As the title says, Easyjet is closing their Hamburg base in 2018. It really is a pity for us here since they enabled us to enjoy great fares on the routes they were on, especially LON. They are currently #3 in terms of capacity while FR is aggressively growing and EW is strong. Wonder whether it has to do with the competition they face or whether it is internal reasons.
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2017/06 ... .html?_r=0

I'm surprised. Originally I thought that it was working out well. I'm guessing that EW is fighting hard for marketshare.

Honestly: I am happy to see the orange birds disappearing from HAM market. And I hope, Ryanair will be next. Their behaviour and aggressivity don't fit to the HAM market, to the very openminded and liberal mentally of Hamburg People, which is rather unique world-wide. No Body will miss them, I swear. EUROWINGS and GERMANWINGS are strong and mighty with their mother Lufthansa in the back and they will capture the market, believe me! And other German markets will see Easy Jet and others go... I bet! The market is regulating itself!

AirbusOnly wrote:

Honestly: I am happy to see the orange birds disappearing from HAM market. And I hope, Ryanair will be next. Their behaviour and aggressivity don't fit to the HAM market, to the very openminded and liberal mentally of Hamburg People, which is rather unique world-wide. No Body will miss them, I swear.

That comment doesn't seem very open-minded to me.

travelin man wrote:

AirbusOnly wrote:

Honestly: I am happy to see the orange birds disappearing from HAM market. And I hope, Ryanair will be next. Their behaviour and aggressivity don't fit to the HAM market, to the very openminded and liberal mentally of Hamburg People, which is rather unique world-wide. No Body will miss them, I swear.

That comment doesn't seem very open-minded to me.

Same here!

Neither does it to me, it is true that U2 was usually the cheapest from among the three on the London route and various other markets that two or more of the LCCs were in. But I wasn't under the impression that fares at HAM were lower than at other bases overall. I certainly will miss them given that HAM is usually a more expensive markets than the more competitive markets of CGN/DUS and TXL/SXF. When U2 exited PAR this year, fares jumped and I fear that this is going to happen to other routes as well. It will be interesting to see whether Norwegian will try to enter the gap that U2 might leave, if the airport indeed suffers substantial cuts, this might come handy if they also finally resolve to start longhaul exHAM.

Was hoping U2 has scheduled another Joshua Tree Tour stop...oh well.

Seems odd they are starting a new seasonal service to Valencia ?

The article does state: "EasyJet said it would keep a significant presence in Hamburg and that there would be no changes to the currently planned schedule."

Therefore routes operating HAM-xxx-HAM will now go xxx-HAM-xxx so this would appear to signal a change in operations at bases that are currently linked to HAM via a HAM based aircraft.

It seems in this case closing the base doesn't mean stop flying. The article finishes with:

EasyJet said it would keep a significant presence in Hamburg and that there would be no changes to the currently planned schedule

AirbusOnly wrote:

No Body will miss them

Per the OP's statement, you're clearly wrong. Competition is always a good thing for the consumer.

AirbusOnly wrote:

Honestly: I am happy to see the orange birds disappearing from HAM market. And I hope, Ryanair will be next. Their behaviour and aggressivity don't fit to the HAM market, to the very openminded and liberal mentally of Hamburg People, which is rather unique world-wide. No Body will miss them, I swear. EUROWINGS and GERMANWINGS are strong and mighty with their mother Lufthansa in the back and they will capture the market, believe me! And other German markets will see Easy Jet and others go... I bet! The market is regulating itself!

But they're not disappearing. They're just closing HAM as a base. I don't see them abandoning HAM anytime soon.

I'm certainly no Hamburg resident, but I do spend a good amount of time in HAM and take EasyJet there about half of the time...I hope they remain an option, particularly on MAN-HAM!

I see. So for all of the Brexit Armageddon & claims U2 would shut down their UK ops they're doing it in a very roundabout way by shutting a base in the country which controls the EU?

