According to a regional newspaper, TAP is discontinuing its 3 routes with ATR72 to LCG,VGO and OVD from 27.october. Sad as it was one of the few hub flights for the three airports. What do you think?

Link only in spanish
https://www.lavozdegalicia.es/noticia/v ... 343529.htm

Will the a/c be used on new routes, increase frequency on existing ones or just parked?

That is strange, media in Vigo always reported the TAP services to VGO were a success! This is a huge blow for VGO airport and the area it serves. Many people used TAP for their yearly trips to Latin America to visit family and friends. Now, UX and IB are left to take care of the local feed to their MAD hub.

Apparently the subcontractors have problems. Hopefully they'll find someone else. Flybe?

Embajador3 wrote:

That is strange, media in Vigo always reported the TAP services to VGO were a success! This is a huge blow for VGO airport and the area it serves. Many people used TAP for their yearly trips to Latin America to visit family and friends. Now, UX and IB are left to take care of the local feed to their MAD hub.

These flights may be a success but if they can use the slots with an even more profitable route is simple maths.

A pity n as u said more chances for ux n IB.

I am not surprised. Those slots are too precious for half-empty ATRs on fire-sale connecting fares. TAP's strategy in that area had no sense. If no other international carrier serves LCG, VGO or OVD, it is for a reason.

Embajador3 wrote:

That is strange, media in Vigo always reported the TAP services to VGO were a success! .

VGO is about 20-25 km from the Portuguese border. TAP had to heavily discount connections from VGO compared to OPO... which meant a lot of those people using VGO were Portuguese looking for cheaper fares. Even the major of Porto complained to the EU about this:

https://www.publico.pt/2016/02/10/local ... ia-1722914

Rui Moreira ameaça TAP com boicote nortenho

Conflito da Câmara do Porto com a transportadora aérea passou a envolver o município espanhol de Vigo, cujo alcaide fez queixa de Moreira à União Europeia.

SCQ83 wrote:

I am not surprised. Those slots are too precious for half-empty ATRs on fire-sale connecting fares. TAP's strategy in that area had no sense. If no other international carrier serves LCG, VGO or OVD, it is for a reason.

[/quote]

Here is a link for TAP's results since the start of flights from VGO. Indeed, loads were not expectacular, but I would not say they were half empty.

https://www.aeropuertodevigo.info/2018/ ... gundo.html (sorry, link only in Spanish).

Kikko19 wrote:

Apparently the subcontractors have problems. Hopefully they'll find someone else. Flybe?

It is just a lame excuse for those cities.

Those three cities/regions (A Coruña, Vigo and the region of Asturias) have three airports with around 1M PAX each of which about 60% of the total traffic is to Madrid. When the high-speed train to those cities will be fully operational by 2021-2022, what will happen? There are only two significant poles of traffic in Northern Spain: BIO (business and tourism) and SCQ (tourism and VFR). There is nothing else. And time proves me right.

Embajador3 wrote:

Here is a link for TAP's results since the start of flights from VGO. Indeed, loads were not expectacular, but I would not say they were half empty.

https://www.aeropuertodevigo.info/2018/ ... gundo.html (sorry, link only in Spanish).

Well... Maybe not half empty, but if tickets were heavily discounted (i.e. cheaper than OPO) then the Business Case goes down the toilet...

SCQ83 wrote:

Those three cities/regions (A Coruña, Vigo and the region of Asturias) have three airports with around 1M PAX each of which about 60% of the total traffic is to Madrid. When the high-speed train to those cities will be fully operational by 2021-2022, what will happen? There are only two significant poles of traffic in Northern Spain: BIO (business and tourism) and SCQ (tourism and VFR). There is nothing else. And time proves me right.

Then new routes/operators will come in, or routes simply will be abandoned because deemed unprofitable. There are many airports in Northern Spain which make little or no commercial sense, but they were built when having a 3 km-runway and flying loss-making state-owned planes was still cheaper and easier than building 600 km freeways or railways to MAD.

LCG SCQ VGO are in a 100KM line linking all there. Let's not count OPO.

On the other side of "The North" SDR BIO EAS VIT RJL PNA RGS... Too many airports "competing" for not that much population.

The problem with OVD is even worse being quite apart from the two main cities in Asturas: Gijón and Oviedo. The 3 biggest populations areas, Gijon (east) Oviedo (south) and Avilés (west) form a triangle and the airport is not in the intersection of all three, but located west of Aviles. On O/D journeys the airport is at a clear disavantage versus land travel (where available).

When the High Speed Railway finally connects the Madrid-Leon sector to the Coruña-Santiago-Vigo "island" then air traffic to MAD will colapse and airlines will adjust gauge and schedule.... Just like was done on MAD-SVQ, MAD-AGP, MAD-BCN and more recently on MAD-VLC.

Then airlines not based in MAD could jump in, but until then the market is quite fragmented.

Given the slot constraints LIS is going through I guess these flights were just slots babysitting.
Now they finally have resources to expand services at LIS the suspension of these routes come as no surprise, while they launch flights to 11 new destinations with larger aircraft.

winGl3t wrote:

Given the slot constraints LIS is going through I guess these flights were just slots babysitting.
Now they finally have resources to expand services at LIS the suspension of these routes come as no surprise, while they launch flights to 11 new destinations with larger aircraft.

That would really make sense!

winGl3t wrote:

Given the slot constraints LIS is going through I guess these flights were just slots babysitting.
Now they finally have resources to expand services at LIS the suspension of these routes come as no surprise, while they launch flights to 11 new destinations with larger aircraft.

I wouldn't call it "slots babysitting". Some routes like LCG were flown for almost 20 years. 20 years ago there were no slot constraints in LIS. They just needed slots for more profitable routes and those were chopped. The ATRs are used routinely on other destinations in Spain (like Seville or Valencia), so the ATR thing is just another excuse.

Btw it seems that TAP confirmed those routes are coming back for summer. Let me think. They cancelled those routes with 20 days in advance (!) and now it is coming back for S19 when LIS is the most congested. It makes a lot of sense

It is also worth mentioning that all those 3 routes were subsidised by the local city governments until recently in one or another.

Aisak wrote:

Then new routes/operators will come in, or routes simply will be abandoned because deemed unprofitable. There are many airports in Northern Spain which make little or no commercial sense, but they were built when having a 3 km-runway and flying loss-making state-owned planes was still cheaper and easier than building 600 km freeways or railways to MAD.

The most logical thing for TAP would be to serve LIS-SCQ. SCQ has roughly the same amount of PAX than LCG, VGO and OVD combined and it has shown to be the only functional international gateway in Northwest Spain. 1 airport VS 3 airports seems like a lot of savings in terms of slots, planes, crews, etc.

