LONDON CITY - 2

[WHBM]

Went to Belfast on the new FlyBe Dash 8 from LCY. Now I remember the operation on this route a few years ago by Cityjet/Scot Airways on the Dornier 328, where passenger numbers were often in single figures, while for FlyBe I haven’t taken them from City since, I think it was 12 years ago when they were last here, in a different FlyBe livery where you could still see the previous British European name showing under the new white paint, and if you looked really closely there was a ghost of Jersey European underneath that one.

It’s a busy time nowadays at City in the morning rush hour, where everyone seems to have started extra flights this winter season, and I wasn’t encouraged by looking at how the flight had gone the previous day, according to FlyBe’s own site the inbound from Belfast had departed on time but had taken an extra 30 minutes over schedule to get in, doubtless with orbits of ALKIN and SPEAR along the way, while it then took over an hour to get turned round. Oh dear. Anyway, I'm off to the terminal on a fine morning.

I never expected this, after some prior comments here, but Full Marks to LCY and their security team because I honestly never stopped, right through the process. On line check in, so up the escalator, straight up to the belt and straight out into departures, maybe 5 minutes overall, maybe less. There are plenty of passengers around but plenty of staff as well. It’s just like the good old LCY days of 10 minutes check-in (aaaah). I’m normally the first critic of ill-managed passenger volumes at security, so credit where it’s due.
There are ever more seats in the main LCY departure area nowadays (none of Heathrow's “don’t do any seats and they’ll have to go into the shops and buy something”), and if more of them faced a departures screen so you could see when your gate opened that would be even better. Out on the ramp, all is busy, but again unlike Heathrow nobody is waiting for marshallers, everyone’s getting straight in on stand.

The big long walk (we’re on gate 9) down to the gate after a few minutes, no queuing on the steps (good), and straight out to the aircraft. I’ve never worked out if FlyBe think they are an LCC or not, and I think their management probably have the same difficulty. But I fit in along with my bag for the Largest Laptop Known To Mankind at my feet fine. For some trim reason, I thought, there are more passengers at the back than the front, and we have about a 60% load, which is not bad for such a new route, and particularly for a wet Tuesday in November when non-business travel is at an absolute minimum. It was even better coming home in the evening. I would guess well over half us passengers are in business suits.

5 minutes before STD and doors closed, the props fire up, gently at first but then into that full Dash 8 buzz-saw drone. I don’t know what it is about the prop shape they have, but they have to be the noisiest around when on the ground. We live about a mile from the ramp, and about the only LCY noises we hear are the Dash 8 props on the ground. It has actually, to Mrs WHBM'S extreme displeasure, woken the baby up when the windows are open. If you knew old prop planes, the Vickers Vanguard had a similar issue with noisy prop tips, someone once told me that when taxying at Manchester Ringway they could be heard in Stockport town centre, several miles away, and I wonder if it’s a concern at LCY now that FlyBe have brought so many more in. The issue seems to be when on the ground taxying and spooling up for departure, which of course is not measured for noise, apparently some harmonic between prop tip speed and certain blade pitch angles. It’s surprising that Bombardier have never come up with a modification for it.

LCY's lack of a taxiway does hang us up, initially at the hold exiting the ramp for a couple of movements, then expeditiously backtracking, into the loop, and a few more movements, and I can't really see how they could handle more at peak periods. Anyway, finally we're off and up into the sun. I've a window on the left, get out aforementioned laptop, turn to pull the windowblind down - only to find that they left this bit out of the cabin spec. I thought it was only Ryanair who did things like this. Remember that bit above about how many are business travellers ? Meanwhile here comes the catering, rather whizzed past and, as far as I could see, little more than coffee and Kit-Kats, and all charged for. The magazine is not much help, I look for the menu of what they might have, typically on the back page, but can't see it and have to resort to the index, finding it's buried inside between ads for, inevitably, perfumes, and pages describing the sale of fluffy bears and lipsticks. Sorry Flybe you've got your audience wrong. And these are boldly described as "duty free". Excuse me, but just what proportion of the route network is outside the EU ?

Into Belfast City, past the Bombardier factory where significant subassemblies for the Dash 8 are made (wonder if anyone in there hears all that propeller resonance from the Flybe base across the runway and thinks to do something about it), and straight out through the terminal. We're 20 minutes early. Meanwhile, my colleague, coming in from Heathrow, is half an hour late. And by the way, coming back home in the evening was pretty much the same easy, queuing-free experience as on the outbound. My only remaining question for the LCY management, as one who has done the 60-second arrival from Gate 2 to the front door, would be whether the man who devised the walking route inside the terminal from Gate 23 to Baggage Claim is feeling better yet ?

Good trip.