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atillathehunn

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The crew (one Kazakhstani and one British) have been taken to hospital with minor injuries and, I would imagine, some new trousers.

Apparently instrument loss on take off. Took three attempts to land and guided in by F16s.
 

Crawley Ben

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Reported elsewhere that Air China's proposed Chengdu - Gatwick service is now going to operate out of Heathrow instead as of 02nd April 2019. 3x weekly using Airbus A330-200 aircraft.

Cheers

Ben
 

LOL The Irony

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Flybe is up for sale
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46203183
The Exeter-based regional airline's board confirmed it was "in discussions with a number of strategic operators about a potential sale of the company".

Flybe said it was also reviewing other "strategic options", including cutting more flights in the face of challenges.

A spokesman for the airline said there was no threat to tickets and flights that had already been purchased as a result of the review.

Last month, the airline warned full-year losses would be £22m, blaming falling consumer demand, a weaker pound and higher fuel costs.

Latest results, published on Wednesday, show that pre-tax profits for the six months to 30 September fell by 54% to £7.4m, on revenues down by 2.4% to £419.2m.

The airline's shares have fallen by almost 75% since September.

The Exeter-based airline is now valued at about £25m, far below the £215m it was valued at when it floated on the stock exchange in 2010.
 

FQTV

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And despite this, Flybe have just launched LCY-NCL (operated by T3).

https://www.routesonline.com/news/3...ybe-adds-london-city-newcastle-from-jan-2019/

Seems an odd choice, much as I like a S2000.

Newcastle to City was a bit of a flop when they tried it last time. The outbound service works OK for a quadrant market from about Hexham round to Blyth, heading for Canary Wharf specifically, but for Newcastle city centre and points south, and for origins/destinations in The City and West End of London, the train is still is still going to be as fast or faster.

One way does not make a viable route, however, and with rail services back to Newcastle at least half hourly, hanging around until 7pm for the sole flight back from City may numb the appeal to the high-yield market - not to say what impact the odd fog diversion to Gatwick or Southend might have on the route's reputation.

The Friday evening and Sunday evening services could be popular with the weekly commuters.

T3 aircraft do seem to spend a lot of their time sat idle on ramps, but this isn't how i'd personally get their utilisation up.
 

Bald Rick

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The crew (one Kazakhstani and one British) have been taken to hospital with minor injuries and, I would imagine, some new trousers.

Apparently instrument loss on take off. Took three attempts to land and guided in by F16s.

The ATC recording is doing the rounds. Absolutely terrifying! Caps doffed to the controllers though, handled it very well.
 

atillathehunn

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Newcastle to City was a bit of a flop when they tried it last time. The outbound service works OK for a quadrant market from about Hexham round to Blyth, heading for Canary Wharf specifically, but for Newcastle city centre and points south, and for origins/destinations in The City and West End of London, the train is still is still going to be as fast or faster.

One way does not make a viable route, however, and with rail services back to Newcastle at least half hourly, hanging around until 7pm for the sole flight back from City may numb the appeal to the high-yield market - not to say what impact the odd fog diversion to Gatwick or Southend might have on the route's reputation.

The Friday evening and Sunday evening services could be popular with the weekly commuters.

T3 aircraft do seem to spend a lot of their time sat idle on ramps, but this isn't how i'd personally get their utilisation up.

Well, I think it's a very dangerous assumption to make that the train is any more reliable. The ECML wires seem to be done more often than they're up, and with catastrophic delays as a result. I think the reliability of the ECML is just as tarnished. At least with a diversion it's usually pretty swift and a train from Southend (which is where City usually diverts to).

Not expecting a wholesale shift to the new City service, but given a small plane, small airport etc it should work out. You don't need that many to half fill a S2000 (given it carries on to Aberdeen).
 

atillathehunn

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Ryanair launching flights from Manchester to Kiev, having launched previously and stalled with negotiations with the airport and UIA.

Twice weekly on Mondays and Fridays. Reasonably uncharitable departure time from Manchester.

One-way can be had for £5 (+ the mandatory fees...).
 

FQTV

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Well, I think it's a very dangerous assumption to make that the train is any more reliable. The ECML wires seem to be done more often than they're up, and with catastrophic delays as a result. I think the reliability of the ECML is just as tarnished. At least with a diversion it's usually pretty swift and a train from Southend (which is where City usually diverts to).

Not expecting a wholesale shift to the new City service, but given a small plane, small airport etc it should work out. You don't need that many to half fill a S2000 (given it carries on to Aberdeen).

