Iberia with La Coruña - London (Heathrow) in February

[ivar]

Read in the paper (La Voz) today that Iberia is starting daily flights from London to La Coruña starting February 2006.

They have talked about closing down the Santiago - London route, so this might be a replacement for that.

 

[Fran]

I have always though Iberia was insane, and now I confirm it. They are trying to hide that their 60% higher costs than Ryanair make them unable to compete. If central position of Lavacolla makes them to have a whole Galicia catchment area, and get passangers frrom every single city of Galicia, I wonder how they will get more passengers moving to one side and making Ryanair get the whole surplus.

ItŽs not a question of "where" (the passangers of La Coruña came to get the flight here, son no additional traffic there). The question is "COST". And it seems that Iberia canŽt compete.

I am affraid it will last just a couple of months. Ryanair has just changed the timetable here, will launch "o cents" fares, will reduplicate the flight and make a nice sandwitch with Iberia flight, and eventually they will pushed of the route.

No doubt that itŽs a vendetta like act to punish the city for having backed Ryanair. As a monopolistic and loathsome structure, they donŽt want to lose the bite and act as a mafia gang, instead of learning to compete. No service, but letŽs harm the ciyt as much as they can.
Fran
Totally outraged and boycotting Iberia as Santiago will do.

 

[ivar]

The Santiago Mayor said to the press yesterday that he is convinced that this is "retaliation" from Iberia after Santiago signed with Ryanair. He said he felt "insulted" by the Iberia decision since it clearly is not a business decision (they had growth in Santiago on the Santiago London route).

...he continues to say that they will work closely with Ryanair to get more flights, a 2nd London route or a Paris flight has been mentioned. It seems like Ryanair leans towards a 2nd London flight.

I have also read that Iberia is just about to start reducing their staff over the next few years. ...and that Iberia staff is ready to strike....

...oohhh boy Iberia.

I read somewhere that the chief at AirBerlin was saying something in the lines of "we transport 60% of the passenger that Iberia does with 10% of the employees". That explains quite a lot.

And then to top it all off, Spanair announced new routes from La Coruña this morning. To Madrid, Barcelona and the Canary Island... not sure when these will be introduced, it may only be summer routes.

Anyway, things are happening.... the Spanish way.

 

[Fran]

Spanair already operates these routes from La Coruña

 

[ivar]

Hmm.. maybe they do, but reading this:
http://www.lavozdegalicia.es/buscavoz/v ... 0000083474

... they make it sound like these are new routes. :roll:

..also reading this article they mention that there is a flight between La Coruña and Lisboa with Portugalia. This is news to me, good news that is

 

[Peter Robins]

Was just about to post a link to today's Voz de Galicia, but I see you beat me to it, Ivar. I can't see any announcement on Iberia's website, but the timetables reflect the change.

Good news for people in SE England wanting to walk the Camino Ingles!

Btw, Portugalia is not a budget airline

Ryanair is currently offering free flights STN-SdC

 

[ivar]

I was thinking the same; this is great news for the camino ingles. Since it is shorter, this camino might be more popular for "the masses" in the future.

Ivar

By the way, I am struggling with the Spanish characters on the main site so I have to write La Coruna and not La Coruña as it should be. The problem appeared when I moved the site to this new host a while back. It is on my to-do-list to fix this, but I do not have much time lately

 

[Peter Robins]

Corunna is the English version - though it's not much used these days.

As it stands, the official Camino Ingles from Corunna is just under 100km, so doesn't qualify for a compostela. The CSJ did try many years ago to persuade the Cathedral authorities to allow walkers to include any walking in England or whereever in the 100km, but failed. So unfortunately almost all those who walk the Ingles start in Ferrol, which historically speaking is a nonsense.

 

[Peter Robins]

According to the lead story in today's Correo Gallego, Ryanair is seriously considering adding a 2nd daily flight Sdc-STN from the spring, and/or adding a further destination. They will continue the current offer of free flights with a 1 centime one.
Some interesting statistics on passenger nos so far, and some interesting reader comments.
http://www.elcorreogallego.es/index.php ... 0&Itemid=6
Ryanair revels in this sort of thing - good publicity for them, bad for Iberia.

 

[ivar]

I think Iberia needs to hire a PR firm... This is nothing new to Ryanair, I don't know, but they probably have one of these "fights" in every new destination they chose to fly to.

I would love a new Ryanair flight to London, since with the current flight I can't fly Oslo - STN - Santiago on the same day, my Oslo flight comes in too late....

Let's cross our fingers..