In this week’s exclusive anna.aero analysis, a comparison has been made between the busiest cities (in terms of air travel) in 16 western European countries. Which cities are best connected to the rest of the world and which have seen the biggest change in the number of non-stop destinations served during the last year?
To facilitates a like-for-like comparison, data for the first week in August 2009 has been compared with the first week in August in 2008. This is around the peak of the summer season when traditionally the maximum number of destinations are served. Of the 16 cities examined, seven are served by multiple airports. These are:
- London (5): City, Gatwick, Heathrow, Luton and Stansted.
- Oslo (3): Gardermoen, Rygge, Torp
- Paris (3): Beauvais, CDG, Orly
- Stockholm (3): Arlanda, Bromma, Skavsta
- Brussels (2): Charleroi, Zaventum
- Frankfurt (2): Main, Hahn
- Rome (2): Ciampino, Fiumicino
Only one city in each country was examined. So although Barcelona, Berlin Tegel, Düsseldorf, Manchester, Milan Malpensa, Munich and Palma are all busier than Helsinki or Lisbon, they are not the busiest cities in their country and are thus excluded.
London benefits from having the most airports and across all five airports a total of 370 destinations were served this summer, down 11 on summer 2008. Low-cost operations by the likes of easyJet and Ryanair at Gatwick, Luton and Stansted serve many foreign airports not reachable from Heathrow. In terms of individual airports however, London Heathrow has long been overtaken by Amsterdam, Frankfurt Main and Paris CDG in terms of non-stop destinations served.
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| Source: OAG Max Online for w/c 3 August 2009 and w/c 4 August 2008 |
In general, the greater the number of total passengers, the higher the number of destinations served. Brussels, thanks to the combination of Zaventem and Charleroi (a growing Ryanair base), performs above expectations serving almost as many destinations as Rome despite only having half the total number of passengers.
Zurich adding routes, Dublin and Rome losing them
Between August 2008 and August 2009, five of the 16 cities examined increased the number of non-stop routes from their airports while 10 saw a decline (Paris remained unchanged). The biggest gainer was Zurich which increased its non-stop destinations from 147 to 157. However, this net gain of 10 routes disguises the fact that seven destinations were lost while 17 were added. Most of the additions came from local carriers Edelweiss and Helvetic adding low frequency holiday destinations but there were also new destinations added by Air Seychelles (to the Seychelles), Armavia (to Yerevan), Belle Air (to Tirana), OLT (to Heringsdorf) and Pegasus (to Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen).
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| Source: OAG Max Online for w/c 3 August 2009 and w/c 4 August 2008 |
Dublin’s net loss of 14 routes also hides the fact that five new destinations have been added (Catania, Funchal, Memmingen, Vancouver and Weeze) while 19 destinations have been lost (Basel*, Berlin Tegel, Bremen*, Calgary, Doncaster/Sheffield*, Durham Tees Valley*, Forli*, Friedrichshafen*, Fueteventura*, Gothenburg Save*, Guernsey, Kosice, Los Angeles, Norwich, Palanga, Ponta Delgada, Porto*, Salzburg* and Stuttgart. *Ryanair route). Other airlines dropping routes to Dublin from their schedules included Flybe and Lufthansa, while the demise of flyLAL and SkyEurope also cost the airport a couple of routes.
