Commercial airline routes that probably shouldn't exist

[Mattg]

Transcontinental flights out of Berlin are somewhat limited, with just AB to AUH, QR to DOH, a flight to Beijing and a few flights to the USA. Not even Emirates, who fly to pretty much everywhere, fly to Berlin.

So can you imagine my surprise the other day when I learnt that Mongolian Airlines has a scheduled passenger flight from Berlin-Tegel to Ulan Bator, Mongolia. It runs twice weekly... get this... on a Boeing 737-800, with a tech stop in Russia. This isn't even a joke - it is a regular passenger service! For the record, the flight time is 10 hours including the stop. :shock:



And when I click on "Detail":


It got me thinking... How does this route even exist? And why on earth do Mongolian Airlines fly to Berlin but NOT Frankfurt, London, Paris, Rome, Istanbul, Amsterdam, Athens or any other European city outside Russia for that matter?

Another flight that got me wondering why it existed lately was Niki's new service between VIE and BTS. The distance between Vienna and Bratislava is 30 miles and there are hourly direct train services between the two cities that are fast, comfortable, convenient and cheap. But that hasn't stopped Niki announcing 6x weekly flights using E190s. The scheduled sector time is 25 minutes.



So... has anyone noticed any other airline routes lately that you had scratching your head?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

there are quite a few routes which may appear to be without good reason. but a lot of them probably reflect some sort of political influence.

chinese airlines fly to some way out destinations in Africa, and trip reports suggest the flights are sometimes practically empty. several african airlines also have flights into China that you might wonder if they support a plane of that size.

sometimes airports and governments offer incentives for airlines to fly to certain airports rather than others. or their might be commercial (business) interests in Berlin for Mongolia?

 

[markis10]

FJ run a 737 to HNL with a stop, what can you do when there is not enough business to put on a bigger plane?

FLIGHT	FJ822	OPERATED BY	Fiji Airways
FROM	Nadi (NAN), Fiji	TOTAL FLIGHT DURATION	8h 51m
TO	Honolulu International (HNL), United States Of America	TOTAL FLYING TIME	7h 51m
ON	10 February 2015	TOTAL GROUND TIME	1h 0m

DEPARTS	Nadi (NAN), Fiji Tue, 10 Feb 2015 11:59 PM	ARRIVES	Christmas Island (CXI), Kiribati Wed, 11 Feb 2015 06:35 AM
EQUIPMENT	Boeing 737-700
MEALS	Business Class	Dinner
Economy Class	Hot Meal

DEPARTS	Christmas Island (CXI), Kiribati Wed, 11 Feb 2015 07:35 AM	ARRIVES	Honolulu International (HNL), United States Of America Tue, 10 Feb 2015 10:50 AM Terminal: M
EQUIPMENT	Boeing 737-700
MEALS	Business Class	Breakfast
Economy Class	Breakfast

FLIGHT DETAILS

Close

FLIGHT	FJ852	OPERATED BY	Fiji Airways
FROM	Honolulu International (HNL), United States Of America	TOTAL FLIGHT DURATION	8h 55m
TO	Nadi (NAN), Fiji	TOTAL FLYING TIME	7h 55m
ON	20 February 2015	TOTAL GROUND TIME	1h 0m

DEPARTS	Honolulu International (HNL), United States Of America Fri, 20 Feb 2015 01:15 AM Terminal: M	ARRIVES	Apia Faleolo (APW), Samoa Sat, 21 Feb 2015 07:15 AM
EQUIPMENT	Boeing 737-800
MEALS	Business Class	Snack
Economy Class	Cold Meal

DEPARTS	Apia Faleolo (APW), Samoa Sat, 21 Feb 2015 08:15 AM	ARRIVES	Nadi (NAN), Fiji Sat, 21 Feb 2015 08:10 AM
EQUIPMENT	Boeing 737-800
MEALS	Business Class	Breakfast
Economy Class	Breakfast

 

[williamsf1]

Another flight that got me wondering why it existed lately was Niki's new service between VIE and BTS. The distance between Vienna and Bratislava is 30 miles and there are hourly direct train services between the two cities that are fast, comfortable, convenient and cheap. But that hasn't stopped Niki announcing 6x weekly flights using E190s. The scheduled sector time is 25 minutes.

