Eastern Airways - Humberside

[Hotel Uniform Yankee]

Has anyone any info the state of Eastern Airways at the moment. They seem to be growing too big too fast !
I understand they are having a lot of technical probs at the moment. Canabalising engines from aircraft inorder to keep others flying.

[Pembo330]

I had an aborted take off on an Eastern J41 last week!

[MEFLYBE]

It's about time they looked at Humberside more closely, they seem to be expanding everywhere apart from HUY!

What about HUY to Brussels? Dublin? Belfast? Paris?

Regards

Mike

[niknak]

This has been done before, but Eastern mostly specialise in services which would be attractive to the business traveller, and would otherwise mean a long train or car journey combined with an overnight stay.
They seem to aim just under the first class rail fare, in return for offering a return service that allows you to do a full days work/business and get home at a reasonable time.

The Humberside area is very well served by good road and rail networks, and doesnt have a big catchment area when it comes to passengers requiring schedule services - which is why it's unlikely that they'll ever be able to offer scheduled flights to anywhere other than Amsterdam or Aberdeen.
Paris, Brussels and Belfast have been tried before, Belfast worked reasonably well before the outbreak of peace but I can't see any demand now, Brussels and Paris (twice) were both failures.

[Chillwinston]

nik nak

would have to disagree with you on that one, the old Heathrow via Norwich was a seat filler aslo Esbjerg from HUY was a good money spinner for Genair.

As for other routes to say Paris (Incumbent operator went bust before the route was given time to grow and hardly any advertising) and as for Brussels it was the same case.

As said here many a time, it would be intresting to see if a Lo-Co flew the odd route from HUY to say Amsterdam (for example) and just see what the load would be like.

Eastern seem to of chosen alot of routes where there is a high volume of business from the oil industry (Aberdeen, Humberside, Norwich and now Gronigen) and I see in this weeks "Flight International" that Shell are tendering for a service operator to fly Aberdeen to Gronigen!

Time will tell I suppose but with Donny International now advertising for staff, HUY dont have the time to standstill.

[MEFLYBE]

I have to agree, there is still potential for development of scheduled routes at HUY.

Paris CDG, was viable and loads were excellent when Gill axed the route. An AF HUY Nightstopping ERJ135 ops a 3xdaily sched would work and would be viable.

Brussels, with this route being 99% business traffic, I can't believe Eastern have not picked it up! a twice daily J41 with schedules suitable for HUY based business travellers could also work.

Dublin is Ryanair territory, and a daily 737-200, similar to the operation at MME could work.

I don't THINK Finningley will be a business airport, and can only see charters and possibly a low fares airline being interested in the site.

Regards

Mike

[Chillwinston]

MEFLYBE, agree with your comments but

It seems Eastern only pick up routes either recently vacated by other airlines, hence the route requires less start up and marketing costs or they are singling out the Oil companies monies on routes I mentioned on my earlier post.

As for Brussels and Paris, could slot allocation be the problem, presuming Eastern would want to service the route twice a day to cater for the businessmen wanting to return the same day.

The old Eastern / Genair operated many a route from HUY but it seems Eastern MK II just want to use it as a base and not expand their route structure from HUY, for whatever reasons.

I personally believe that Finningley will take a large slice of HUY's charter and possibly the regional services with the lure of a larger market but time will tell.

I just dont understand why HUY management have not attracted lo-co's to the airport or found a regional airline willing to expand upon the routes discarded by previous insolvent airlines.

Maybe someone can tell why HUY management are NOT actively pursuing a larger slice of the market.