737James - Astraeus will still be doing one flight per week for Travelsphere in 2007, which will be from London Gatwick.
Astraeus has operated an extensive programme in Summer 2006, but this involved a lot of positioning from our second base at Manchester to other airports including Bristol and East Midlands. Quite frankly, it wasn’t economically viable to do so.
The other issue has been that Travelsphere’s programme tends to operate for five weeks from mid/late May to end June; and then another four weeks from mid September to mid October – that’s the market they’re in (wherein few older people tend to go away during July and August). NB. Peak season demand for the aircraft is now realistically five weeks from the last week of July to the last week of August.
So, adding all that together (five + five + four), it means that you’re only using the aircraft for a total of 14 weeks out of a 26 week summer season, which doesn’t make much sense - does it?!
Through a combination of those two factors, Astraeus have reached agreement with Travelsphere that we will do flying which is sensible for both us, and them, in Summer 2007. I'm sure it would be true to say that we maintain an excellent working relationship with Travelsphere; are pleased that we’ll still be working with them and get on very well indeed.
Moving forwards our aircraft capacity will be focussed into a year-round development & deployment of our oil and gas services; something which generates a solid annual returns for us.
I hope that helps paint a fuller picture.
