Has Flybe's collapse allowed Southampton to prosper?

Last week, I wrote an article about Belfast City since the collapse of Flybe: Has Flybe's collapse allowed Belfast City to prosper? (seanm1997.blogspot.com). This time, I am looking at Southampton.

On 5 March 2020, Flybe ceased operations, leading to many routes across the United Kingdom being cut. At Southampton, Flybe had 94% of total seats and 91% of movements with a total of 631,192 scheduled departure seats. Southampton was forecast to be Flybe's second largest airport in terms of departures and fourth largest cities in terms of seats. The loss for Southampton was probably the greatest of all airports that Flybe served, yet this loss gave Southampton an opportunity to be less reliant on one carrier and to spread its operations across many.

First came Loganair - adding flights from Edinburgh, Glasgow and Newcastle followed by Eastern Airways announcing flights to Manchester, Belfast City and Dublin. Blue Islands then announced a new base in Southampton, with flights to Manchester and Dublin, before KLM announced a return to the airport after a year hiatus with a daily flight to Amsterdam.

In December 2020, Southampton received its biggest news since the collapse of Flybe. BA CityFlyer would launch 11 new routes from May 2021. This included new routes to Berlin, Ibiza, Malaga and Mykonos. This significantly increased the number of leisure routes from the airport, which has long been a predominantly a business airport with leisure flights operating from nearby Bournemouth.

Interestingly, BA CityFlyer also added flights to Bergerac, Nice and Limoges, whilst Eastern Airways announced two new routes to Nantes and Rennes. Why am I highlighting these French additions?

When Flybe operated to Southampton, half of Southampton's routes were to regional France and these had been diminished. Whilst these are just four routes, it demonstrated a resilience from the airport in its aim of being a regional hub between the United Kingdom and France. What this also shows is that more than one carrier saw potential in Southampton to be connected to France, thus brought competition to the airport for the first time.

Continuing with the expansion, Eastern Airways announced a route to Gibraltar whilst British Airways announced two more routes - Alicante and Chambery, the sixth route to France.

In total, Summer 2021 will provide 26 non-stop routes to Southampton across 6 airlines including 11 domestic routes and 15 international routes. However, the international routes remain significantly reduced from the times of Flybe. This is a stark contrast to Belfast City which as grown its route network.

When compared to years gone past, Southampton are not so reliant on one carrier. The airport has become more resilient to external factors. If another airline collapses, the airport should be able to recover, but not being reliant on just one airline allows the airport to have more room in negotiating deals with airlines.

What next for Southampton?

Southampton, like Belfast City, is constrained by its short runway length. However, in April 2021, Southampton were granted permission to extend its runway by 164m. This will allow an Airbus A320 to operate to the airport on a full pay load. This will be a few years away meaning the airport would have to look at other ways to grow in the short term.

Paris Charles de Gaulle is the busiest route that remains unserved from the airport. Air France could operate the route with its Hop! subsidiary, but the airline may not want to impact its sister airline, KLM. However, with over 75,000 annual passengers on the route, it appears to be a major loss for the airport.

Southampton could look at adding weekday BA CityFlyer routes to the airport. Currently, BA CityFlyer operate at weekends only (except Bergerac which operates on a Tuesday as well), but this would mean a reduction in flights from BA CityFlyer's base at London City. The Embraer 190 is well suited for Southampton due to its small runway and BA CityFlyer's network works well with Southampton's affluent catchment.

However, where the airport could prosper is attracting easyJet to launch UK domestic routes. easyJet added domestic routes from Bournemouth in Summer 2021 as Southampton's runway is not suitable for easyJet's A320 aircraft. However, an A319 at slightly reduced pay load can operate from the airport and easyJet maybe well suited for Southampton with its wealthy catchment and large number of unserved routes - especially in Europe, as well as reduced domestic frequencies compared to Flybe.

Southampton Airport could really have suffered with its main airline collapsing and the impacts of COVID reducing travel demand across the world. However, the airport has managed to rebuild its network. The airport maybe less reliant on one carrier but now operates a significantly smaller route network and movements. The airport may need to look at adding new airlines to its network in order to grow. The collapse of Flybe has not allowed Southampton to prosper to the same extent as Belfast City, but has allowed the airport to have a more diverse offering.

Photo: https://mediacentre.britishairways.com/imagelibrary/categories/647
Photo: https://mediacentre.easyjet.com/content-files