Definitely missed the one rolling off the newsire… From FlightGlobal
Sun Country in March announced plans to launch seasonal scheduled Boeing 737-800 service to London Stansted after securing extended twin-engine operations (ETOPS) certification from the US FAA.
Anyone happen to know the distance between KMSP and EGSS? And seasonal or not, would htat fit into the range of a B738? BBJ, obviously, but this is Part 121 here… I didn’t think the B738 would have that range, but with getting ETOPS certification, it would appear so…
With the exception of this service, there aren’t any LCC (low cost carriers) doing transatlantic routes. A lot of people fly scheduled charter flights between Europe and the USA. I think SCX is experimenting to see if a LCC can make it transatlantic.
I think they can make it if they do it right. By that, I mean grow frequencies slowly and try not to attract too much attention from the incumbent carriers on the USA/London routes.
I think they can do it as well. What just got me though was that while their main rival at KMSP can fly the route easily with an A330 or B753, but a B738 was pushing it with the range.
If SCX kept part of their older fleet (they did fly the DC10-30), then they could easily make it. But they dropped those and their B727s for commonality.
There was Fred Laker’s Skytrain, although most here are far too young to remember it. Did very well until (it is alleged) BA and others colluded to put it out of business.
PeopleExpress and Air Florida (again, carriers that many here are too young to remember unless they are into airline history) both operated transatlantic flights. Both, unfortunately, suffered the same problem that many LCC’s have: they expanded too fast and got into markets they shouldn’t have been in.
It’s amazing though how much of People Express is in the airline industry today. They were the first to charge for baggage ($3), they charged for food ($2), they had charges for “peak” days. Their demise was from the Frontier Airlines purchase though. Wonder if they would have survived if they hadn’t.
Anyway, the route might work. Just looking at fares and I see Sun Country at $485 and everyone else at $1400+ so that would lure some people over.
Ehh, a lot of components would have to fall in place to make it work, mainly the volume of pax. I suppose there will be at least some connecting traffic through MSP, but questionably enough to be profitable. I suppose they’re only B738s we’re talking about, though, maybe it’ll be enough to scrape by.
Several airlines had peak day fares. Or, I guess more correctly, they had discounts for off-peak flights. Two good examples are Aloha and Hawaiian. Both airlines had discounted fares for the flights before 0700 and after a certain time at night.
When Southwest started, they had two fares for any given city pair. They had off-peak fares on weekends and I believe certain flights during the week.
When the airlines had their fares regulated by the Civil Aeronautics Board, most, if not all, of the airlines had night fares which could be considered off-peak fares.
The purchase of Frontier by PeoplExpress was a mistake. Not only did they purchase Frontier but shortly afterward they also purchased Britt Airways (a commuter airline in the midwest) and Provincetown-Boston Airlines (PBA) (a commuter with flights in New England and Florida).
Frontier was operated as a subsidiary. In 1986 it tried to sell Frontier to United by the deal fell through. As a result, Frontier ceased operations.
In separate transactions, Frontier and PeoplExpress were sold to Texas Air Corp., the holding company for Continental Airlines. Ironically, the founders of PeoplExpress were all former execs of Texas International, an airline that was part of Texas Air Corp.
Stansted along with Luton are the main UK airports for LCC’s. The last time I was there we wandered over to the terminal for lunch. Scoping out the departure board I saw there was a flight to Calgary using an A330. I checked it out and they (forget who) operated 3 or 4 times a week. And this was in March, not exactly peak season for either city.
Thomas Cook. Winter is Calgary’s peak season for skiing and the flights continue to Vancouver (also skiing, but more general tourism) so I’m sure there’s a steady demand. TCX is pretty much year-round to both cities.
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