Rumour has it they're adding a craft to SEN. In addition to aircraft added to LTN, BRS, LGW and EDI. I suppose they're just going to pull those all back out when we leave?

http://www.aero.de/news-26810/Easyjet-z ... rueck.html
German webpage aero.de are quoting U2 as reducing capacity by up to 70 per cent and stating that there are too many airlines on many routes. We're certainly looking at major cuts and HAM-XXX-HAM are not all going XXX-HAM-XXX

Man, EasyJet is having a rough go in the German market...DUS and CGN bit the dust a few years back (granted, they were just daily LGW routes), HAM is headed downhill...they can't make inroads at Dresden and Stuttgart...Munich is limited...no Frankfurt service...their sole decent operations is SXF.

@AWACSooner, there was also their Dortmund operation. Launched as a 4 aircraft base in 2005, they now only have a flight to LTN left. Indeed, little luck in Germany.

AirbusOnly wrote:

Honestly: I am happy to see the orange birds disappearing from HAM market. And I hope, Ryanair will be next. Their behaviour and aggressivity don't fit to the HAM market, to the very openminded and liberal mentally of Hamburg People, which is rather unique world-wide. No Body will miss them, I swear. EUROWINGS and GERMANWINGS are strong and mighty with their mother Lufthansa in the back and they will capture the market, believe me! And other German markets will see Easy Jet and others go... I bet! The market is regulating itself!

So you're happy that people are losing jobs? Because that's what will happen, staff will be laid off if they don't get another job offer from U2, EW or any other.

And don't think for a second that FR is leaving HAM. Apart from the incentives they must have received after they moved from LBC to HAM, they've been expanding for a while and I have not heard anything that indicates that they're reaching a dead end with their expansion plans. And, as much as I despise FR, we need the competition because if you let the LH Group alone in HAM (with LH, LX and EW), they can hike fares beyond belief with such a de-facto monopoly. And don't get me started about the implications of AB going under and LH grabbing a big chunk of their route network from HAM.

So yeah, let the market regulate itself, but don't be glad about the possibility that many people can be laid off because U2 is cutting capacity as drastically as they will. And don't be glad about a move that could potentially raise fares to such a point that people will choose different means of travel because it becomes more and more unaffordable.

Germany's a tough market altogether with eurowings and Lufthansa, Easyjet are just scaling back, they've been losing money on the continent and maybe need to refocus on their primary market of the UK. They are doing well at Amsterdam though and Orly so maybe just fill the gaps in the eu that ryanair doesn't over capacitate, easy have dropped the ball a bit in some of their previously successful markets with poor schedules and high pricing, letting ryanair come in and dominate a bit, their doing it in in my home town of Belfast, along with jet2 and we're starting to see less of the orange which is all bfs used to be.

I'd hedge a few bets and say that with easy changing up to some a321's their focusing efforts on high density cities unlike ryanair making their own market.

Sorry this may seem a bit rantish, just tired

AirbusOnly wrote:

No Body will miss them, I swear.

We can agree that Lufthansa won't miss them. I wouldn't be too sure about anyone else. According to a report in airliners.de EasyJet in Hamburg carries about 1.5 million passengers a year. If the projected reductions for 2018 are correct, that figure will fall to 500,000. Will upwards of a million potential passengers be happy to see them go?

http://www.airliners.de/easyjet-basis-h ... afen/41578

As to U2 and FR not "fitting in" with the open-minded and liberal attitude, does that attitude not include the right to enter a market and serve destinations that meet travellers' needs? If so, I would describe that attitude as snobbish rather than open-minded. It may well be that with the level of entrants into the market there is not room for all to remain, but that has little to do with liberal attitudes any more than Lufthansa shifting to a LCC model with Eurowings does.

