London Stansted still Europe’s leading low-cost hub with over 130 destinations served this winter

The phenomenal growth of low-cost airlines in Europe really began in the UK in the 1990s. One of the key facilitators for this was that the huge metropolis of London was served by four major airports, two of which were operating well below their capabilities. As a result, when easyJet was launched in November 1995 it was from London Luton airport, while Dublin-based Ryanair focused on London Stansted as its biggest operational base. When British Airways launched its low-cost subsidiary Go in May 1998, it too chose London Stansted airport as its main base.

As a result, traffic at the Essex airport with the Norman Foster designed terminal boomed and between 1994 and 2006, traffic grew seven-fold from 3.3 million annual passengers to 23.7 million, making it the third-busiest airport in the UK after Heathrow and Gatwick.

However, in the last three years, passenger numbers have fallen by 20%, as easyJet (which bought Go in 2002) has focused its London growth at Gatwick and Ryanair (which acquired Stansted-based, KLM-owned Buzz in 2003) has cut the number of aircraft based at the airport for a variety of reasons. However, these two carriers still account for almost 90% of seat capacity at the airport.

Dublin still #1 route

A closer look at the busiest routes at the airport reveals that Dublin stands head and shoulders above all other international routes with over 700,000 annual passengers. Spanish beach destinations Alicante and Malaga rank second and third

A number of domestic routes including Belfast City, Belfast International, Edinburgh, Glasgow International and Prestwick all saw traffic volumes of over 250,000 in 2009. anna.aero has previously examined Ryanair’s operations at the airport and easyJet’s operations, but which other carriers have (or have had) a presence at the airport in recent years?

The rise and fall of airberlin services

airberlin saw an opportunity at London Stansted and began ‘City Shuttle’ operations from a number of German airports in September 2002. In December 2005, it even launched domestic flights to Belfast City, Glasgow and Manchester, but these were abandoned at the end of the 2007 summer season. The number of destinations served by airberlin at Stansted peaked at 12 in the summer of 2006, but has fallen gradually in recent years. The number of routes will fall still further next week when airberlin’s Hannover and Nuremberg services are re-allocated to London Gatwick, leaving just Düsseldorf, Münster/Osnabruck and Paderborn services operating from Stansted this summer.

germanwings stays, Norwegian goes

Other European LCCs have also been attracted to Stansted. Currently, Lufthansa’s low-cost subsidiary germanwings operates multiple daily flights to Cologne/Bonn, Hannover and Stuttgart and will overtake airberlin to become the airport’s third-busiest scheduled carrier this summer. Another major European LCC, Norwegian, began serving Stansted from Oslo in June 2003. Further routes were added to Bergen and Stavanger (April 2004), Trondheim (November 2004), Kristiansand (November 2006), Tromsø (December 2007) and Rygge (March 2008). All of these services have now either been terminated or moved to London Gatwick.

Mixed fortunes for long-haul services

Stansted has had several attempts at securing transatlantic services. American Airlines has tried at least twice to make it work while the airport was also the chosen London airport for MaxJet and Eos, a couple of “business” airlines that operated between 2005 and 2007/08. Last summer, US services returned briefly when Sun Country Airlines began a weekly service to Minneapolis/St Paul using a 737-800 with a technical stop in Gander.

More successful has been the arrival of AirAsia X, which began long-haul, low-cost flights to Kuala Lumpur on 11 March 2009. Last year, the route generated almost 170,000 passengers with many making onward connections with AirAsia’s extensive low-cost network in Kuala Lumpur.

New routes still keep coming; Turkish network growing

Despite the downturn in passenger numbers in recent years, the airport continues to welcome new services from a range of carriers. Last year, the following new services were launched.

Launch date	Airline	Destination	Weekly frequency
28 March 2010	easyJet	Cagliari (CAG)	7
28 March 2010	Ryanair	Trapani (TPS)	7
29 April 2010	germanwings	Hannover (HAJ)	12
4 May 2010	Ryanair	Fez (FEZ)	3
4 May 2010	Ryanair	Figari (FSC)	3
14 May 2010	easyJet	Dalaman (DLM)	4
14 May 2010	easyJet	Split (SPU)	4
15 May 2010	easyJet	Bodrum (BJV)	3
15 May 2010	easyJet	Dubrovnik (DBV)	3
25 May 2010	Ryanair	Ciudad Real (CQM)	3
11 June 2010	Sun Country	Minneapolis/St Paul (MSP)	1
2 August 2010	AnadoluJet	Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen (SAW)	7
31 October 2010	Ryanair	Verona (VRN)	3
2 November 2010	Ryanair	Plovdiv (PDV)	2
2 December 2010	airberlin	Salzburg (SZG)	4
16 December 2010	Belle Air	Tirana (TIA)	2
17 December 2010	easyJet	Grenoble (GNB)	3
Source: anna.aero new route database

This week has seen the start of a new service to Ankara operated by Turkish Airlines’ low-cost subsidiary AnadoluJet and there are several other new routes already announced for 2011.

Launch date	Airline	Destination	Weekly frequency
28 January 2011	AnadoluJet	Ankara (ESB)	3
27 March 2011	Ryanair	Marrakech (RAK)	2
28 March 2011	bmibaby	Belfast City (BHD)	16
13 April 2011	Ryanair	Thessaloniki (SKG)	3
1 May 2011	Pegasus	Izmir (ADB)	3
13 October 2011	Icelandair	Reykjavik (KEF)	2
Source: anna.aero new route database