SCQ is not a major airport by any means but this winter season it will have 10 international routes (FRA, MUC, HHN, BGY, FCO, STN, DUB, CDG, BSL and GVA) on five different carriers (Lufthansa, Aer Lingus, Vueling, easyJet and Ryanair). The other three airports combined will have 1 route (LCG-LHR on Vueling which btw is subsidised by the city council of A Coruña). Maybe if carriers as different as Lufthansa or Ryanair seem to think that they can serve the area from just 1 airport, there must be some truth to it.

There are a lot of Portuguese tourists in Santiago (among the Top 5 for international tourists in the city) so it could work as a city-break for the local Portuguese population. In addition (and most importantly) there are many American tourists/pilgrims in the city plus the Latin American VFR, that would provide real connectivity to TAP's long-haul network to the Americas.

It is also worth mentioning that all those 3 routes were subsidised by the local city governments until recently in one or another.[/quote]

We know the local goverment of Vigo supported UX first, and now FR. But I was not aware TAP received subsidies. Do you have a link to support your claim?

Now that we know that the routes are all coming back from the 31st of March '19, it might seem that either TAP received a kick from these local goverments, the Portugese goverment or, in fact, they faced issues with White Airways getting enough crew to support TAP's requirements.

They certainly don't look as the most profitable routes out of the TAP network, but like others said, some i.e LCG-LIS had a little bit of history behind. I am not sure what are the subsides behind. They were a link to a different hub, different to MAD, which is the main route for all three OVD, LCG and VGO. Lisbon is a Star Alliance airport, with agressive offers to Brazil, Africa and some stops in the USA. Certainly the times weren't great to connect to many places...

Lisboa, as a leisure market, has been targeted from different airports in the north of Spain. For some reason, both airlines and city governments must think it is meant to be a successful market, but eventually they all ended dropping services. Easyjet flew OVD-LIS, they also tried BIO-LIS, Iberia through Air Nostrum flew seasonally SDR-LIS in summer seems not repeating next year. It's a gorgeous city, however the connections through MAD are time and cost wise nearly as good, and therefore, a very tiny market.

The 3 mentioned routes (LCG, VGO and OVD) have been suspended for the W18 season, not cancelled. It is said that they might return for the S19. They have been chosen among all ATR operated routes due to being the least profitable, not necessarily for being unprofitable.
The reasons for such a short notice cancellation (with plenty of tickets already sold) seem to be related to unexpected difficulties in recruiting new flight crews to operate the ATR72 aicraft used in all these routes. TAP is currently recruiting up to 300 new pilots for their planned expansion, and probably some of the current ATR crews (from White, who operates on behalf of TAP Express) will be moving to TAP, thus causing a temporary crew shortage at White.
There is no question whatsoever about a lack of slots in LIS, as TAP has enough slots for W18 and they are not gonna use the vacant slots for any other flights - all W18 flight schedules are known for quite some time.
If slots were the reason for any cancellations these would happen for the S19 season, not W18.

LXwing wrote:

The 3 mentioned routes (LCG, VGO and OVD) have been suspended for the W18 season, not cancelled. It is said that they might return for the S19. They have been chosen among all ATR operated routes due to being the least profitable, not necessarily for being unprofitable.

Wishful thinking. They have "last minute" difficulties hiring crews in winter, and will it be easier in Summer? LIS is already congested, and will it have more space this coming summer with all the new routes coming than in winter?

Those three routes were an oddity in their strategy. Daily or less-than-daily with the smallest equipment available. Unsurprisingly TAP prefers to focus on other nearby larger markets that can have multiple flights daily (OPO, FNC, FAO, SVQ, VLC, AGP, ALC, BIO...). They save the logistics and expenses to fly to three different airports.

No other international carrier will serve those airports this winter (save Ryanair in VGO - where it is subsidised and has menaced to pull out if their subsidies are not multiplied threefold -).

Galicia is a case study of everything that is wrong with spanish government. They had a once in a lifetime opportunity with the new HSR line to consolidate all air traffic to Santiago. It should all have been one single project, HSR and a new airport terminal integrated with trains reaching the airport in 15 min from Coruña and 35 min from Vigo and Ourense, this would all have been possible if intelligent people had been in charge instead of the retarded dimwits that run spanish administrations.

Of cause the real winner would be Galicia itself, it would have an actual viable airport with around 4 to 5 million pax instead of three that are not. And a HSR that would actually see some proper utilization.

This articles indicates that it is a combination of factors, as it typically is, with the main problem being lack of crew but it also states route performance and airport constraints (one has to assume slots).
https://jornaleconomico.sapo.pt/noticia ... tes-363749

SCQ83 wrote:

Aisak wrote:

Then new routes/operators will come in, or routes simply will be abandoned because deemed unprofitable. There are many airports in Northern Spain which make little or no commercial sense, but they were built when having a 3 km-runway and flying loss-making state-owned planes was still cheaper and easier than building 600 km freeways or railways to MAD.

The most logical thing for TAP would be to serve LIS-SCQ. SCQ has roughly the same amount of PAX than LCG, VGO and OVD combined and it has shown to be the only functional international gateway in Northwest Spain. 1 airport VS 3 airports seems like a lot of savings in terms of slots, planes, crews, etc.

SCQ is not a major airport by any means but this winter season it will have 10 international routes (FRA, MUC, HHN, BGY, FCO, STN, DUB, CDG, BSL and GVA) on five different carriers (Lufthansa, Aer Lingus, Vueling, easyJet and Ryanair). The other three airports combined will have 1 route (LCG-LHR on Vueling which btw is subsidised by the city council of A Coruña). Maybe if carriers as different as Lufthansa or Ryanair seem to think that they can serve the area from just 1 airport, there must be some truth to it.

There are a lot of Portuguese tourists in Santiago (among the Top 5 for international tourists in the city) so it could work as a city-break for the local Portuguese population. In addition (and most importantly) there are many American tourists/pilgrims in the city plus the Latin American VFR, that would provide real connectivity to TAP's long-haul network to the Americas.

Your obsession with a LIS-SCQ route is funny, I guess your username says it all. You've been saying the same thing endlessly in previous threads, funnily enough despite claiming Lisbon is a delapidated city not worth visiting. Well, guess what, TAP insists in serving LCG, VGO, and OVD instead, and despite the current suspension of these routes they will likely restart (maybe not all, but surely some) as soon as they can recruit new flight crews. So you might as well drop your obsession with SCQ, because it's not gonna happen on TAP anytime soon!
TAP is mostly going after business pax from North Spain to connect on their American and African routes, and also LIS business pax for Galicia, not the VFR and tourist pax which you claim are abundant at SCQ. Futhermore, most Portuguese tourists at the SCQ area are driving from the North of Portugal, not flying from LIS.

