic air travel market in Europe had a difficult 2019, especially in the second half of the year. We reveal actual passenger trends for a wide range of domestic markets and which were the leading domestic airlines in Europe last year. We also look at Ryanair’s home base of Dublin, Newcastle Airport, market trends from Europe to both Armenia and Saudi Arabia, traffic trends at three passengers passing through Spanish airports on domestic flights million while international traffic was up 11.4% to 97.6 million. smaller European airports, plus a bit of grew by 6.4% to almost 85.8 million. Remember that domestic Turkey is one of the few European countries where domestic fun for UK-based plane spotters. passengers will be counted at each end of their journey, so a traffic is still bigger than international traffic, along with Norway person making a domestic return flight will be counted as four and Russia. Finally, remember to check out the passenger movements. According to Avinor, Norwegian domestic traffic was down EATS database of airport traffic on our In Italy, the domestic market grew in the first half of 2019 (by 0.4% to 30.73 million, whereas international traffic increased by website, which already has full 2019 just under 3%), but contracted in the second half of the year by 1.8% to 22.77m). In neighbouring Sweden, which appears to be data for over 400 airports. around 1%. Across the year as a whole domestic passengers the main driver of the so-called ‘flight shaming’ movement, grew by 0.7% to 64.4 million according to assaeroporti. Transportstyrelsen data for 2019 and 2018 shows that domestic Ralph Anker A similar pattern was seen in France at Paris’s two main traffic was down 9% in 2019. In nearby Finland, Finavia data for [email protected] airports. Between January and June domestic traffic was up 2019 shows that domestic traffic was down 0.9% to 5.88 million 1.9%, but from May onwards domestic traffic was declining passengers, while international traffic was up 5.7% to 20.14 compared with 2018, and by the end of the year ADP’s million. domestic traffic was reported as having fallen by 0.3%. In Greece, it was another year of two halves for domestic Germany also had a year of two halves. In the first half of 2019 traffic, according to data from Athens Airport. In the first half of domestic traffic was up 2.4% to 23.2 million. However, the 2019, during which domestic traffic grew every month, second half of the year saw a significant reduction, with passenger numbers were up 4% to 3.48 million. However, in November domestic air travel down 12% and December the second (busier) half of the year demand fell by 2.6% to 4.27 domestic traffic recording a drop of almost 9%. Some of this million, resulting in tiny growth of 0.3% across the whole year from 7.73 million in 2018 to 7.75 can be accounted for by Lufthansa staff going on a two-day continues on page 10 strike in early November, while Eurowings staff also went on million in 2019. The ANKER Report Issue 54: Monday 10 February 2020 1 Ryanair serves over 100 destinations from its home base in Dublin; five new routes added for S20 as Spanish routes lead ASK rankings Europe’s biggest (U)LCC Ryanair has its corporate headquarters in Dublin. Originally the airline’s biggest base it was overtaken by London STN many years ago but still ranks as its second biggest airport for annual seats in 2019 (ahead of Milan BGY and Barcelona). Since 2006, Ryanair has consistently accounted for between 38% and 44% of Dublin’s scheduled seat capacity. Local national carrier Aer Lingus is the other major carrier at the airport. Since 2006 Ryanair has usually been the bigger airline in terms of annual seats apart from between 2011 and 2014. 2008 peak only bettered in 2016 The global economic recession of 2008/09 hit the Irish market quite hard. While Aer Lingus beat its 2008 capacity figure in 2013, it would take Ryanair a further three years to beat the figure of 6.73 million departing seats it had offered in 2008. Last year saw both Ryanair and Aer Lingus set all-time records for seat capacity in Dublin, which handled almost 33 million passengers, an increase of 4.5% on 2018. Last summer Ryanair served 100 destinations from Dublin after adding over a dozen new routes. In total, Ryanair has offered flights to over 140 destinations from Dublin in over 30 years of operating from the airport. Spanish routes lead way for Ryanair A look at the airline’s leading routes last summer by ASKs (which takes into account frequency and sector length) shows that seven of the top 15 routes by this metric are to Spanish destinations. Four of the top six routes are to Spain with Malaga just edging out Faro for the top spot thanks to its longer sector length. Of the remaining eight routes, there are two each to Italy, Portugal and the UK, and one each to Hungary and the Netherlands. The highest frequency routes last summer were London STN (54 weekly flights), London LGW (48), Birmingham and Manchester (both 37) and Amsterdam 28. A total of 20 routes were served at least 2-daily and a further 23 were routes were served at least daily. All routes are served at least 2-weekly in summer. Three new routes for S20 plus two resumptions Five new routes have so far been unveiled for this summer; Marseille in France, Menorca in Spain, Palanga in Lithuania, Podgorica in Montenegro and Verona in Italy. Both Marseille and Verona have previously been served by Ryanair from Dublin. Flights to Munich are suspended from the end of March 2020, which will be great news for Aer Lingus and Lufthansa, who also both operate the route. In recent years Ryanair has also dropped German routes to Bremen, Frankfurt HHN and Stuttgart. Domestic flights to Shannon ended in 2008, while Cork and Kerry services were operated until the end of summer 2011. Ryanair’s network developments from Dublin 2008-2020 Year Destinations from Dublin Destinations no longer served 2008 Bologna, Brest, Cuneo, Kerry, Palma de Mallorca, Rodez, Santander, Tours, Zadar Malmö, Pula, Stockholm VST, Tenerife TFN, Vitoria 2009 Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, Memmingen Blackpool, Forli, Shannon, Warsaw WAW 2010 Barcelona, Oslo RYG, Tallinn Basel, Billund, Bremen, Cuneo, Doncaster Sheffield, Friedrichshafen, Gothenburg GSE, Tampere, Teesside, Weeze 2011 Ibiza, Venice VCE, Vilnius Almeria, Bournemouth, Brest, Budapest, Hamburg LBC, Karlsruhe/Baden- Baden, Oslo TRF, Prague 2012 Budapest, Lublin, Maastricht, Palermo, Verona VRN, Warsaw