View attachment 40993

So... has anyone noticed any other airline routes lately that you had scratching your head?

I saw a recent news article re the above flight, and the reason given for operating had more to do with connecting traffic than just point to point travel

 

[harvyk]

You can rest assured that for every single flight out there, there is a reason why they exist, and it won't necessarily be the obvious bums in seats reason. There could be trade reasons, cargo reasons, pricing reasons, equipment positioning reasons, training reasons, connecting flights reasons.

To put bluntly, if a flight has no reason to operate then it either won't be operating for long, or the company will be going bust pretty quickly.

The real confusing thing is that a flight or even a route in isolation does not need to be making a profit for the airline to run it, it just needs to be some sort of benefit to the company. This is especially true for short connecting flights which act as feeder services for larger flights.

 

[A330]

MIAT used to fly ULN-TXL direct with an A310 but now operates ULN-SVO-TXL with either 738 or 763. They have traffic rights SVO-TXL too.

Apparently they fly to TXL because of the Mongolian community there? They also interline with AB for connections beyond TXL.

Niki's BTS-VIE flight is used to position the aircraft to fly BTS-BRU. I guess they decided to sell seats to get free publicity?

Kuwait Airways' GVA-FRA tag strikes me as strange. What need does KU have to fly to GVA?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Kuwait Airways' GVA-FRA tag strikes me as strange. What need does KU have to fly to GVA?

chocolates, rolexes and bank accounts? and possibly the UN

air Zimbabwe used to fly Harare-beijing. odd one would have thought (I can understand with political ties and trade maybe you might fly to CAN or something... but PEK is a long ways into China).

 

[jsoprano]

So can you imagine my surprise the other day when I learnt that Mongolian Airlines has a scheduled passenger flight from Berlin-Tegel to Ulan Bator, Mongolia. It runs twice weekly... get this... on a Boeing 737-800, with a tech stop in Russia. This isn't even a joke - it is a regular passenger service! For the record, the flight time is 10 hours including the stop. :shock:

Re the MIAT flight to Berlin, it exists as long as I can remember. Being from Berlin I have fond memories of a MIAT 727-200 sitting on the tarmac of SXF (Berlin-Schoenefeld) airport in the mid-90s, when my interest in aviation started. In those days they used to fly twice a week, with 2 fuel stops along the way in Moscow and Novosibirsk. They then later acquired an A310 and flew both non-stop and via Moscow. They changed to TXL then at some stage, and even had a FRA flight for a short time (can't remember if it was a tag-on to the TXL service).

But its existence is due to the large Mongolian community in the former East of Germany. There are tens of thousands of Mongolians living in Berlin and surrounds, who moved to the GDR back in the 1970s and 80s to study or for work. Many of them went back to Mongolia, but many also stayed. The crowd at the airport when a MIAT flight is arriving or leaving is quite interesting as well, not your average clientèle, with tons of luggage and a dozen people for each passenger simply to welcome them or send them off. If you know TXL and its narrow corridor of check-in desks and gates, it can definitely lame half the airport.

Another flight that got me wondering why it existed lately was Niki's new service between VIE and BTS.

I looked into this one last week. Besides connecting pax as already mentioned, this flight must have also to do with fleet rotation and aircraft utilisation, because if you look at the timings the flight out and the return are some 3 hours apart, so this suggests they need to/want to move the planes between their hub VIE and BTS.


Another one I always wondered about (but it is no longer in this form) was Lufthansa's DUS-NCL flight. It used to be daily on a CRJ200, then a few years ago they even increased it to double-daily on CRJ and even 735 some days I think. Anyway, it is no longer, has since been handed down to their LCC Germanwings, who still fly the route.
The weird thing about it was not that LH flew to NCL, but it must have been the only LH destination not served from MUC or FRA. It's the equivalent of Qantas offering flights to say Surabaya, but only from ADL. And to me there are no obvious connections between the Northeast of England and Duesseldorf either. The 2 times I used the flight most pax were connecting in DUS anyway.