Begues wrote:

Galicia is a case study of everything that is wrong with spanish government. They had a once in a lifetime opportunity with the new HSR line to consolidate all air traffic to Santiago. It should all have been one single project, HSR and a new airport terminal integrated with trains reaching the airport in 15 min from Coruña and 35 min from Vigo and Ourense, this would all have been possible if intelligent people had been in charge instead of the retarded dimwits that run spanish administrations.

Of cause the real winner would be Galicia itself, it would have an actual viable airport with around 4 to 5 million pax instead of three that are not. And a HSR that would actually see some proper utilization.

I don't think Galicia is any different to other regions like the Basque Country, Castilla León, Catalonia or Andalucía where there are multiple airports and some of them are dying or empty (Vitoria, Lérida, Burgos, León, Salamanca, Valladolid...) . Just the circumstances are different. There are regions like Castilla León where all the airports are empty (they have like 4 or 5 commercial airports with less than 500k PAX/year combined).

I think the cases of A Coruña, Vigo and Oviedo/Gijón are comparable to other non-touristic cities in Spain like Valladolid or Zaragoza. Those are relatively large cities with very discrete business activity (no matter what the local hooligans say), average income and, specially, zero interest from international tourists. That is why routes fail and fail again, particularly to international destinations. Because you can subsidise Ryanair to give tickets away, but if nobody in Italy or the UK wants to visit the city even for free... then you have a problem.

Santiago de Compostela is a completely different world because it is a major and growing global tourism destination, so traffic is relatively easy to stimulate.

LXwing wrote:

Your obsession with a LIS-SCQ route is funny, I guess your username says it all. You've been saying the same thing endlessly in previous threads, funnily enough despite claiming Lisbon is a delapidated city not worth visiting. .

I don't have any obsession with that route. I just say if they were to serve one destination in the area, the logical choice would be SCQ. That is what other legacy carriers like Aer Lingus or Lufthansa do. They serve BIO and SCQ in Northern Spain (Aer Lingus does not even serve OPO). That is all.

And of course I keep my words about Lisbon. In any case those routes from Spain overwhelming work with connections. Probably in MAD and BCN there is some local business traffic as there are so many companies that manage Portugal from Spain (so Lisbon is a subsidiary of Madrid) and Portuguese working in those cities, but other than that, there is no point. Just as someone else mentioned before, LIS-Spain (non-MAD/BCN) outside TAP is a very tiny market and pretty much every one who tried it (easyJet, Air Nostrum...) has failed

LXwing wrote:

SCQ83 wrote:

Aisak wrote:

Then new routes/operators will come in, or routes simply will be abandoned because deemed unprofitable. There are many airports in Northern Spain which make little or no commercial sense, but they were built when having a 3 km-runway and flying loss-making state-owned planes was still cheaper and easier than building 600 km freeways or railways to MAD.

The most logical thing for TAP would be to serve LIS-SCQ. SCQ has roughly the same amount of PAX than LCG, VGO and OVD combined and it has shown to be the only functional international gateway in Northwest Spain. 1 airport VS 3 airports seems like a lot of savings in terms of slots, planes, crews, etc.

SCQ is not a major airport by any means but this winter season it will have 10 international routes (FRA, MUC, HHN, BGY, FCO, STN, DUB, CDG, BSL and GVA) on five different carriers (Lufthansa, Aer Lingus, Vueling, easyJet and Ryanair). The other three airports combined will have 1 route (LCG-LHR on Vueling which btw is subsidised by the city council of A Coruña). Maybe if carriers as different as Lufthansa or Ryanair seem to think that they can serve the area from just 1 airport, there must be some truth to it.

There are a lot of Portuguese tourists in Santiago (among the Top 5 for international tourists in the city) so it could work as a city-break for the local Portuguese population. In addition (and most importantly) there are many American tourists/pilgrims in the city plus the Latin American VFR, that would provide real connectivity to TAP's long-haul network to the Americas.

Your obsession with a LIS-SCQ route is funny, I guess your username says it all. You've been saying the same thing endlessly in previous threads, funnily enough despite claiming Lisbon is a delapidated city not worth visiting. Well, guess what, TAP insists in serving LCG, VGO, and OVD instead, and despite the current suspension of these routes they will likely restart (maybe not all, but surely some) as soon as they can recruit new flight crews. So you might as well drop your obsession with SCQ, because it's not gonna happen on TAP anytime soon!
TAP is mostly going after business pax from North Spain to connect on their American and African routes, and also LIS business pax for Galicia, not the VFR and tourist pax which you claim are abundant at SCQ. Futhermore, most Portuguese tourists at the SCQ area are driving from the North of Portugal, not flying from LIS.

Have to disagree with your critique of his post. After all 10 international cities by 5 carriers shows the city has greater tourist options than the other 3 cities.

rbavfan wrote:

Have to disagree with your critique of his post. After all 10 international cities by 5 carriers shows the city has greater tourist options than the other 3 cities.

Both of your statements are not incompatible. He's stating that it's a bad market for TP. None of those destinations are in Portugal because Portuguese tourists prefer land transportation to get there. It is also already well served from the rest of Europe and LIS is out of the way as a connecting hub to get there. It would be very hard for TP to take those passengers away from the airlines that already offer non-stop flight to markets in Europe. TP is a little bit of many things but one thing they absolutely are not is an Intra-Europe airline because of the geographic location of their hubs.
As far as Vigo is concerned, didn't TP at one point offer complimentary bus transportation between Vigo and OPO? Did that work?

Btw Ryanair just announced OPO-ALC, a big gap for Porto in Spain (the other is OPO-BIO).

So Porto will be better connected with Spain than secondary airports like LCG, VGO or OVD are. So the only cities with links to ALC in the Atlantic Coast will be SCQ (Vueling and Ryanair), OPO (Ryanair) and LIS (TAP Portugal). Enough said.

Interestingly Binter Canarias started flights from VGO to Tenerife and LPA. The reason? Portuguese residents in the Canary Islands get a 75% off (like every resident in the Canary Islands) to fly to mainland Spain (read: Vigo) but if they fly Canarias - OPO they get 0% off.

airbazar wrote:

Have to disagree with your critique of his post. After all 10 international cities by 5 carriers shows the city has greater tourist options than the other 3 cities.

I think he tried to back my post. An airport with 10 international routes on 5 carriers in winter (SCQ) has very likely more international demand that 3 airports (LCG, VGO and OVD) that combined have 1 international route (LCG-LHR on Vueling - subsidised -).

According to the same newspaper in the OP's link, TAP would eventually consider starting LIS-SCQ.

https://www.lavozdegalicia.es/noticia/g ... P14991.htm

El ingeniero brasileño Fernando Pinto (Porto Alegre, Río Grande do Sul, 1949) llegó a Portugal hace 16 años para privatizar la TAP (Transportadora Aérea Portuguesa). Sin embargo, el acuerdo de venta del 61 % de la compañía, por 388 millones, al consorcio luso-brasileño Atlantic Gateway no se firmó hasta noviembre del 2015. A punto de culminar la privatización, Pinto ha hablado con La Voz en Funchal (Madeira), donde confiesa que en esta etapa de crecimiento «España, y en particular Galicia, es prioritaria para nosotros». Y añade: «España es nuestro primer destino europeo. No descartamos Santiago-Lisboa, a su debido tiempo».

