KIRFlyer wrote:ClassicLover wrote:EI710 wrote:Speaking of FR, what’s the deal with the fares from KIR-DUB…€95 seems to be the standard return fare now, fair enough the €20 fares arent sustainable but €95 isn’t going to help load factors. You’d have to wonder is it a prerequisite to pulling the route.
You mean, why has the fare gone up from €19.99 each way to €47.99 each way? You wrote it as though it went from €20.00 to €95.00, when really it went from €40.00 to €95.00.
Anyway, I don't think they give much of a hoot about load factors. Sure, they'd love full aircraft, but more importantly, as someone else mentioned, is the yield. If you're regularly getting 50 passengers and found they're all business people, they'll pay the extra and keep flying it, and the airline might as well try to make some more money.
I'm curious as to whether the PSO money makes this route profitable or not. Also, whether FR use it to rotate aircraft to and from Dublin in an easy manner from KIR.
The FR DUB-KIR-DUB service appears to have slowly become unattractive over time, since it started. At the start, the times were decent enough for getting up to Dublin before 10am and leaving DUB around 6pm, all at €20 each way. Now the times vary from day to day and are poorly timed for morning and evening departures. The price has also gone up to just under €50 each way. I think it’s only a matter of time before FR pull the route. It cannot be making a profit, even at €95 return. FR is always about the bottom line. They do not operate routes out of the goodness of their heart. They have an ulterior motive, no doubt. At the start I thought it was so that they could keep pilots current and aircraft “ticking over”, but now I think it is simply to keep EA at bay.
Through the majority of the routes life EI commuter had it until 2001. The RE took over the route as PSO until 2008. FR undercut them viciously in the tendering and operated the route from 2008 until 2011. Even with the PSO, FR couldn’t make the route work. They blamed everyone and anyone as they cut the services. EIR picked the route up in 2011 until their demise in 2021.
EIR and think RE charged fares around €41/44 each way under the PSO. The ATR 42/72 worked well. The 737 is too much. While FR’s pricing is not outlandish, as already stated, they won’t make a profit.
Are you not kind of contradicting yourself there by saying they only think of the bottom line and then by saying that they do it to keep EA at bay?
I would nuance it by saying they only operate with one motive profit. The exception being Ireland where they have shown plenty of seemingly unprofitable behaviour - e.g when Wizz or Easy came to Ireland.