 

[Mattg]

What can I say? You learn something new everyday! I wasn't aware about the Mongolian community in Germany but I guess this isn't a huge surprise. Maybe I will head down to TXL when that flight is due to arrive just to see for myself... sounds interesting.

 

[Alanslegal]

Thanks for that, I might have to spend a few days in Kiribati one day and tick it off the country list whilst enroute to Hawaii

FJ run a 737 to HNL with a stop, what can you do when there is not enough business to put on a bigger plane?

FLIGHT	FJ822	OPERATED BY	Fiji Airways
FROM	Nadi (NAN), Fiji	TOTAL FLIGHT DURATION	8h 51m
TO	Honolulu International (HNL), United States Of America	TOTAL FLYING TIME	7h 51m
ON	10 February 2015	TOTAL GROUND TIME	1h 0m

DEPARTS	Nadi (NAN), Fiji Tue, 10 Feb 2015 11:59 PM	ARRIVES	Christmas Island (CXI), Kiribati Wed, 11 Feb 2015 06:35 AM
EQUIPMENT	Boeing 737-700
MEALS	Business Class	Dinner
Economy Class	Hot Meal

 

[markis10]

Thanks for that, I might have to spend a few days in Kiribati one day and tick it off the country list whilst enroute to Hawaii

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It's a weekly service.

 

[jsoprano]

just coming back to the MIAT flight to Berlin again, this really took me down memory lane last night. One more reason for this flight during the 1970s and 80s was also tourism: people in the former GDR behind the Iron Curtain had somewhat limited travel options. So besides the usual Eastern European destinations like Poland, Bulgaria and Romania, there were really only three long-haul destinations available that East Germans could travel to: Cuba, Vietnam and Mongolia. Now Cuba and Vietnam are quite obvious as a holiday destination, but quite a few people also went to Mongolia, to experience a completely foreign culture and spend time in the desert plains, living in jurtes etc.

Regarding SXF in the mid/late 1990s, other interesting planes to visit were a regular Air Koryo Tu-154 or Il-62 (weekly at least) from Pyongyang via Moscow, and the Cubana Il-62 which flew fortnightly via Gran Canaria (or Tenerife?) to Havana. And, last not least, a Singapore Airlines 747-400, which at the time flew SIN-ZRH-SXF 4 or 5 times a week and was parked on the apron all day. That was my favourite, simply due to its sheer size compared to all the other planes at SXF.

Apologies for hijacking the thread somewhat.

 

[browski]

I have 2 mysteries:
1. Bangkok-Guangzhou on Air Madagascar
2. Tokyo-Beijing on PIA

 

[juddles]

.....chinese airlines fly to some way out destinations in Africa....

Gold. Gold. Gold. Gold.

 

[Formal Hall]

I saw a recent news article re the above flight, and the reason given for operating had more to do with connecting traffic than just point to point travel

Apparently it is some sort of tax or airport charge dodge; much lower in Slovakia than Austria and this is Niki's way of pressuring the airport authorities.

 

[madrooster]

CA will soon fly PEK-YUL-HAV... beats me as to why they'd fly to HAV...

 

[RooFlyer]

CA will soon fly PEK-YUL-HAV... beats me as to why they'd fly to HAV...

Lots of traffic PEK-YUL, and assuming they can pick up at YUL, lots of Canadians (and Americans ) YUL (cold) - HAV (warm)

 

[Pvcmenace]

Back in the day I took a few times an NZ flight whose route was AKL-TBU-APW-HNL on the 767. We got off in APW but it served the purpose of the local island bus.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

beats me as to why they'd fly to HAV...

political cooperation

 

[Simo]

Also in Australia the govt will subsidise the flight between destination due to location reason...

Cape York is a prime example.