A bit of rubbish being spouted here on this subject, clearly some of it from spotters with no idea whatsoever of how an airline operates.
Hwy only have 2 x J41 and one of which is currently being used as spares
Rubbish. Highland have 2xJ41's. One is operating every day. The other is in heavy maintenance prior to being put on line.
where do you think the highland airways aircraft come from for tech delays? Sumburgh Inverness etc all in the highlands plus longer flying time to reach CWL
Our a/c come from Warton, Cambridge, Bristol or Inverness to cover for a tech a/c. The first three are fairly close to CWL. We have no a/c based in LSI.
Airlines do not have many aircraft lying around waiting to pick up slack covered by tech problems. You want to talk about Saab dispatch reliability talk to the islanders on SYY - they will put you right. It is no better or worse than ours in a J31. We all try our best, but with all the will in the world a/c do break down. Due to the nature of some of our contracts we do have a/c on the ground for large parts of the day which does give us a degree of backup in the worst case. Some other airlines do work their machines harder so may not have the flexibility we have. Interestingly we find the J41 reliability absolutely fantastic. It is more modern than the 31 or SF340 and seems to do well.
Time will tell who carries on the route. Personally I think Highland would love to continue it, and with the infrastructure there in place, albeit with room for improvement I do think it would be the option with the most success and least disruption. We have local crew, all great guys and all comitted to the success of the route.
On an aside the 41 is 40 kts faster than a 340.
As for other routes, this may well be something in progress. Having 29 seats opens up markets which 19 seats makes economically unviable.
But as i say time will tell.