- Which airline didn't have flights cancelled on friday in the UK? Nearly the whole country was fogged out most of the day! Newcastle was no exception.
- Many of the J41 aircraft are owned outright by Eastern, a smaller number are leased from Bae and some leased from the remenants of BA citiexpress. There appears to have been rumours to sell a few 41's recently, to fund expansion of other parts of the business, see the thread on Romania in the terms forum.
- Talk of a small number of redundancies relating to engineering staff, and flight crew at certain bases that have been closed ie Inv and Man. Engineering appears to be getting brought in house at more bases, presumably to keep a grip on costs.Sign of a well managed business to me?
- Plenty of companies interested in Scatsta contract, its secure long term work, but I would guess the oil companies involved demand a high standard of safety and reliability in return. Eastern have their feet under the table already. The onus is on competing companies to demonstrate how they could do better?
- Biggest future threat to eastern is probably an upturn in the aviation industry and staff moving for better T's and C's.