News: Flight Route Changes Summary
Flights > News > # 188 (14/03/2005)
The major announcement this week was the launch of flights from London Heathrow to Riyadh by BMI, in addition to confirmation of their flights from London to Mumbai (Bombay).
Bmibaby have also confirmed their plans for flights from Birmingham and Durham Tees Valley to Cork.
Aside from this, the market for flights to and from the UK has been relatively quiet, with a few airports issuing passenger figures (see our comments on Birmingham airport's results), but not much else happening.
London City Airport picked up another award for passenger Airport of the Year, in a survey aimed at business travellers. This is hardly surprising, considering the excellent and compact range of facilities the airport offers.
Across the pond, far more significant developments were taking place, with the collapse of Canadian no-frills airline Jetsgo. Considering their recent incidents, and the withdrawal of certain operational certificates, this announcement really came as no surprise. What it does show is that the market for flights is volatile across the world, and not just in Europe. Meanwhile, the USA continues to experience significant overcapacity in a sick industry, which is only being kept alive by enormous life support subsidies from the Bush administration.
This is certainly a market in which only the strongest should survive, and Jetsgo clearly seem to have had a number of internal management problems which aided their downfall. Because of its generally sparse population, and wide mountainous terrain, combined with the general lack of "Ryanairport" type facilities, Canada remains a tough market for no-frills airlines to operate in. It will be interesting to see how quickly, if at all, the void left by Jetsgo gets filled.
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