According to a post on airliners.net, Eastern Airways are basing a J32 at MME from the end of October to operate a twice daily MME-BRS flight.

Does anyone know anything about this?

Regards

Mike

Well if true,the HUY lads will be banging their heads off the preverbial brick wall.

Thought T3 was HUY-based...why not more services from THERE?

(Uh-oh...:uhoh: )

I think they will be basing a J41 here, Aberdeen goes all J41 and the (already) based J32 will be used to do a Bristol......presume MME-BRS-???-BRS-MME (x2)

mmeteesside

Yes, what about HUY Eastern, your home base. Good news for MME and BRS if true though

Eastern at present does two routes from BRS: ABZ double daily and IOM single daily.

The equipment for both is the J41 but CAA stats suggest the average monthly loads are rarely much over 50%-60%. However, with the high fares charged I suppose they make money.

As for MME-BRS I assume the fares will again not be cheap suggesting it is almost entirely a business route.

There is clearly a big market between the Bristol area and the Northeast because easyJet does three daily 737 rotations between NCL and BRS and carries at least 20,000 pax every month, winter and summer. It is by some way the busiest route (in pax number terms) between two English provincial cities.

That being the case one might think there ought to be enough pax to make a tiny J32 viable twice a day, even at the high fares likely to be charged.

I really cant see that one working at all....if Easyjet are filling up a 737 three times aday then surely if there was a gap in the market for more then they would have taken full advantage of it.
Eastern airways never bother with advertising so its only going to be a small few that know about the service and Virgin and National Express promote heavily in the area.
MME needs to get its act together with its ground transport first...isnt it that the train stops once a week?
BMI baby need to get a regular 2xdaily service to belfast back on and maybe Eastern could consider a that and LCY

isnt it that the train stops once a week?
Yes

richardhall99 do I sense a bit of fear on your part? Frightend of Eastern beating Easy:)
Just think that if I told you that Newcastle would have a three times a day service with a 737 to Bristol 15 years ago you would of laugh me out of town.
Have to admit that it's not what I would of thought of first (if it happens). Agree that someone needs to provide a decent service to Belfast (at least twice a day), but I think baby have had their chance and mess around to much.
LCY would be nice especially if they could beat NCL to it as well.

The public transport to the airport is a hell of a lot better than it was with the free bus service to Darlington railway station. How many other airports provide free transport??

Also I guess Eastern are tapping into the market that exists between the north east, Darlington especially, and Bristol with Orange employess travelling between offices. Orange used to have a dedicated charter service between MME and Filton I believe. Lets hope it happens.

Also I guess Eastern are tapping into the market that exists between the north east, Darlington especially, and Bristol with Orange employess travelling between offices. Orange used to have a dedicated charter service between MME and Filton I believe. Lets hope it happens.

Eastern will have done their homework, they are obviously confident of it working. Industry connections will have helped MMEs plight! Afterall thats how the airline works 'connecting ares of heavy industry on thin routes that would not be viable with other airlines' in other words charge the world for a seat because the pax are 99% business who dont have to pay out of their own pocket.

I fear HUY will never see expansion from Eastern unless international or LCY! I dont think such business routes would be viable with the exception of SOU.

Good luck to them.

Eastern will not expand upon their current routes at HUY because there's no demand to do so, if there had been, they would have been the first to do so.
HUY - LCY is a non starter as is any HUY - international route as the operating costs to LCY are way above the competition from the train, and KLM have all the HUY - international routes sewn up.