London gains 17 new destinations but loses 28
Between London’s five airports, there was a net loss of 11 destinations during the last year. This consisted of gaining 17 destinations but losing 28. Among the new destinations are Bacau, Hyderabad, Memmingen, Punta Cana, Rimini, Sao Paulo, Tangiers, Timisoara, Trapani and Zweibrücken. A summary of the lost services is provided below:
| Destination (code) | London Airport | Airline | Weekly frequency |
| Aalesund (AES) | Gatwick | SAS | 2 |
| Ahmedabad (AMD) | Heathrow | Air India | 5 |
| Ankara (ESB) | Heathrow | Bmi | 7 |
| Balaton (SOB) | Stansted | Ryanair | 3 |
| Cardiff (CWL) | Gatwick | Zoom | 1 |
| Dhaka (DAC) | Heathrow | British Airways | 3 |
| Dresden (DRS) | Gatwick | British Airways | 7 |
| Durham Tees Valley (MME) | Heathrow | bmi | 20 |
| Ekaterinburg (SVX) | Heathrow | bmi | 3 |
| Kaliningrad (KGD) | Gatwick | KD Avia | 7 |
| Kolkata (CCU) | Heathrow | Air India British Airways |
3 3 |
| Liberia (LIR) | Gatwick | First Choice | 1 |
| Lilongwe (LLW) | Gatwick | Air Zimbabwe | 1 |
| Malmo (MMX) | Gatwick | Sterling | 5 |
| Osaka Kansai (KIX) | Heathrow | JAL | 7 |
| Palanga (PLQ) | Stansted | flyLAL | 2 |
| Pau (PUF) | Stansted | Ryanair | 7 |
| Rygge (RYG) | Stansted | Norwegian | 3 |
| Salvador (SSA) | Gatwick | First Choice | 1 |
| San Diego (SAN) | Gatwick | Zoom | 2 |
| Sarajevo (SJJ) | Gatwick | British Airways | 2 |
| Seychelles (SEZ) | Heathrow | Air Seychelles | 2 |
| Strasbourg (SXB) | London City | Air France | 17 |
| Sumburgh (LSI) | Stansted | Atlantic Airways | 2 |
| Tbilisi (TBS) | Heathrow | bmi | 3 |
| Vilnius (VNO) | Gatwick
Stansted |
airBaltic flyLAL flyLAL |
7 7 5 |
| Windhoek (WDH) | Gatwick | Air Namibia | 2 |
| Winnipeg (YWG) | Gatwick | Zoom | 1 |
| Source: Derived from OAG Max Online for w/c 3 August 2009 and w/c 4 August 2008 | |||
Some of these losses are due to the collapse of airlines (flyLAL, KD Avia, Sterling and Zoom) while others reflect airlines taking the difficult decision to drop underperforming routes.
3 Comments
Cardiff (CWL) to Gatwick (LGW) Zoom 1
This was never operated as a route between the two airports. It was simply a double drop flight operating Gatwick-Cardiff-Toronto-Cardiff-Gatwick. Zoom did not transport passengers between Gatwick and Cardiff.
I don’t agree with the methodology you have used, because it is misleading. We have just two ways to compare routes between cities. The first making use of the IATA codes, in this case Paris has two airports, Frankfurt one, and London three (LTN-Luton and STN-Stansted aren’t London airports).
Of course you will reply that airlines promote these airports as such and people use them to reach London and Beavauis to go to Paris. But you used Hahn as a second Frankfurt airport and Hahn is more than 100km away, but you haven’t used Bratislava-Vienna (that is just 60 km away) to Vienna. What is the reason to sometimes include a smaller airport being considered a secondary airport of one city and sometimes not? So using IATA codes it is much more simple and transparent.
The second way is to compare directly connections between cities. Ryanair for instance uses very often airfields that are near bigger cities, and in this case they count twice, even if people go to the same city. They use Torp but people go to Oslo or Lübeck and almost everybody drives to Hamburg.
Another example, recently Lufthansa moved their flights from Berlin TXL from London City to London Heatrow. They have the same number of flights and fly to the same city and even use bigger aircraft and that means more seats. But according to your methodology Berlin loses one connection and is less well connected.
There is one error on your list, Ryanair still serve Pau from Stansted nonstop. The airport was closed from 27 July to 9 August this year due to runway work, so FR diverted flights to Lourdes. But they’re definitely back there now.
bmi still serve Tiblisi, but I believe it is now a one stop. So it fits in the same category as your Air Seychelles exception in a previous comment.