Originally Posted by wallp
It would be great to see CityJet take over Stobart and remove the ridiculous requirement for them to HAVE to use Southend. Whilst it may offer opportunities it certainly proved the death knell for WAT which was doing just fine as LTN-WAT with RE until Stobart came along and messed with things.
If CityJet can come in and make the route doable using the EI brand then everyone wins. Fingers crossed
WAT-LTN used to work well and it would be great to see a successful WAT-LTN come back.
Just a word of caution, though: WAT-LTN was back in the days when LTN was a significant station on Aer Arann's network, and a WAT route fitted in well to that network: aircraft could be rotated around, brought back to Galway for maintenance, etc. Today neither Cityjet nor Stobart (nor Aer Lingus as the potential franchisor) has scheduled service to LTN, so either WAT-LTN would be operating completely isolated from the rest of the airlines' networks (leading to positioning flights, higher costs, etc) or the airline would have to launch other services from LTN.
I agree with the desirability of WAT-LTN with Cityjet/Stobart, but I have to say that it's not nearly as operationally feasible as it was a few years ago, so it's very far from being a no-brainer for a airline such as Cityjet or Cityjet/Stobart.