SCQ83 wrote:

Interestingly Binter Canarias started flights from VGO to Tenerife and LPA. The reason? Portuguese residents in the Canary Islands get a 75% off (like every resident in the Canary Islands) to fly to mainland Spain (read: Vigo) but if they fly Canarias - OPO they get 0% off.

Unless things have changed since I lived there, I'm pretty sure the subsidy for domestic travel is only 50%. If so, I think claiming the reason for starting two new routes is an extremely niche northern-Portuguese community in the Canaries wanting a cheaper loophole to visit home is a bit of a stretch. There's plenty of domestic tourism in both directions to justify these flights - sunshine and sea is an appealing prospect in the Galician winter months.

LostLuggage wrote:

Unless things have changed since I lived there, I'm pretty sure the subsidy for domestic travel is only 50%. If so, I think claiming the reason for starting two new routes is an extremely niche northern-Portuguese community in the Canaries wanting a cheaper loophole to visit home is a bit of a stretch. There's plenty of domestic tourism in both directions to justify these flights - sunshine and sea is an appealing prospect in the Galician winter months.

There is also a large community of Galician people in Canarias. Naturally some of them will come from the area around VGO. As for Portuguese, according to the INE there are 4.575 Portuguese citizens living in the region. Most Portuguese migrants come from the area around OPO. Not a big community, but it will serve them well.

As for the 50%, the government recently raised the discount to 75%

https://elpais.com/economia/2018/07/03/ ... 83611.html

Why has OVD lost all it's international routes this year? Vueling LGW/CDG routes and easyJet STN route are all also ending this year.

Aax1 wrote:

Why has OVD lost all it's international routes this year? Vueling LGW/CDG routes and easyJet STN route are all also ending this year.

Also Iberia Express to LHR and easyJet to GVA.

Subsidies ended, airliners walked away.

The ATR-72 freed from those services will be used in 4 new daily services in the "Ponte Aerea" between LIS and OPO. LIS-OPO will become 18 daily (!) each way on TAP. So the lack of crew was just a lame excuse to chop those routes.

https://www.farodevigo.es/gran-vigo/201 ... 77512.html

TAP aumentará los vuelos Lisboa-Oporto un día después de cancelar la ruta con Vigo
► La aerolínea destinará un avión más al puente aéreo entre ambas ciudades para alcanzar los 36 viajes por jornada
► Sumará Bruselas, Lyon y Múnich a la parrilla de Sá Carneiro en 2019

SCQ83 wrote:

The ATR-72 freed from those services will be used in 4 new daily services in the "Ponte Aerea" between LIS and OPO. LIS-OPO will become 18 daily (!) each way on TAP. So the lack of crew was just a lame excuse to chop those routes.

Not necessarily. There's a big different in crew scheduling between operating 1x or 2x daily flights away from home vs. something like the ponte aerea. They already have ATR's flying the Ponte Aerea. It's a short route. More frequencies doesn't necessarily represent more crews. It's also a much more flexible route. If there's a delay on flight in OVD for example now that crew and aircraft is tied up completely and possibly lost for the day. If there's a delay on the ponte aerea the flight is just canceled as it happened today and the passengers rebooked on the next flight, and both the crew and aircraft is freed up.
https://flightaware.com/live/flight/WHT ... /LPPT/LPPR

airbazar wrote:

SCQ83 wrote:

The ATR-72 freed from those services will be used in 4 new daily services in the "Ponte Aerea" between LIS and OPO. LIS-OPO will become 18 daily (!) each way on TAP. So the lack of crew was just a lame excuse to chop those routes.

Not necessarily. There's a big different in crew scheduling between operating 1x or 2x daily flights away from home vs. something like the ponte aerea. They already have ATR's flying the Ponte Aerea. It's a short route. More frequencies doesn't necessarily represent more crews. It's also a much more flexible route. If there's a delay on flight in OVD for example now that crew and aircraft is tied up completely and possibly lost for the day. If there's a delay on the ponte aerea the flight is just canceled as it happened today and the passengers rebooked on the next flight, and both the crew and aircraft is freed up.
https://flightaware.com/live/flight/WHT ... /LPPT/LPPR

I completely agree with your logic. That is why those three routes were somehow outliers. All other TAP routes in the Iberian Peninsula are served at least 2 daily and/or with bigger aircraft. But those are tiny markets that cannot grow anymore. So it is easier to concentrate in bigger, stablished markets (not only OPO but also BIO, VLC, AGP...) that serve too many tiny markets.

Maybe those routes made sense 10 years ago but now with all the slot restrictions at LIS and TAP being a much bigger company with a more global scope, it is wiser to concentrate on bigger markets.

LIS-SCQ should work. It would also be more complementary to OPO and even BIO, rather than competing with OPO (like the VGO-LIS flight did). Many tourists do Northern Portugal/Galicia (from OPO to SCQ) or the Cantabrian sea coast (from BIO to SCQ) so TAP could tap on open-jaws.

If TP ever ends up doing SCQ, it will be because of business links and international connections at LIS, not Portuguese tourists at SCQ - many of those in the city walk there, and the rest just drive.

I am not sure about Vigo, but one of the largest, and most global, clothing retailers in the world, Inditex, is based in La Coruña, and they are notoriously cheap (so fit the TP mindset well). I don't think the ATRs carry much cargo, but Inditex is also a huge user of air cargo (although they probably just truck a lot of it to OPO like they used to). I wonder how much of TP's flights to LCG was just to shuttle Inditex employees around the globe through LIS.

Pyrex wrote:

If TP ever ends up doing SCQ, it will be because of business links and international connections at LIS, not Portuguese tourists at SCQ - many of those in the city walk there, and the rest just drive.

You are right TAP is probably not the most conductive carrier for city breaks. But Aer Lingus (now year-round), Bergamo/Malpensa/Rome or Lufthansa work mainly because of the pilgrims (Irish, Italian and Germans being three of the nationalities with more pilgrims doing the camino). People will either fly to SCQ and then take a bus/train to their start destination (so they back track), do open jaw (e.g. they fly to BIO and then the return from SCQ if they start in the French border, or they fly to MAD and take the train to whenever they start in Galicia, and then return from SCQ). Americans are another well represented nationality, so TAP could work well there.

Even routes to Andalusia or the Canary Islands (at least when I have flown them) had a lot of Andalusian/Canarian tourists clothed to do the Camino (from someone from Seville a summer at 25-30 degrees is a pleasant experience). Granted Seville/Málaga to SCQ is a longer driver than Lisbon to SCQ.

