Originally Posted by
Jay Sata
We did see them at Cardiff although as you correctly say they got the bulk of their work outside Wales.
Indeed my friends working for Air Inter European helped to break the Australian pilots strike when I lived downunder in 1989.Aspro were so lucky they had new aircraft unlike the problems that Airways Cymru encountered.
In fact during IEA's first season with a solitary B737-200 it was pretty much all CWL work.
2nd season with 2 x B737-300's one based at CWL, one at BRS.
3rd season Monarch's G-MONP joined the fleet, recall BFS & MAN and perhaps LTN coming in to the equation
Then 4th B737-300 G-IEAA came along just as the Aussie domestic pilots downed tools, that was it, one and then a 2nd aircraft, and your truly to manage the operation, off to Oz initially based in MEL before our then permanent base of ADL, 40 degrees in the shade over new year was so bad we demanded danger money
Then the first B757 came along, thereafter ex Air Europe moved in and A320's became the thing, of course IEA expanded outside of Wales because an airline cannot expand from one solitary regional airport.
Let it not be missed that the Asprou family were/are Greek Cypriots, Cypus and then Greece were their primary markets and I recall Cypriot operations thru GLA and NCL to name but two.
The rest is history.