Oh Christ, the first letter being capitalised disease is obviously contagious. [Before you ask, Christ is capitalised because it's referring to the Almighty, no other reason - even if agnostic. See the UKIA website if you have any queries on the inherent involvement of deities in airline operations. It's recommended reading on the Almighty's involvement in the granting of Air Operator's Certificates.]
GW76, the record of Globespan this year has not exactly been stunning. Let's have a look at the low-lights:
Glasgow-Boston - daily 737-700 service on sale. Three flights per week were then amended to run via Knock. Cut back heavily in September and October to reduce from a daily flight to four per week, of which three ran via Knock.
Liverpool-JFK - daily 757 service put on sale. Three flights per week were then changed to run via Knock. Operational fiasco including five days with no flights whatsoever in July. [Did anyone ever answer the question about whether the crew had continued past alternates to land at JFK with one engine shut down, by the way?] Friday flight cancelled from the end of August, and cut back to four per week - three via NOC - for September and October.
Vancouver/Calgary - sold on GSM three-class 767, changed to an Italian 767 with two-class service, various routing changes (more stops introduced to combine flights from LGW + GLA, GLA+MAN, MAN+LGW depending on the season) and Italian crews who - according to the Skytrax website - could barely speak English on a good day.
Belfast/Glasgow-Sanford - Italian aircraft and crews with inferior service, but thankfully no routing changes.
Glasgow-YHM - daily direct service put on sale, ended up with 737-800 with tech-stop at Keflavik on the way out every day and a Business service which fell some way short of what was originally advertised.
Manchester-YHM - daily direct service put on sale, ended up with a 757 via Glasgow in the shoulder season, being cut back to four days per week during the peak summer including a 737-800 via Keflavik on Fridays.
Gatwick-YHM - daily direct service put on sale, ended up with a 757 on three days per week - via Glasgow during the shoulder season.
Manchester-Johannesburg - put on sale for Winter 2007 and cancelled as they didn't have bilateral rights to fly the route. Passengers transferred to Cape Town service.
Manchester-Cape Town - flown in Winter 2006 and put on sale for Winter 2007. Cancelled as apparently "bilateral rights" didn't exist for them to fly the route and created uncertainty in the minds of customers. Like hell. When did your average customer know about bilaterals and where was this last publicly discussed? Perhaps the c**p reputation they've earned had put people off booking again. Or perhaps the GSM cabin crew over at another website saying that the operation was unsafe due to GSM's rostering practices? The policy of providing a foam camping mat so that cabin crew could lie down on the rear galley floor to take rest and extend their FDP isn't one that I can find in my version of CAP371.
Glasgow-Sharm - put on sale and cancelled within the week. EDI-SSH still exists for this winter but with block times bent to hell so that it's just legal to be rostered as a Level 2 variation. I'd like to see how many of those they achieve without discretion.
Glasgow-Las Vegas & Barbados - put on sale and cancelled without flights having ever taken place.
Open warfare between cabin crew on other forums and flight crew on this forum - pro-rata probably more so than any other airline relative to its size. This doesn't fill you with confidence that it's a professional operation. Every airline has its problems but there seem to be few whose employees are as hell-bent on washing their dirty linen in public as this one.
To say that this is a "blip" is rather like Mrs Abraham Lincoln saying that there was a bit of a kerfuffle at the theatre the other night.
I'm sure that there are quite a few other examples which are out there but which I've forgotten and which most customers involved would rather forget. Not exactly stunning - and I can't think of any other airline which has behaved like some 1980s bucketshop flight company in this way. Need I say more?
Last edited by Albert Hall; 30th Sep 2007 at 16:42.