I opened a thread a few months ago about easyJet's (lack of) strategy and I remember well the kind of things I was told and how clueless I was . But it seems that easyJet has no idea on what to do. Anywhere they face Ryanair they are gone. Let's see:

- Spain. This is a study case. Probably advised by The Sun that predicted economic armageddon for Spain five years ago, they closed all the bases there. What is the result? Ten years ago in MAD, easyJet was the "low-cost of choice" (Ryanair was not even there). During the crisis Ryanair and Norwegian grew (this was the time Iberia was a mess) and 10 years later Ryanair has dozens of routes while easyJet has a handful of routes (I don't think they added a single one in one decade). easyJet in MAD is becoming as relevant as Wizzair or Transavia. They could leave Madrid tomorrow and nobody would remember them. This is Europe's 5th or 6th airport where 10 years ago they were the leader low-cost. Btw at the time they were leaving Spain, they grew in Egypt or Tunisia.

- Moscow: Gone despite being the only Western low-cost in Russia.

- Rome. Gone. They closed their base since they could not compete with Ryanair.

- Germany. Now Hamburg. But this is not the first time the cancel routes there. Some major routes from SXF have been cancelled (Brussels, Madrid). They closed routes out of DUS or CGN (major airports).

They were the "smart urban" low-cost but now they are leaving those routes to Ryanair. Outside some of their key airports in the UK, France (they should thank French labour regulations) and Switzerland nobody knows anymore what easyJet is doing. And they are still big in France and Switzerland because for reasons X or Y Ryanair has not pushed into those two countries.

So basically easyJet leaves big markets when Ryanair enters and then they look for new niche markets (Israel, Iceland, Croatia, etc) until Ryanair starts flights there and then back to square one. At the end it looks that they are becoming a kind of Monarch or Thomas Cook out of London, MAN, BSL and GVA.

Zachbt wrote:

Germany's a tough market altogether with eurowings and Lufthansa, Easyjet are just scaling back, they've been losing money on the continent and maybe need to refocus on their primary market of the UK. They are doing well at Amsterdam though and Orly so maybe just fill the gaps in the eu that ryanair doesn't over capacitate, easy have dropped the ball a bit in some of their previously successful markets with poor schedules and high pricing, letting ryanair come in and dominate a bit, their doing it in in my home town of Belfast, along with jet2 and we're starting to see less of the orange which is all bfs used to be.

No wonder. Ryanair hardly has any presence in Amsterdam (two routes only) and does not fly to any of the major Paris airports. Over there, EasyJet can still dominate the LCC market because of the lack of Ryanair.

If EasyJet wants to survive they need to lower their prices and attack Ryanair in a price war. Right now everywhere Ryanair pulls in EasyJet pulls out. If this continues there'll be no market left for EasyJet. And the customers just pick the lowest price which is mostly found at Ryanair instead of EasyJet.

AirbusOnly wrote:

Honestly: I am happy to see the orange birds disappearing from HAM market. And I hope, Ryanair will be next. Their behaviour and aggressivity don't fit to the HAM market, to the very openminded and liberal mentally of Hamburg People, which is rather unique world-wide. No Body will miss them, I swear. EUROWINGS and GERMANWINGS are strong and mighty with their mother Lufthansa in the back and they will capture the market, believe me! And other German markets will see Easy Jet and others go... I bet! The market is regulating itself!

Sounds very closed-minded to me and not even a bit realistic.

In fact, Ryanair is the very reason EasyJet is closing their Hamburg base. The market is indeed regulating itself because, unlike you said, people from Hamburg pick the lowest fare. That used to be found at EasyJet and is now found at Ryanair. We don't need Lufthansa and their counterparts.

