Hi all,
I have been asked to publicise a letter from the Honorary British Consul in Granada regarding negotiations to re-establish Monarchs service from Granada to Gatwick.
Here is the letter.
Dear Everybody,
On Monday of this week the new British Ambassador in Spain, Denise Holt, made her first official visit to Granada. She had interviews with the different city authorities, and among them with the Presidente de la Diputación Provincial, with whom she had a long conversation about the low-cost airlines flying between Granada and the UK. These flights have made a great difference to the life of the British residents in Granada and province, as well as to tourists and Erasmus students and many others.
The Presidente de la Diputación has held talks with Monarch airlines with the intention of increasing their subsidies in order that they may resume flights in the spring. He has also made great efforts to achieve a considerable increase in the backing from the Chamber of Commerce.
He has asked me if I can request letters of "support" from the English community who live or holiday here; this means support for his activity and efforts to maintain the low-cost airlines (even the continuity of Ryanair has been imperilled, because of the fact that the City Corporation has discontinued their financial backing). It would be extremely useful if you could write a letter, either to him (via me at this e-mail dlkelham@telefonica.net) or directly to me, mentioning how important these flights (in general) are to you for visiting your family or doing business in the UK, for your frequent visits during the year....
You can write in either Spanish or English, and I will collect together your letters, print them out and take them to D. Antonio Martínez Caler, preferably next week, because he would like this support to take to the big FITUR (Tourist Fair) in Madrid.. He is doing a great job, I think!
Yours sincerely,
Diana L. Kelham
Honorary British Consul in Granada
Can I ask everyone on the forum to get in touch with Ms Kelham expressing support for the reinstatement of the vital link.
My wife and I strongly support any action that will restore the service from Granada to Gatwick. Monarchs action in cancelling the flights was, we consider, to be extremely short sighted with absolutely no thought given to the hundreds if not thousands of regular and irregular passengers on this route.
Malaga simply is not an alternative to the Granada service, but one that we are stuck with if Andalucia Inland passengers want an airport with a service to Gatwick.
For many hundreds of travellers, Ryanair’s service to from Granada is not viable, since departures/arrivals from/to Liverpool, East Midlands or Stansted are just logistically stupid for people living South of the Thames in Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire, Berkshire and Dorset.
We dont need to be faced with a three to four hour drive to an airport which lies in totally the opposite direction to that in which we need to travel and then to be faced with a possible two or three hour drive on arrival at Malaga.
Malaga is currently at saturation point, a fact well recognised by AENA who are doing all that they can to ease the situation, but until the new terminal is open and the new runway is built the delays involved in actually getting into the airport will continue to be horrendous.
If it means restructuring Monarchs pricing system then so be it. It’s high time that all of these low-cost airlines realised that offering passenger fares which equate to less than their rates for hold baggage is not the way to do business.
Monarch offer themselves as a scheduled airline and whilst I would hate to see their fares brought into line with the more conventional scheduled airlines, BA or Iberia for instance, logic dictates that a reasonable fare will virtually guarantee a decent load factor for the airline.
[Having said that, check out www.ba.com the fares from Gatwick to Malaga seem to be more in line with the lowcost airlines (If you cant beat 'em ,join 'em?)]
The other factor to be considered is the actual timing of the flight; this is paramount in deciding the sort of load factors that one can expect. For the first two years of the service, the flight left Gatwick mid afternnon and the return flight arrived Gatwick around 9pm. These are absolutely brilliant timings. A 6 pm arrival at Granada ensured that most passengers could reach their ultimate destinations before nightfall, and the arrival time at Gatwick was still in time to link with trains to the South Coast.
To my mind, Monarchs biggest mistake was the retiming of the flight from Gatwick to 0615. this meant a check in at 0415; no trains, no public transport, only taxis or private cars or an overnight stay at the airport having arrived the previous evening.
Monarch then got into the vicious circle of descending load factors and resultant higher fares to cover the costs and the whole thing just spiralled out of control.
From a passenger point of view, Monarch gave the best service of the three major low-cost airlines. Queasyjet and Ryanair offer little in the way of passenger care, the attitude of the cabin-crew being little better than what used to be termed Woolworth Saturday Girl rejects.
Squeezyjets aircraft boarding policy ensures a scrimmage at the gate and generally speaking the baggage is taken better care of than the passengers. (Mind you on some flights the baggage price is actually more than the passenger price...so its not really surprising).
Thanks.
For anyone who needs a reminder...
http://www.flightlevel350.com/Aircraft_Airbus_A320-Airline_Monarch_Aviation_Video-4078.html