Absolutely I may be wrong, but considering the factors that generally contribute towards a successful domestic route, Newcastle and London City as a pair doesn’t obviously display many of them.

And, given that the target audience has to be high yield to make something like this work, attracting time sensitive, cost insensitive passengers, diversions are a big deal even if they’re infrequent. The wires on the ECML aren’t 100% ‘reliable’, it’s true, but even when they’re down you can generally still be fed, watered and continue to work. And regular users know the score.

Being delayed, circling, and then being dumped at even Southend to be decanted on to C2C just won’t wash more than a few times with the big spenders. And when Crossrail opens, any few Aberdeen passengers who might otherwise suffer a prop with a stop may find it more reliable still to stick with a BA Airbus from Heathrow.

I’m supportive of anything that sustainably develops Newcastle Airport routewise, but we’d probably get more out of a Frankfurt, a Munich, more to Dublin, etc., etc. Even Aberdeen > Newcastle > Inverness as a triangle might bring something more useful to the market from a competitive point of view.

We’ll see, anyhow.
 

Bletchleyite

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I think realistically if you're going to compete with the train domestically you need the kind of frequencies that at least vaguely compare (or a journey time that makes the train a nuisance), and only really London to Manchester, Edinburgh and Glasgow fit the first of those (and then in the former mostly only for people who live near Ringway or have a flight connection) and Aberdeen/Inverness the second.
 

atillathehunn

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Absolutely I may be wrong, but considering the factors that generally contribute towards a successful domestic route, Newcastle and London City as a pair doesn’t obviously display many of them.

And, given that the target audience has to be high yield to make something like this work, attracting time sensitive, cost insensitive passengers, diversions are a big deal even if they’re infrequent. The wires on the ECML aren’t 100% ‘reliable’, it’s true, but even when they’re down you can generally still be fed, watered and continue to work. And regular users know the score.

Being delayed, circling, and then being dumped at even Southend to be decanted on to C2C just won’t wash more than a few times with the big spenders. And when Crossrail opens, any few Aberdeen passengers who might otherwise suffer a prop with a stop may find it more reliable still to stick with a BA Airbus from Heathrow.

I’m supportive of anything that sustainably develops Newcastle Airport routewise, but we’d probably get more out of a Frankfurt, a Munich, more to Dublin, etc., etc. Even Aberdeen > Newcastle > Inverness as a triangle might bring something more useful to the market from a competitive point of view.

We’ll see, anyhow.

But I would suggest that the irritating journey time is a feature of Newcastle, combined with regular delays on the trains and bad roads means Newcastle is pretty good fodder for domestic air travel. The point on being able to work on the train and not on the plane is valid, however.

I think given the amount of passengers through City generally means the delays aren't terminal.

I'm pretty sure the flight will survive for at least 12 months. The passengers will bounce between the train and the plane, as each group experiences a big delay on the trains and a diversion on the plane. They will then all switch back again, rinse and repeat. If nothing else the early doors arrival time will help with attractiveness, even if the evening flights aren't as popular.

Certainly in terms of connections a Germany or Ireland flight would help, but the question is why there is not already a flight there? What is the profile of the passengers?
 

FQTV

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But I would suggest that the irritating journey time is a feature of Newcastle, combined with regular delays on the trains and bad roads means Newcastle is pretty good fodder for domestic air travel. The point on being able to work on the train and not on the plane is valid, however.

I think given the amount of passengers through City generally means the delays aren't terminal.

I'm pretty sure the flight will survive for at least 12 months. The passengers will bounce between the train and the plane, as each group experiences a big delay on the trains and a diversion on the plane. They will then all switch back again, rinse and repeat. If nothing else the early doors arrival time will help with attractiveness, even if the evening flights aren't as popular.

Certainly in terms of connections a Germany or Ireland flight would help, but the question is why there is not already a flight there? What is the profile of the passengers?

As @Bletchleyite notes though, you need frequency (or an unassailable time advantage) to really make an overland domestic service work in the UK. It's all very well getting down to London for an early meeting, but an Anytime rail ticket allows you to get back to King's Cross and never wait for more than thirty minutes for a train back to the North East. Having no option to wait until the dark hours of the evening for the sole flight just doesn't have the same appeal.

Generally-speaking what you also need is interline connections, too. Loads out of Newcastle to Heathrow are often c80% for connections. That's not City's thing, and routes like Edinburgh are viable only because of a) frequency and b) banking being almost co-located in The Wharf and Edinburgh, generating enough origin and destination (point-to-point) traffic.