EZY said their goal was to became #1 in HAM. Sounds ambitious in hindsight regarding their moderate growth in recent years. Seems odd they give it up for marketshare reasons no matter if flights were profitable or not. I flew on many of them and (perceived) utilization never was anything below 80%. Policy now shifts to further strengthen their strongholds where EZY is already dominating like Berlin-Schonefeld. "If we cant be #1, we're out"
Cut-throat competition is not always good. Its a race to the bottom in most cases where comfort and flexibility fell by the wayside.

blackbox67 wrote:

EZY said their goal was to became #1 in HAM. Sounds ambitious in hindsight regarding their moderate growth in recent years. Seems odd they give it up for marketshare reasons no matter if flights were profitable or not. I flew on many of them and (perceived) utilization never was anything below 80%. Policy now shifts to further strengthen their strongholds where EZY is already dominating like Berlin-Schonefeld. "If we cant be #1, we're out"
Cut-throat competition is not always good. Its a race to the bottom in most cases where comfort and flexibility fell by the wayside.

I think Ryanair is already number 1 in SXF.

I think this is a short sighted move. The company is too worried about performance in the short term. They sight to be competitive they would have to base more a/c there . A/c which they don't have spare . It does seem that giving up places to Ryanair will just signal for Ryanair to expand. The only reason they are holding on is because there at capacity restricted airports. AMS and Lgw are full. I was hoping that local authority would clamp down on tax evasion in Italy and Germany by fr . This for some reason hasn't happened so of course they can offer lower fares.
Upscaling to 321neo should help lower there fares . Other than that they don't really have an answer. Perhaps they should merge with wizz that would provide them with low cost base they need

The article does state: "EasyJet said it would keep a significant presence in Hamburg and that there would be no changes to the currently planned schedule."

Not really, I'm afraid. German sources including the local Abendblatt all cite a reduction in capacity of two thirds. They also say that there are strategic considerations behind, and U2 wants to concentrate on markets where they are or can be leader. The HAM market is too divided among FR, U2, EW and DY for anyone to be dominant. This is mainly a consequence of FR's move from LBC into HAM, IMO, which led even DY to close some routes.

http://www.abendblatt.de/wirtschaft/art ... luege.html

Their route network out of HAM remains viable, now the question is who will pick it up. For the sake of HAM consumers, hopefully not EW...
It reminds me of their (much more relevant) closure of the MAD base, which was happily picked up by FR & DY (and recently the new IB), and IMO was a very short-sighted mistake.

their Dortmund operation

The DTM operation was unworkable due to the 10pm curfew. That one was not really U2's fault or decision. U2 was betting on a curfew extension to 11pm...which didn't happen.

So basically easyJet can only survive for the moment:

- Amsterdam (marginal Ryanair, only EIN)
- Basel (marginal Ryanair)
- Geneva (no Ryanair)
- London LGW and LTN (Ryanair focused on STN)
- Paris and France (Ryanair does not have bases)

Giving that Ryanair is still growing like there is no end and venturing more and more in places where 3 years ago it would be unthinkable (Frankfurt, Tel Aviv, etc), I wonder what is their long term strategy... I assume there is no strategy other than running away from Ryanair, and soon Ryanair will be everywhere.

I was unfortunate enough to be in the room with U2's CEO yesterday when the closure was announced. Many questions were asked and the information we were given straight from the source, and after dozens of questions, was as follows.

-HAM has never been profitable for the airline, in order to make it profitable at least 7-8 aircraft would have to be based here and a waiting game of over 5 years before they started to see returns. This demands aircraft that the airline can't spare at the moment.
-U2 want to strengthen their position in larger and already established and profitable bases. Unfortunately HAM was at the bottom of the profitability list with four aircraft.
-The flying programme will be reduced to 40% of what it is currently, the only routes being kept will be from other U2 bases. I.e. BSL, LGW etc
-It will continue to operate as normal until the end of the winter 17/18 season when it will be gradually reduced to no based aircraft over the period of a month.
-The main growth market for U2 will continue to be Italy, and that is where the currently HAM based aircraft will most likely be going, especially with Alitalia in poor shape.
-A fourth aircraft joined the fleet and new routes were started in HAM about a week before the announcement of base closure, because it was organised a while ago and would be too complicated to undo late notice.