Pyrex wrote:

I am not sure about Vigo, but one of the largest, and most global, clothing retailers in the world, Inditex, is based in La Coruña, and they are notoriously cheap (so fit the TP mindset well). I don't think the ATRs carry much cargo, but Inditex is also a huge user of air cargo (although they probably just truck a lot of it to OPO like they used to). I wonder how much of TP's flights to LCG was just to shuttle Inditex employees around the globe through LIS.

Vigo has a PSA (Peugeot-Citroen) factory and (subsidised) Air France used to fly CDG-VGO. They chopped the route a few years ago, and PSA will route their PAX via OPO with their endless options to Paris (Paris being the busiest international route in OPO with +1M PAX and 7 carriers), or seldom on SCQ-CDG which is slightly closer.

As for Inditex, the company was founded in 1975 and TAP operates in LCG since 2001. So they have had time to consolidate. In any case Inditex HQ to SCQ is about 45 minutes on the motorway (so about 30' more than LCG), not a big deal. I also doubt TAP offered many other destinations than MAD (with IB/UX) relevant for Inditex. Btw Inditex's main logistic operation in Spain is in ZGZ.

As I mentioned before the problem with cities like A Coruña, Vigo or Asturias (Oviedo or Gijón) is the same as other cities like Valladolid or Zaragoza. They offer basically nothing (in terms of beach or cultural city-break) for international tourists, so there is little traffic to stimulate. The only city that has find a niche is Santander, but that is because it is a 45' drive from Bilbao, which is 1) a very wealthy urban area (way way wealthier than any of the other cities mentioned before), 2) a major city-break destination today (Guggenheim effect) and 3) has no Ryanair/Wizzair. That is why SDR has odd routes like Marrakech, Warsaw or Edinburgh. Just by being "Bilbao-West" (and of course being heavily subsidised by the Government of Cantabria).

Bilbao is also probably the closest proper airport to San Sebastian and Pamplona, which are huge touristy destinations, particularly for Americans.

Anyway, a friend of mine is a regular on the TP flights to Oviedo (he sells mining equipment to some mines up there in the Astúrias), this will probably be a bit of a hassle for him, as the drive from LIS is a pain.

Pyrex wrote:

Bilbao is also probably the closest proper airport to San Sebastian and Pamplona, which are huge touristy destinations, particularly for Americans.

Anyway, a friend of mine is a regular on the TP flights to Oviedo (he sells mining equipment to some mines up there in the Astúrias), this will probably be a bit of a hassle for him, as the drive from LIS is a pain.

I am sorry, but AF flights to VGO did not receive a cent from the local goberment. They left VGO due to the crisis and the need to use those CDG slots on more profitable routes.

Pyrex wrote:

Bilbao is also probably the closest proper airport to San Sebastian and Pamplona, which are huge touristy destinations, particularly for Americans.

Pamplona is not particularly popular outside San Fermines. Btw those are the number of overnight stays by city in Northern Spain in 2017 only for international tourists (data taken from INE.es). I put in brackets the city population to compare, and the reference airport.

807,393 Bilbao (pop 345,110) - BIO
732,947 San Sebastián (pop 186,370) - EAS / BIO
710,236 Santiago de Compostela (pop 96,456) - SCQ

239,690 Santander (pop 171,951) - SDR
236,677 Vigo (pop 292,986) - VGO
202,982 Pamplona (pop 197,138) - PNA
179,665 Coruña, A (pop 244,099) - LCG
172,081 Oviedo (pop 220,301) - OVD
105,488 Gijón (pop 272,365) - OVD

The three main destinations (by far) for international tourists' stays are the couple of Bilbao+San Sebastián and Santiago. Everything else comes way behind.

What is interesting is that the 6 cities in the bottom are more or less in the same population range. Yet tourism is marginal in all of them. Santiago de Compostela has about 25 times more international tourists per resident than Gijón. And yet some people wonder why SCQ has Lufthansa or Aer Lingus and OVD cannot maintain a single international line... despite SCQ being "a village".

SCQ83, I have read some of the last messages in this thread and I would like to comment on some of the statements you have written. Please correct me if I am wrong.

You wrote some things about different cities in the north of Spain that I don't think are accurate. Some (if not most) of those cities have great tourist potential. I don't think it is fair nor accurate for those cities/airports to say that their airports only exist because of subsidies.

Regarding the cities in Galicia for instance:

A Coruna: Second largest city in Galicia and closest airport to Inditex world headquarters (for who doesn't know, one of the most important companies in the whole world, and parent company of famous clothing brands like Zara). That alone includes important business growth and passengers. On top of that, the airport manages a significant metropolitan area, that covers A Coruna population itself and the area of Ferrol/Naron which is alone bigger in population than the area around Santiago, for instance. I'm surprised you name all these cities and identify them as 'no tourist potential'. Well, A Coruna alone has the oldest lighthouse in the world (UNESCO world heritage), a pretty old town, and a good culinary scene. There is also much more in the Lugo northern area, which is not very far from A Coruna.

Vigo: Largest city in population and size in Galicia. Counting the metropolitan area, it is way more than the 300k approx. people you listed in your last email. Also, it is the closest airport to the Ourense area, and for some Portuguese people in the northern towns, this airport is actually closer than Porto. Industry is big here, so I don't understand why the tourism would be such a crucial factor in the equation anyway, when for this airport, a big percentage of passengers would be business travelers related with the fishing, automotive, ship building, and recently aerospace, industries. But even in that case, there are also great tourist attractions in the area for visitors. First of all, the Atlantic Islands national park (Cies Islands and Ons Islands specially), that alone make the visit worthwhile, but there is also amazing fresh seafood, a great and unique nightlife, and a beautiful natural estuary. For day visits, the neighbor cities of Baiona, Tui, and Pontevedra have a lot of history, there are great beaches to enjoy the summer, and Ourense with all the traditional hot springs are also only 1 hour away by car. So it is simply not fair to say 'there is nothing to do', without any data to support that. It may not be such a town in the middle of nowhere when The Guardian and other international newspapers have written numerous traveling articles recommending this area, the last one just a few days ago (copied below)

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2018 ... ncis-drake

With that, I'm trying to emphasize that I don't agree with your statements of places with 'nothing to offer for tourists'. I'm not saying they are better or worse than Santiago. Obviously, Santiago is beautiful, the most historical city in Galicia, and also its capital. However, it is also only about 1 hr from Vigo and even less from Coruna. One could even argue that by flying to either LCG or VGO, you could go on a weekend trip to visit Santiago and come back. I understand that Santiago is also a crucial pilgrimage, cultural, and historic destination, therefore the airport is needed, but I don't think that is a reason to claim that the other two should just be closed down.

