Originally Posted by
Flightrider
These guys are putting out some pretty desperate-sounding pilot recruitment adverts. How can you be recruiting pilots when you haven't even applied for an Operating Licence with the CAA and there's no visibility of any aircraft coming? With current problems in the ATR market, operators struggling to get delivery of committed aircraft and 72s apparently still in demand, where are the aircraft coming from? Surely if they can start to answer some of these questions, prospective pilots and employees might take it rather more seriously ....
That's exactly what I was thinking. It doesn't make sense even if there is good money behind it and the makings a reasonable management team. How are they going to recruit pilots without giving them a good insight into the bigger picture, particularly as some of the pilots they are likely to be targeting were recruited by the the same managers in Flybe 2? Why would anyone leave a current employer and go to an operator with no AOC and no aeroplanes and the twin otter thing seems to be a complete red herring. If there is a desire to try out hydrogen on an Otter then surely it would be on Highlands and Islands type routes of less than an hour, where the Otter has been operating for over 30 years. Some kind of merger / consolidation or partnership between the current operators in the field and possibly sharing resources, AOC's etc is the only thing that makes sense.
As has been pointed out, the only plausible aircraft for high frequency SH domestic flights are the ATR and the ERJ145. When these 145 aircraft were first bought in significant numbers by the Airlines of Britain group (BRAL) they were thrown at all sorts of routes from MAN - BHD to BHX - MXP, BHX - STR etc and many were put on the former BA Regional (737/A320) routes. Some of these routes have still not been taken on by the locos. I never got the arguments put forward by Flybe that the 145's were an economic disaster (maybe more like Flybe were up to their necks in E190 debts). What happened to all those routes that BRAL / BA con used to do out of BHX for instance? They haven't all gone to the locos and there must still be some low hanging fruit ready to be picked by a 145. Its just a shame that Loganair doesn't have the resources / crews to deploy them more effectively at the moment.
One thing is for sure, the new boss of Logan will be well aware of all this history.