Originally Posted by
excrab
BAladdy - Telaviv and Gambia are within reach of 737 - 800 from the UK, and certainly within reach of the max, the issue becomes one of flight time limitations and cost of night stopping crews, if you only do one flight a week you end up spending a lot of money on crew hotels.
As for crew training, whilst the 757 crews would have to retrain to fly an Airbus or a Max, once they’d retrained for a Max then there would be far more flexibility for crewing or rostering as any of the company’s pilots could fly any of its aircraft.
Yes the 737-800 or Max can make TLV Cape Verde and Banjul and likely could make DXB from UK (Transavia go from AMS and Norwegian from OSL) but Banjul is a nightstop for crews due FTL.
Banjul is not really a seat only destination but usually sold as a package and has a limited appeal (its seasonal too) - I think Gambia Experience used Small Planet or Enter Air but now uses it's own Titan charters.
TLV is a prime route and yes you can crew it there and back.
Cape Verde I'm not 100% sure but from Northern UK airports I doubt FTL would allow there and back crewing.
Jet 2 wisely pulled out of Egypt some years ago and I doubt they will go back there anytime soon (nor Tunisia) - They have been rightly cautious and seem to stick to
safe bread and butter routes.
They have for S19 gone big for Bulgaria - The beach resorts there were pushed to the UK IT market as long ago as the late 1960's but their popularity came and went - Even after 1989 when the ''Wall'' came down and seen as less 'soviet' - I would not say that it is an exotic destination but I guess with losing Egypt and Tunisia (and there was downturn with Turkey) I guess Jet2 think they can make a go of Bourgas this summer - In the winter ski is popular in Bulgaria.
They are ramping up Turkey and I hope they do well but it has been a destination with constant security concerns.
Unless they keep some 733 or 757 they cannot use the 738 or Max into GIB so that market is likely off limits.
Had they been interested in GIB they would have started the route soon after Monarch dropped out.