As for me, I'm devastated. I've been working here in HAM with U2 since day one. I have a girlfriend, a new apartment and a dog here. Friends and colleagues have bought houses with their families, we settled in for the long term. Although operationally we were one of the best performing, if not the best performing base on the network, financially we were never out of the red. Now I either face redundancy or a transfer to another U2 base.

Sorry to hear that . I do worry about airlines opening and closing bases (some times just because it doesn't make not only a profit but not as much as somewhere else) very difficult for people who work for them. Unless you have no family you're only really safe in a large base

TupolevTu154 wrote:

I was unfortunate enough to be in the room with U2's CEO yesterday when the closure was announced. Many questions were asked and the information we were given straight from the source, and after dozens of questions, was as follows.

-HAM has never been profitable for the airline, in order to make it profitable at least 7-8 aircraft would have to be based here and a waiting game of over 5 years before they started to see returns. This demands aircraft that the airline can't spare at the moment.
-U2 want to strengthen their position in larger and already established and profitable bases. Unfortunately HAM was at the bottom of the profitability list with four aircraft.
-The flying programme will be reduced to 40% of what it is currently, the only routes being kept will be from other U2 bases. I.e. BSL, LGW etc
-It will continue to operate as normal until the end of the winter 17/18 season when it will be gradually reduced to no based aircraft over the period of a month.
-The main growth market for U2 will continue to be Italy, and that is where the currently HAM based aircraft will most likely be going, especially with Alitalia in poor shape.
-A fourth aircraft joined the fleet and new routes were started in HAM about a week before the announcement of base closure, because it was organised a while ago and would be too complicated to undo late notice.

As for me, I'm devastated. I've been working here in HAM with U2 since day one. I have a girlfriend, a new apartment and a dog here. Friends and colleagues have bought houses with their families, we settled in for the long term. Although operationally we were one of the best performing, if not the best performing base on the network, financially we were never out of the red. Now I either face redundancy or a transfer to another U2 base.

I really feel sorry for you. Terrible news, really. Do hang in there. I am sure new doors will open in due course.... It's happened to me...
Hamburg is a lovely city, with a very high quality of living.... If your whole life "is there" by now (GF, home, dog, friends..) maybe you should prioritize on this side of things and just go for another job?... Anyway, best of luck. The world is your oyster!

Danny

AirbusOnly wrote:

Honestly: I am happy to see the orange birds disappearing from HAM market. And I hope, Ryanair will be next. Their behaviour and aggressivity don't fit to the HAM market, to the very openminded and liberal mentally of Hamburg People, which is rather unique world-wide. No Body will miss them, I swear. EUROWINGS and GERMANWINGS are strong and mighty with their mother Lufthansa in the back and they will capture the market, believe me! And other German markets will see Easy Jet and others go... I bet! The market is regulating itself!

Wow, what a poor comment... Really.
And I am not even mentioning those OBVIOUSLY terrible and immediate implications like those who are losing their jobs, and the fact that the flying public will have less choice and higher prices...
LH offering out of HAM is PATHETIC, not to mention how bad their inflight service is on shorthaul...yet they charge premium money for god knows what.... And the Eurowings/Germanwings shamble has a TON of things to be rectified before it can be called a success. Give us a break man.

Ultimately, right because the great city of Hamburg has a long history of being so open, open-minded and liberal the departure of U2 is something to be mourned if anything.

oldannyboy wrote:

[LH offering out of HAM is PATHETIC, not to mention how bad their inflight service is on shorthaul...yet they charge premium money for god knows what.... And the Eurowings/Germanwings shamble has a TON of things to be rectified before it can be called a success. Give us a break man.

LH has basically outsourced its entire HAM network in house to EW, except for their shuttle flights to FRA and MUC. So in a way, LH still has a major presence in HAM, but only as LH Group, not LH as individual airline.