Newcastle and the North East has always been a blind-spot for the Star Alliance (ie Lufthansa). I'm minded to suspect that this may be in part be down to some long-standing reliance on gerrymandered figures from bmi used to justify the rundown and suspension of Durham Tees Valley flights (which, for the record, were ultimately canned to free up slots at Heathrow for Lufthansa Italia flights from and to Milan - and that went well, didn't it?!).

Otherwise for Star:

Dusseldorf has been a long-running route for Lufthansa, albeit with a regional jet until it was bounced to Eurowings and now, miraculously, supports an A320, as Eurowings seem to actually be marketing connections off it.

Brussels has always been unreliable, right back to the Sabena days when connections were far too short at Brussels and were constantly missed. It's now operated by bmi Regional and not strongly marketed for connections.

Newark started with United, stopped seasonally, restarted and stopped again, utillising an old 757 that was bedevilled by lengthy delays on a regular basis, with not much reported contingency to get folks rerouted.

Route development and presence at the route planning conferences never seems to be particularly strong from the Newcastle Airport side, either. They do, however, regularly seem to be slightly in awe of Emirates and have to be reminded into promoting connections through Heathrow, Paris and Amsterdam.

Outside of Star, Dublin may have more potential, I think, for US traffic with pre-clearance, but the current Stobart operated flight is timed more for O&D than for connections, and there's often a long wait inbound to get back to Newcastle. When there are enough routes West out of Dublin to make it viable, I'd hope that an increase in frequency and perhaps also per flight capacity to and from Newcastle would also follow.
 

ModernRailways

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Certainly in terms of connections a Germany or Ireland flight would help, but the question is why there is not already a flight there? What is the profile of the passengers?

I've always wondered this myself. Newcastle is well linked to the more party holiday destinations, but to other major European cities it's lacking miserably. We have Easyjet for Berlin with a singular flight every other day (possibly even every 3 days?). You have Eurowings going to Dusseldorf, and KLM to Amsterdam, and I believe we have a few flights to Paris and Brussels but nothing to get excited about. You then have BA down to London. Easyjet to Berlin the flights are always relatively well loaded, but with the infrequent service pattern (and really awkward timings) it's not going to be the go to for people. Dusseldorf with Eurowings seems to do really well on the 5 or 6 times I've flown with them, punctuality has always been a little off but it's never been anything major (30 mins or less generally). I'm very surprised with the lack of flights to places like Munich/Frankfurt/Stuttgart/Zurich. I can imagine a flight to either Frankfurt or Munich would be loaded day in day out not only with business travellers but with leisure travellers and people connecting onto long haul. KLM (and BA with LHR) does extremely well with connections in Amsterdam so why a German carrier doesn't try similar is strange.

Newcastle has always been quite poorly connected with mainland western Europe, it's only recently with Eurowings coming on board that it's seen an improvement. And even they only fly to Dusseldorf.
 

atillathehunn

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As @Bletchleyite notes though, you need frequency (or an unassailable time advantage) to really make an overland domestic service work in the UK. It's all very well getting down to London for an early meeting, but an Anytime rail ticket allows you to get back to King's Cross and never wait for more than thirty minutes for a train back to the North East. Having no option to wait until the dark hours of the evening for the sole flight just doesn't have the same appeal.

Generally-speaking what you also need is interline connections, too. Loads out of Newcastle to Heathrow are often c80% for connections. That's not City's thing, and routes like Edinburgh are viable only because of a) frequency and b) banking being almost co-located in The Wharf and Edinburgh, generating enough origin and destination (point-to-point) traffic.

Newcastle and the North East has always been a blind-spot for the Star Alliance (ie Lufthansa). I'm minded to suspect that this may be in part be down to some long-standing reliance on gerrymandered figures from bmi used to justify the rundown and suspension of Durham Tees Valley flights (which, for the record, were ultimately canned to free up slots at Heathrow for Lufthansa Italia flights from and to Milan - and that went well, didn't it?!).

Otherwise for Star:

Dusseldorf has been a long-running route for Lufthansa, albeit with a regional jet until it was bounced to Eurowings and now, miraculously, supports an A320, as Eurowings seem to actually be marketing connections off it.

Brussels has always been unreliable, right back to the Sabena days when connections were far too short at Brussels and were constantly missed. It's now operated by bmi Regional and not strongly marketed for connections.

