Ah. The continuing saga that is Primera Air continues – this time with the airline announcing it is to start services up from Brussels to the USA.
Primera Air Boeing 737-800 at Birmingham Airport – Image, Economy Class and Beyond.
The airline is planning to operate out of Brussels National Airport (as opposed to Brussels South – Charleroi) to three destinations:
- Newark (New Jersey), Commencing 9th May 2019, daily service
- Boston Logan, Commencing 4th June 2019, four times a week (Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday
- Washington Dulles, Commencing 2nd June 2019, three times a week (Monday, Thursday and Sunday)
Primera are planning to utilise a Boeing 737 MAX 9, configured with a 16 Premium seats and 173 economy class seats.
AirlineRoute has the timings – which are mostly evening flights. Whilst you could get a day’s business done in Brussels or Washington done before jetting off, you’re going to be arriving late in the day to do anything useful/
The airline will be doing some battle, with it going toe to toe with Brussels Airlines and United Airlines on the Washington Dulles route, and solely with United Airlines on the Newark route. It will be operating without competition between Brussels and Boston however.
Now, this is all well and good, however – Primera’s start-up and route planning have fallen short of a lot of accountants dreams. Initially, for their long haul flights, the airline was planning to use Airbus A321neo aircraft. This came to nothing as they had to substitute other aircraft in. In addition, in the leisure market attack on Birmingham – the airline flopped, with the long haul services being scrapped first, with short-haul services to follow by October.
Could Primera Air try to make Brussels work?
Maybe.
It’ll be contingent on two things: on-time arrival of the aircraft, and passenger loads. Considering that they abandoned Birmingham at 70% loads… I’m not pinning my hopes on the service lasting unless they can divert a lot of passengers away from Brussels Airlines and United Airlines.
And as I found out – if you dig and ignore the headline fare, Primera Air fares may not be competitive…
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The last time we flew Primera from EWR to Gatwick, we took 2 hours to clear TSA security check in, there were no TSA pre lines. 4 lanes, and priority/staff/crew cuts the line into the same 4 lanes. After we got to our gates, flight was delayed another 2 hours. I got worried that flight was going to be cancelled after reading flight status that this route is delayed for more than 2 hours 80% of the time, and 30% of the time, the flight cancels. Turns out they outsourced their planes to National Airlines, felt like we went back into the 80s flying with American. Thank god we didn’t have check baggage, we heard from our neighbors upon arrival that many baggages were misplaced.
That was probably our first and last time flying Primera, ever. It’s not worth the stress for that little value of savings.
I really have my doubts about this – their lack of any connecting service on either end means they’re looking at either taking business away from existing competitors (which also includes Brussels Airlines at JFK for the NYC market), or through market stimulation, or a combination of the two. Any way you look at it, that’s an equation for trashy yields even if they can get butts in the seats. Admittedly, with only 189 total seats getting a decent load factor might be possible, but if they couldn’t make any headway at Birmingham with ~70% loads, how high will LFs have to go to offset market-stimulating fares? And with no connections on either end of these flights, they’re entirely dependent on point-to-point demand, as opposed to Brussels Airlines with an extensive connecting network.