The decision by JMC Airfares to strip 150,000 return seats out of the summer ’99 market following its merger with Skybargains and Flights By Inspirations led to a better season for all flight-only operators.
Its main rivals Avro, Unijet and First Choice Flights all claimed to have enjoyed a good summer with sales and margins both up on last year. JMC’s largest competitor Avro said its sales were up 8.5% on summer ’98 and its yields were 2% higher.
JMC Airfares, formerly Flying Colours, took out 100,000 seats following its integration with Skybargains and dropped a further 50,000 seats when it merged with FBI.
Operators are predicting an even better summer next year after JMC Airfares confirmed it was taking a further 100,000 seats out of its programme, giving it a total capacity of 500,000 return seats compared to 600,000 in summer ’99.
JMC Airfares general manager Rob Thompson said: “FBI was operating quite a lot of high-season capacity which we will take out. We are also getting rid of some of FBI’s Turkish routes and losing the TriStars (operated by in-house carrier Caledonian Airways) which will reduce our capacity.”
In anticipation of a possible shortfall of capacity for summer 2000, most flight-only operators have opted to increase fares by an average of £5-£10 rather than adding more capacity of their own.
The exceptions are Manchester-based Club Travel 2000 which has increased its capacity by 70% to 126,000 return seats for summer 2000 and market leader Avro which is planning to add an extra 40,000 one-way seats for next summer to bring its total capacity to 840,000 – equivalent to 420,000 returns. Avro distribution director John Fitz-Gerald said: “We are looking to add more destinations and flights to keep our position.”
New routes being considered by Avro are Gatwick-Murcia, Birmingham-Arecife, and Bristol-Fuerteventura.
“We are looking at adding more capacity rather than extra flights, but we are also looking at new routes which might have a market for seat-only,” said Fitz-Gerald.
First Choice Flights said winter sales were booming, probably due to a shortage of capacity caused by the rationalisation of JMC’s programme.
First Choice marketing manager for flights Peter Tsitsaros said:”This has led to a general increase in prices, although it is not possible to say how much fares have gone up because it varies from route to route.”
The only black spot this winter is over the millennium period where operators are seeing far less demand for flights than was originally expected. Flight consolidator Travel 2 said scheduled fares over this period – originally hiked by an average of 20% – are drifting back to normal levels.
Travel 2 air product director David Gibbs said:”There is still demand for travel at that time of year, but no more than we would expect to see normally. Airlines originally set fares about 20% higher than usual for the millennium period, but now some prices are coming in below what they were last year.”
Hamilton Travel said although there is still some availability on outbound flights, there is less capacity on return flights during the first week of January.
TABLE: Cutbacks:operators are predicting a good summer 2000 following JMCAirfares’ decision to reduce capacity