[Anonymous]

[pheighdough]

There’s good news coming from a southern regional airport. Southampton is attracting more services in the next year.

Aurigny have replaced their Trislanders with D228s, a marked improvement especially as according to my wife, a real plane, and will therefore travel on it.

Volotea starting next summer to Palma.

Aer Lingus (Stobart Air) starting to Cork. Great news for my my wife, as all her family live there and so we don’t need to trek to Heathrow anymore, we don’t fly Ryanair.

and finally we have KLM starting twice daily to AMS. This is a great way to avoid Heathrow.

When BA Connect ceased from SOU and Fly Maybe took over, services went down, routes changed or were withdrawn. Now we have competition on certain routes, maybe other carriers will be attracted to fly from a regional airport…

[Bath_VIP]

That’s terrible news that the Trislanders are being withdrawn. They are one of my all time favourite aircraft!

And don’t for one minute think that the D228 is an improvement. It masquerades as an airliner but in fact it’s a shoebox only suitable for children to play in.

[AMcWhirter]

Here’s our news piece re KLM at SOU.

http://www.businesstraveller.com/news/102357/klm-to-fly-to-southampton-and-inverness

The KLM service is, I believe, more about connectivity than point-to-point travel.

It’s good to see KLM operating this routewhich has been flown by various carriers over the years.

SOU has a great location but it cannot realise its potential because of its short runway which limits the type of planes and their range.

[pheighdough]

Bath_VIP best not let my wife hear that the D228 is a shoebox, it’s taken me a few days to convince her that it is a marked improvement on the Trislander and she has agreed to fly to Alderney…

[pheighdough]

Bath_VIP best not let my wife hear that the D228 is a shoebox, it’s taken me a few days to convince her that it is a marked improvement on the Trislander and she has agreed to fly to Alderney…

[MrMichael]

KLM flying Sou-AMS us nothing new, I used it in the late nineties and or early 2000,s many a time. I think at that time it was after they had taken over AirUK and it may have been called KLMUK or something like that. They used SAAB aircraft. Glad to see FlyBe will get some competition, it is a route I use often. Getting the train from SW London to SOU and then the hop to AMS is preferable for me than using LHR.

[ChrisJR]

I hope LH follow suit as I travel with them quite a bit and live in winchester so it’s 12 mins on the train to SOU. However twice daily means potentially long connection times and the risk of missed connections would be a long wait (unless you could be rebooked to LHR). Specifically on KLM I thought you could effectively do this anyway as Flybe had a code share with them and AF to AMS and Paris respectively?

[AMcWhirter]

ChrisJR – But is SOU a priority for LH ? It would need to use one of its smaller planes (beause of SOU’s short runway) and there aren’t many left as most have been transferred away, some ending up with OS.

If booking Flybe via AMS I believe you would need to use a travel agent …in other words you wouldn’t be able to book direct with either Flybe or KLM as neither of their websites displays any information regarding onward (from AMS) destinations.

KLM. for example, will display its own services but that is only when it commences operations in 2016.

[KeaneJohn]

This is a welcome return for Southampton. Back in the late 90s, I used to regurarly fly from Southampton to Amsterdam with KLM and connect onward to the USA. A short check in time at Southampton was fantastic and I could be in the air on my transatlantic flight long before I would be checking in at Heathrow having left home at the same time. Back then though there were 4 or 5 flights a day in the “waves” of connections at AMS.

These timings aren’t as great though and it won’t take much of a delay to a transatlantic arrival to find that you are in AMS until the late afternoon departure.

Hope KLM sees sense and adds a further mid day rotation.

When I first flew the route in the late 80s, it was Netherlines on a combination of Jetstreams and Saabs. Netherlines was taken over or became part of KLM City Hopper which in turn turned into KLM UK and just one Stanstead based F100 ended up.

When Air France withdrew its Paris services and KLM its Amsterdam services the ability to connect was dramatically reduced with limited through ticketing.

It was (is) a great airport and I am sure Flybe have brought a lot people from the regions to a lot of destinations that they wouldn’t have gone to but I think they (the airport) missed a trick by allowing these carriers to cease services to these destinations stopping the feeding of onward flights.

[KeaneJohn]

This is a welcome return for Southampton. Back in the late 90s, I used to regurarly fly from Southampton to Amsterdam with KLM and connect onward to the USA. A short check in time at Southampton was fantastic and I could be in the air on my transatlantic flight long before I would be checking in at Heathrow having left home at the same time. Back then though there were 4 or 5 flights a day in the “waves” of connections at AMS.

These timings aren’t as great though and it won’t take much of a delay to a transatlantic arrival to find that you are in AMS until the late afternoon departure.

Hope KLM sees sense and adds a further mid day rotation.

When I first flew the route in the late 80s, it was Netherlines on a combination of Jetstreams and Saabs. Netherlines was taken over or became part of KLM City Hopper which in turn turned into KLM UK and just one Stanstead based F100 ended up.

When Air France withdrew its Paris services and KLM its Amsterdam services the ability to connect was dramatically reduced with limited through ticketing.

It was (is) a great airport and I am sure Flybe have brought a lot people from the regions to a lot of destinations that they wouldn’t have gone to but I think they (the airport) missed a trick by allowing these carriers to cease services to these destinations stopping the feeding of onward flights.

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