At the end of the day, that would be like moving hundreds of thousands of people to take a flight, which does not make a lot of sense. To make an analogy with the state of California, in the US, for instance: it is like if the situation was to prioritize the airport of Sacramento since it is the state capital. Then, the airport would be huge, and the people from San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, should all either drive 1.5 hr north and fly from there, or, take a train to LAX. It just doesn't make any sense. First of all by simple math (moving the larger population area to the smaller population area airport), and second of all, because the industry is located in the Bay Area, not in Sacramento, and that's a lot of passengers. It would be ridiculous to ask a Google or Apple employee to drive every time she/he needs to travel for work, to drive 1.5 hr back and forth. In a similar way, it doesn't make much sense either to ask a Citroen or Inditex employee to do the same thing (obviously at a different scale).

This "my city has XXX,XXX people" in 2018 is no-sense.

Tourism growth is the main driver for airline growth in the 21st century, specially in mature markets like Western Europe. That is why you have Qatar Airways in Mykonos (pop 10,000) and American Airlines in Dubrovnik (pop. 40,000). And that is why there are +1 million cities in Africa with almost no air service.

The reality is that not every other city on Europe or earth is and will not be a tourist mecca. Santiago is an uncommon destination in Spain because it has a 2.5-3M PAX airport in a city that is about 100,000 people, which is somehow odd for a non-island capital, non-Mediterranean city in Spain. And for some reason, some people cannot handle it

I would call it the Dubrovnik-effect (granted Dubrovnik is a way more globally known destination). Dubrovnik is pretty much a village but anything works (PHL, Istanbul, Dubai, B787s from the UK...). Up the road you have Rijeka which are way bigger city and there is almost no air traffic. One word: tourism.

Regarding your references about Ourense and Lugo, those are incorrect. SCQ is the closest airport to those two cities (at least when the motorway is finished between Santiago and Lugo), and with way better public transportation links. For instance SCQ has multiple daily direct buses with Lugo which are heavily used by pilgrims (sometimes they have to double the service to make room for all those tourists!) that fly to SCQ and start their journey in the Lugo province heading to places in el Camino like Sarria or Pedrafita. One word: tourism.

Those Lufthansa flights are filled with tourists. It seems that those Inditex execs were not enough to fill those TAP flights... not even for 17 years the route was operating.

I disagree that population doesn’t make sense in 2018. As more population, more potential passengers. I don’t understand also the analogy with Rijeka and Dubrovnik since Croatia is a whole different country with different cultural and economic background. I do understand though the point you are trying to make. However, I think the business and industry development in both Vigo and A Coruña is superior than in Rijeka, from an objective perspective.

I would like to see more data and references to some of the statements you write, for example, in your last message you claimed that both Lugo and Ourense cities are closer by car to SQC than to either VGO or LCG. It turns out, they are fairly close among all of them, but it is just simply not true by doing a quick search in google maps. This is the data and anyone can check it:

Ourense city - VGO : 59 min
Ourense city - SCQ: 1 hr and 10 minutes

Pretty much the same. However, bigger towns in the Ourense province like Alaric or Verín are closer to VGO.

Lugo city - LCG: 1 hr and 1 min
Lugo city - SCQ: 1 hr and 14 min

Obviously the advantage of SCQ here is that since it is centrally located, it is close to both at the same time. However, the biggest population areas in Galicia are Vigo and A Coruña anyway, so if there were no subsidies to any airport, I think these airports would have many routes just because of demand. The problem is when the fares from nearby airports (and I include OPO) are significantly lower, then people obviously want to save money and they move around, but if you live in Vigo and can take a flight to BCN for the same price, why would you go to SCQ or OPO? I think it that was the case, the whole scenario of number of passengers would be quite different to be honest. You mentioned Vigo got Ryanair because of subsidies, that’s true but same applies for SCQ before with the same and other airlines. Honestly I think with all this competition, the most smart management was OPO who took the opportunity back then and now they are in a different league.

In the case of Lugo, SCQ is undoubtedly its reference airport due to the Camino and the strong links existing between the two cities (for instance, the University of Santiago de Compostela has campuses in both Santiago and Lugo). The "Camino Francés" crosses the whole province so it means that there are strong natural links between SCQ and the whole province and it shows in the public transportation opportunities that already exist and are very popular among tourists (pilgrims). Trying to include Lugo in the "natural" LCG catchment area is extremely biased.

In the case of Ourense, when the high-speed train is completed by 2020-2021 (?), it means that Ourense-Madrid Chamartín will be 2h15'. Ourense-MAD T4 will be around 2h30'. That will be very competitive in timings, particularly for long-haul flights. Ourense-OPO is also competitive driving. So that means that basically nobody from the area will drive to SCQ/VGO to take a plane to MAD and change there. The only links that will be feasible for those passengers from SCQ will be Spanish islands or some European non-stop destinations. Even Ourense-BCN/ALC/VLC will be shorter by train, and much less of a headache.

SCQ83 wrote:

Pyrex wrote:

Bilbao is also probably the closest proper airport to San Sebastian and Pamplona, which are huge touristy destinations, particularly for Americans.

Pamplona is not particularly popular outside San Fermines. Btw those are the number of overnight stays by city in Northern Spain in 2017 only for international tourists (data taken from INE.es). I put in brackets the city population to compare, and the reference airport.

807,393 Bilbao (pop 345,110) - BIO
732,947 San Sebastián (pop 186,370) - EAS / BIO
710,236 Santiago de Compostela (pop 96,456) - SCQ

239,690 Santander (pop 171,951) - SDR
236,677 Vigo (pop 292,986) - VGO
202,982 Pamplona (pop 197,138) - PNA
179,665 Coruña, A (pop 244,099) - LCG
172,081 Oviedo (pop 220,301) - OVD
105,488 Gijón (pop 272,365) - OVD

As much as this data is interesting and valid, careful cause even the most visited city in Spain (BCN), which hosts nearly 30 million tourists every year, half of them only spend around 8 hours in the city. I wouldn't be surprised to tourists coming in to the North of Spain through SDR or EAS to visit SDR, BIO, EAS or simply the other way around. In case they can accommodate some more days, maybe they do the same but starting in OVD, so they fly in landing there. Maybe they fly in to VGO to leave through SCQ.

On the other hand, and trying to get back to the topic of this thread, not surprisingly TAP was after the corporate pax, thus it chose to fly to the most developed areas of the North in terms of industry and business (VGO, LCG and OVD).Why would they fly to SCQ when they are not exactly aiming to attract the tourist pax in first place? No matter how centrally located they are, they'd still prefer to operate as close to the business as possible.

SCQ83 wrote:

I am not surprised. Those slots are too precious for half-empty ATRs on fire-sale connecting fares. TAP's strategy in that area had no sense. If no other international carrier serves LCG or VGO, it is for a reason.

