Competitors on this route are regular airlines Tarom and British Airways, as well as Wizz Air and Blue Air. The latter two are low-cost operators that entered the market in 2005 or 2006 and have since developed unhindered.
UK’s easyJet, the second largest low-cost operator in Europe after Ryanair, which carried 50 million passengers last year, introduced four flights a week from Bucharest to London (Henri Coanda – Otopeni to Gatwick) in October. Gatwick is London’s second biggest airport after Heathrow.
Ryanair will introduce daily flights from Bucharest’s Henri Coanda Airport, the largest of the country to London’s Stansted in March 2014, as well as flights to Dublin, Ireland in April, offered four times a week.
“Once these new low-cost companies have entered the market, Romanians will have flights available to all London airports,” said an aviation expert who declined to be named.
They will go to Heathrow with Tarom and British Airways, to Luton with Blue Air and Wizz Air, to Gatwick with easyJet and to Stansted with Ryanair, the expert added.
“London is a good route because many Romanians work there.”
The expert says the companies will try to stand out by price, and competition will drive it down.
“Prices and services make the difference. Companies will adjust the ticket price and not the services that generate additional revenue, such as luggage charge and all.”
Low-cost airlines try to differentiate themselves through their flight schedule, the airports they fly to, the charges for additional services, checked and cabin luggage etc. All low-cost companies charge a fee for in-flight meals and all these charges make the final price of the flight higher than displayed on the airlines’ websites.
easyJet, like any other low-cost company except Wizz Air, does not charge for one piece of carry on luggage. The checked luggage charge for a Bucharest-London return trip may be equal to the ticket price in case of a 32 kilo piece of luggage, EUR141.
Wizz Air and Blue Air fly to London, too, but they land on Luton, a smaller airport some 50 kilometers away from the city.
A roundtrip ticket to London (Luton) from Wizz Air costs 898 lei (EUR201) for a reservation made early in December for April 3-6, 2014. Wizz Air allows passengers to take a small handbag as cabin luggage for free and charges RON59 for anything larger, while checked luggage costs RON113.
Wizz Air has had the most aggressive expansion of all low-cost carriers operating in Romania, and is about the open its fifth hub in the country in Craiova on July 23, 2014, to which it will allocate one airplane. Its other hubs are in Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Targu-Mures and Timisoara.
It carried 2.7 million passengers to and from Romania last year.
Blue Air charges RON474 for a Bucharest-London trip on April 3 to 6, 2014, booked in early December. One piece of cabin luggage is free, checked luggage charge is EUR17 per item. The company also charges RON91 for payment by card online, something Wizz Air charges for, too.
Blue Air is the only Romanian-owned low-cost airline and also the only one with employees and offices in this country. It carried 1.5 million people last year.
Blue Air flies to 25 routes, including Dublin where it will see competition again from Ryanair as of next year.
Ryanair, which will start flying from Bucharest to London and Dublin next year, expects to carry 100,000 passengers to and from London and 60,000 to and from Dublin. Adding the flights from Constanta and Targu-Mures, the number of passengers carried next year should reach 210,000, Ryanair officials said.
The airline allows a 10-kilo hand luggage and charges for checked luggage, starting from EUR15 for a 15-kilo bag.
Another low-cost airline in Romania, which only competes with state-owned Tarom is flydubai. The company offers Bucharest-Dubai flights three times a week as of October 2012.
A new low-cost airline, Air Serbia, is due to enter on December 9. The company will offer Bucharest-Belgrade flights, which no other low-cost rivals is currently offering. (EUR1=RON4.4687)
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)