Originally Posted by WHBM
Scheduling a 12 noon Saturday departure out of London City is a real moment of tension, if you are not gone by the time the curfew comes in the whole charter is lost and that will be the end of any more business from that customer.
Football charters would be an obvious market for LCY, out on Saturday morning, were it not for the fact that you can't come back on Saturday night (so what's the point of going by air ?), and have to be in quite precisely on Sunday ready for the schedules.
Yes but there is nothing stopping them if the work is available positioning the one aircraft that nightstops on a Saturday at LCY to STN or a regional airport such as SOU/BOH/BHX/EMA or MAN once it has completed it's inbound sector to LCY. It would then be available Saturday afternoon and possibly Sunday am.
Originally Posted by marlowe
WHBM you assume that any charter would start and finish at LCY, so far none of the charters done by BACF have done so. As for charters at weekends then they can be accomodated by the airframes that are up in EDI so the limitations of LCY dont apply .
Very true. I think BACF have 1 possibly 2 aicraft on the ground at EDI from Fri night to Sunday Afternoon, with another 2 aicraft free from around 1pm on Saturday to mid afternoon on Sunday. GLA currently has two aircraft that arrive on a Friday evening. One of the aircraft does not operate again until 1700 on the Sunday and the other does not operate until Monday morning.
With this in mind BACF could easily operate charter flights from EDI and GLA in the summer if they where successful in bidding to operate flights for a tour operator. Ex EDI They could use one aircraft all day Saturday and on Sunday am and another Saturday PM and Sunday am to operate charter flights leaving at least one aircraft on STBY. EX GLA they could use both aircraft all day on Saturday and one aircraft on a Sunday for charter ops. Whilst still protecting the limited Sunday operation
If insufficent charter work was available for all sectors ex these airports then maybe with some strategic bidding the aircraft could operate W patterns.
eg. EDI/XXX/BHX/XXX/EDI or GLA/XXX/MAN/XXX/GLA
In the Winter they could bid for ski flights as well as some of the many day trip flights to German markets and even Lapland.