I assume you are mistaking international with legacy, unless you consider TAP and Ryanair as national carriers. Because when international carriers tried they where bullied/paid by the regional government to serve only SCQ. Most of those flights have disappeared or reduced frequencies (Turkish force to take SCQ even after starting the advertisement campaign in LCG, VY moving Amsterdam's flight, AF forced to leave VGO after someone decided that a subsided flight to Paris from SCQ a better idea than an established competition).

Aisak wrote:

LCG SCQ VGO are in a 100KM line linking all there.

Not true, check Google maps. The main problem there is LCG (a business airport) running less 60 km away from a long term subsided airport (SCQ) with no industry around who can only base its operations in low yielding tourism.

SCQ83 wrote:

...There is nothing else. And time proves me right.

Self reaffirmation?

SCQ83 wrote:

Even the major of Porto complained to the EU about this:

https://www.publico.pt/2016/02/10/local ... ia-1722914

Rui Moreira ameaça TAP com boicote nortenho

Conflito da Câmara do Porto com a transportadora aérea passou a envolver o município espanhol de Vigo, cujo alcaide fez queixa de Moreira à União Europeia.

This had nothing to do with Portuguese passengers flying from VGO, but with the fact that those flights were driving Spanish passengers to LIS instead of OPO, which is by far the preferred option by people in the south of Galicia. Interesting that this fact is ignored even by Spanish authorities when they calculate the catching area of the airports, for them OPO doesn't exist as competition for Spanish airports. So convenient....

SCQ83 wrote:

The most logical thing for TAP would be to serve LIS-SCQ.

And even though your "logic", TAP has not only been flying from VGO for 2 years, but also from LCG for 2 decades. But I guess reality here is out of your facts.

SCQ83 wrote:

There are a lot of Portuguese tourists in Santiago (among the Top 5 for international tourists in the city) so it could work as a city-break for the local Portuguese population.

Funny how you declare a route as unsustainable based in connections but then defend another one based on low yield tourism. That math doesn't add up.

LXwing wrote:

Your obsession with a LIS-SCQ route is funny, I guess your username says it all. You've been saying the same thing endlessly in previous threads, funnily enough despite claiming Lisbon is a delapidated city not worth visiting. Well, guess what, TAP insists in serving LCG, VGO, and OVD instead, and despite the current suspension of these routes they will likely restart (maybe not all, but surely some) as soon as they can recruit new flight crews. So you might as well drop your obsession with SCQ, because it's not gonna happen on TAP anytime soon!
TAP is mostly going after business pax from North Spain to connect on their American and African routes, and also LIS business pax for Galicia, not the VFR and tourist pax which you claim are abundant at SCQ. Futhermore, most Portuguese tourists at the SCQ area are driving from the North of Portugal, not flying from LIS.

A fanatic is someone who can't change his mind and also refuses to change the topic

SCQ83 wrote:

It is also worth mentioning that all those 3 routes were subsidised by the local city governments until recently in one or another.

That's a lie. And there is proof of that.

SCQ83 wrote:

...no other international carrier will serve those airports this winter (save Ryanair in VGO - where it is subsidised and has menaced to pull out if their subsidies are not multiplied threefold -).

Funny thing to read when you are pushing for an airport that has been (and is) paying the same subsidies to the same company for decades (and not via public offer, but underhanded negotiations and not will local money but with regional money). In you stop counting the subsided passengers from the list, SCQ would have just a bit more that 3 helicopter landings a day.

SCQ83 wrote:

LIS-SCQ should work.

TAP is on the record saying that:
A) That route wouldnt work.
B) They are not interested in it.

I guess every TAP manager is ignorants for not getting the logic.

SCQ83 wrote:

Vigo has a PSA (Peugeot-Citroen) factory and (subsidised) Air France used to fly CDG-VGO.

That is lie again. In fact one of the reasons for AF to leave VGO was, as mentioned before, that they were not getting subsidies while the regional government decided to give money to VY to operate the same route from SCQ.

SCQ83 wrote:

As I mentioned before the problem with cities like A Coruña, Vigo or Asturias (Oviedo or Gijón) is the same as other cities like Valladolid or Zaragoza. They offer basically nothing (in terms of beach or cultural city-break) for international tourists, so there is little traffic to stimulate.

I don't know if it obsession or personal vendetta, but that statement is false. I know that may not be able to compare with a really big church, but that's far from reality. Other posters already clarified that for you before.

SCQ83 wrote:

In the case of Lugo, SCQ is undoubtedly its reference airport due to the Camino and the strong links existing between the two cities and ... are very popular among tourists (pilgrims). Trying to include Lugo in the "natural" LCG catchment area is extremely biased.

You are ignoring the highway between Lugo and Coruna, ignoring the habits of the population used to use LCG as natural gateway instead of SCQ for decades, and the fact that even when low yield tourists "walk" through the area don't create a connection between them. Lugo (as well as El Bierzo even further) are in the catching area of LCG from a business and also population perspective. Denying that blindness.

SCQ83 wrote:

In the case of Ourense, when the high-speed train is completed by 2020-2021 (?), it means that Ourense-Madrid Chamartín will be 2h15'. Ourense-MAD T4 will be around 2h30'. That will be very competitive in timings, particularly for long-haul flights. Ourense-OPO is also competitive driving. So that means that basically nobody from the area will drive to SCQ/VGO to take a plane to MAD and change there. The only links that will be feasible for those passengers from SCQ will be Spanish islands or some European non-stop destinations. Even Ourense-BCN/ALC/VLC will be shorter by train, and much less of a headache.

Note that the high speed train was meant to arrive to Galicia in 2003, and onwards had a delay every couple of years. 2020 is the expected timeframe for getting to Ourense now. The time to Coruna will be around 3:30 and to Vigo close to 4 hours, which puts it clearly in the border of not be able to compete with the train (this is because Ou-Sant is still to be refurbished to allow max speed, the fact that the railway Corona-Vigo will never be able to offer more than 200kmh and specially the fact that one of the links to Vigo is still to be built).
I have no other chance than assuming you have never been in Chamartin, as the only explanation to say that you can jump off an AVE train in Chamartin to the second of its arrival, navigate the station, get the regional train on time, make the journey to airport and off board the train. And everything in 15 min. Sorry, that's not happening. Some passengers flying to MAD may be able to take that alternative, almost anyone connecting to a long haul will risk the flight because of the transfer. Business passengers running through the station to catch a regional so they don't miss the flight? Not happening.

What you fail to understand is that no one of the classic SCQ passenger will get a flight to MAD and connect having the train. Low yields are heavily affected by price. For business trips when frequency and reliability are critical, will show much less affection. The arrival of the AVE will impact the airports indeed, but the worst part will be for SCQ and it subsided link with Ryanair which periodically boosts the number of the facilities, and you are trying to export that paradigm to other places to apply the logic that it will be chaos and only one can stand.