Newark started with United, stopped seasonally, restarted and stopped again, utillising an old 757 that was bedevilled by lengthy delays on a regular basis, with not much reported contingency to get folks rerouted.

Route development and presence at the route planning conferences never seems to be particularly strong from the Newcastle Airport side, either. They do, however, regularly seem to be slightly in awe of Emirates and have to be reminded into promoting connections through Heathrow, Paris and Amsterdam.

Outside of Star, Dublin may have more potential, I think, for US traffic with pre-clearance, but the current Stobart operated flight is timed more for O&D than for connections, and there's often a long wait inbound to get back to Newcastle. When there are enough routes West out of Dublin to make it viable, I'd hope that an increase in frequency and perhaps also per flight capacity to and from Newcastle would also follow.

Ok, I accept your argument on the frequency*time interaction term. You might well be correct. In that case it is only the time dimension and the early arrival in the City that would make it attractive and that is probably not sufficient. There are a very limited number of connections through City (probably not with Eastern), but not many, and would in no way compete with Heathrow and the 2 or 3 daily LHR flights with BA. And arriving in the City is a very O&D based market.

I'm not overwhelmingly familiar with Newcastle airport having just been through a few times. It didn't appear to be very business oriented.

I guess in a smaller airport like Newcastle, when there are three entrenched players (BA, KLM and Emirates) there is little scope for a newcomer to squeeze in.

Dublin would be logical, but with BA's massive presence in the US it will be a challenge.
 

atillathehunn

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BBC Radio Cornwall have reported today that Flybe is moving its Newquay service from Gatwick to Heathrow in April 2019.

Ben
Blimey, adding Heathrow costs when you are trying to get bought out. Probably better news for the route in terms of connections, though.

In Flybe news, I see they are in talks with Virgin (and therefore AF/KLM/DL). That would be an interesting gamble. Virgin's Little Red failed, though this was bringing people from the regions to London to connect. If they bought Flybe the focus would be much more on the regional flying, and possibly trying to funnel people through Manchester (lower costs than Heathrow) or through AMS and CDG for a more diverse set of flights.
 

LOL The Irony

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Looks like Flybe may become Little Red 2.0.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46317706

Flybe and Virgin Atlantic have confirmed they are in talks about a sale or closer alliance.

The move comes after cash-strapped Flybe put itself up for sale earlier this month.

The Exeter-based regional airline said that Virgin was "one of the parties" it has been in discussions with.

Last month, Flybe warned its full-year losses would be £22m, blaming falling consumer demand, a weaker pound and higher fuel costs.

Confirming the talks, Flybe added that there was no certainty that an offer would be made by Virgin.

In a short statement, Virgin Atlantic said it "has a trading and codeshare relationship with Flybe and confirms that it is reviewing its options in respect of Flybe which range from enhanced commercial arrangements to a possible offer for Flybe".

Since hitting a price of nearly 50p in March this year, Flybe's shares have fallen by more than three-quarters. On Friday, they jumped by nearly half to 14.3p.

Flybe, whose roots date back to 1979, has 78 planes operating from smaller airports such as London City, Southampton, Cardiff, Aberdeen and Norwich to destinations in the UK and Europe.

It serves about eight million passengers a year, but has been struggling to recover from a costly IT overhaul and has been trying to reduce costs.
 

Crawley Ben

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Low Cost Carrier Wizz Air is to launch a new route between Gatwick & Budapest, Hungary from 31st March 2019. This will be a daily flight & should using Airbus A321 aircraft.

Cheers

Ben
 

fowler9

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Low Cost Carrier Wizz Air is to launch a new route between Gatwick & Budapest, Hungary from 31st March 2019. This will be a daily flight & should using Airbus A321 aircraft.

Cheers

Ben
Blimey, surprised they didn't do it already.
 

Crawley Ben

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The last of the Boeing 767 jets in used with British Airways has now been retired.

Last flight was from Heathrow to Larnaca & return at the weekend - Final commercial jet used for said flight was G-BZHA according to an article on 'Business Traveller' this morning.

This and another 767 jet from BA's fleet have now been retired to St. Athan in Wales.

Ben
 

fowler9

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The last of the Boeing 767 jets in used with British Airways has now been retired.

Last flight was from Heathrow to Larnaca & return at the weekend - Final commercial jet used for said flight was G-BZHA according to an article on 'Business Traveller' this morning.

This and another 767 jet from BA's fleet have now been retired to St. Athan in Wales.

Ben
How many are St Athan.
 
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