Finally, hijacking a topic related to TAP and their current flights with a non sense defence or someones home airport is nuts.

a350lover wrote:

As much as this data is interesting and valid, careful cause even the most visited city in Spain (BCN), which hosts nearly 30 million tourists every year, half of them only spend around 8 hours in the city. I wouldn't be surprised to tourists coming in to the North of Spain through SDR or EAS to visit SDR, BIO, EAS or simply the other way around. In case they can accommodate some more days, maybe they do the same but starting in OVD, so they fly in landing there. Maybe they fly in to VGO to leave through SCQ. .

Those are overnight stays, not tourists.

a350lover wrote:

On the other hand, and trying to get back to the topic of this thread, not surprisingly TAP was after the corporate pax, thus it chose to fly to the most developed areas of the North in terms of industry and business (VGO, LCG and OVD).Why would they fly to SCQ when they are not exactly aiming to attract the tourist pax in first place? No matter how centrally located they are, they'd still prefer to operate as close to the business as possible.

Because this whole dialectic of the "business PAX" in medium-sized cities like A Coruña, Vigo, Oviedo, Gijón, Zaragoza, Valladolid, Burgos, Badajoz, Córdoba, etc is basically BS. It has seen repeatedly that none of those cities can support any legacy connection to any hub outside MAD/BCN (when train is not competitive). Those business markets are just too small.

About the canceled routes in Spain, the CEO of TAP has been quoted:

Sobre a suspensão recente de rotas em Espanha, Antonoaldo Neves diz que a TAP preferiu “dar um passo para trás para dar dois a frente”. “Em vez de estar a operar numa situação difícil (…), preferimos suspender os voos e dar tempo ao nosso parceiro [a White] para fazer a reposição de pilotos da forma que é necessária”, disse.

which translates into:

We've chosen to take a step backwards so that next we can make two steps forward. Instead of operating the routes in a difficult situation, we preferred to suspend the routes and allow time for our partner (White) to replace the lost pilots as necessary.

https://www.dinheirovivo.pt/empresas/1278277/

So the LCG, VGO and OVD routes were indeed suspended, not cancelled, as I explained above.
They will likely return (at least some of them, surely) as soon as White manages to replace the pilots that they've recently lost to TAP mainline among others. If TAP ever really intended to cancel these routes, as loss making or for any other reason, they wouldn't have scheduled and sold them for W18 only to cancel them at the last minute. This alone would clearly show there was some unexpected reason behind the suspension.

Also, to correct a false information stated above, TAP is not increasing the LIS-OPO route at the cost of these suspended routes. The number of daily frequencies on LIS-OPO is roughly unchanged for W18, and if any there will be some upgages in used aircraft to cope with increasing demand. The main change in the LIS-OPO route is that TAP schedules have been changed to allow for increased rotation times on the ground (from 30 to 60 min.) in order to overcome the constant delays in flights, especially when operated by the ATR which are naturally slower. And this will require to have one more ATR aircraft assigned to this route, in case there are no upgages in any frequencies.
Offtopic, Ryanair is said to be cancelling their 3 daily LIS-OPO flights. If so, TAP would keep this route for themselves. Who would have guessed TAP could fend off Ryanair?

So, no, SCQ is not going to happen on TAP anytime soon, as LCG and VGO have the Galicia business pax market pretty well covered when they return.

SCQ83 wrote:

a350lover wrote:

On the other hand, and trying to get back to the topic of this thread, not surprisingly TAP was after the corporate pax, thus it chose to fly to the most developed areas of the North in terms of industry and business (VGO, LCG and OVD).Why would they fly to SCQ when they are not exactly aiming to attract the tourist pax in first place? No matter how centrally located they are, they'd still prefer to operate as close to the business as possible.

Because this whole dialectic of the "business PAX" in medium-sized cities like A Coruña, Vigo, Oviedo, Gijón, Zaragoza, Valladolid, Burgos, Badajoz, Córdoba, etc is basically BS. It has seen repeatedly that none of those cities can support any legacy connection to any hub outside MAD/BCN (when train is not competitive). Those business markets are just too small.

Those markets are only big enough to be served by turboprops with much smaller CASM than your usual A320/B737 jets, a privilege that only TAP (and IB) have the ability to do. Thus no other legacy serves them, and even LCC struggle.
Even you should be able to see that, if only you could take the blinds off for a minute. I know, it's a lost case.

LXwing wrote:

So the LCG, VGO and OVD routes were indeed suspended, not cancelled, as I explained above.
They will likely return (at least some of them, surely) as soon as White manages to replace the pilots that they've recently lost to TAP mainline among others. If TAP ever really intended to cancel these routes, as loss making or for any other reason, they wouldn't have scheduled and sold them for W18 only to cancel them at the last minute. This alone would clearly show there was some unexpected reason behind the suspension.

So, no, SCQ is not going to happen on TAP anytime soon, as LCG and VGO have the Galicia business pax market pretty well covered when they return.

The routes have been taken down from TAP's booking system. What a surprise! No.

SCQ83 wrote:

LXwing wrote:

So the LCG, VGO and OVD routes were indeed suspended, not cancelled, as I explained above.
They will likely return (at least some of them, surely) as soon as White manages to replace the pilots that they've recently lost to TAP mainline among others. If TAP ever really intended to cancel these routes, as loss making or for any other reason, they wouldn't have scheduled and sold them for W18 only to cancel them at the last minute. This alone would clearly show there was some unexpected reason behind the suspension.

So, no, SCQ is not going to happen on TAP anytime soon, as LCG and VGO have the Galicia business pax market pretty well covered when they return.

The routes have been taken down from TAP's booking system. What a surprise! No.

TAP also announced that from January they are going all A320 series on the "Ponte Aerea". So I wonder what will happen to the ATR's. New frequencies/routes?

airbazar wrote:

SCQ83 wrote:

LXwing wrote:

So the LCG, VGO and OVD routes were indeed suspended, not cancelled, as I explained above.
They will likely return (at least some of them, surely) as soon as White manages to replace the pilots that they've recently lost to TAP mainline among others. If TAP ever really intended to cancel these routes, as loss making or for any other reason, they wouldn't have scheduled and sold them for W18 only to cancel them at the last minute. This alone would clearly show there was some unexpected reason behind the suspension.

So, no, SCQ is not going to happen on TAP anytime soon, as LCG and VGO have the Galicia business pax market pretty well covered when they return.

The routes have been taken down from TAP's booking system. What a surprise! No.

TAP also announced that from January they are going all A320 series on the "Ponte Aerea". So I wonder what will happen to the ATR's. New frequencies/routes?

Hopefully new routes. An ATR cannot fly very far from LIS. What about LIS-SCQ? LXwing, what do you think?