Originally Posted by
5aday
There were two companies - JEA based in Jersey and JEA Ltd based in Bournemouth.
The CAA Flt Ops reckoned that the two should be seperated because of the number of types the original JEA was operating. Peter Glenister went to Bournemouth with the Viscounts, Dakotas, and Dart Herold and I remained in Jersey with Bandeirante, Twin Otters, Two Islanders and another twin piston which went to Aviation Beauport. JEA later developed into sd360, Ex air Anglia 748s and then the DASH8. Quite what it has now I don't have a clue. For one antartic season, one of the JEA pilots went south to see if JEA could manage the British Antartic Survey but he reported back to me of severe problems with one of the pilots and a low flying accident because of one of them.
Fly Be was formed with JEA and not , as far as I know, JEA Ltd - ie Intra Airways. I think the latter was always in court in Jersey for quite a lot of irregularities such as base checks done in the flying club bar and so on.
As for the Islander running out of fuel inbound Jersey to Guernsey, it had full main tanks and a previous pilot who had just flown it had selected tip tanks and exhausted the fuel up to the point where it came down in the field just using tip tanks. Thr CAA agreed with me that the fuel useage was consistent with 2.5 round trips to Guernsey and though it could not be proven, the tip tanks were in use on that flight into the field short of the runway. The previous pilot did something similar on an island in the Indian Ocean but I was told nothing about it until I inquired. That did not excuse the operating pilot from checking though so he carried the can. As for JEA and the dates of Jersey +/- Guernsey route, I don't have a record. As for operating Alderney with Twin Otters, I would suspect one of the Trilanders went unserviceable, though Aurigny did attempt Twin Otter ops and unlike piston engines, the starts on the turbines went against the totals on the PT6 engines. I think the PT6 was fantastic unless it had fancy zero pitch latches for water and snow ops (British Antartic Survey did),and always flew at least 40 minutes to make it more viable than a piston engine. Apart from a light747.400 the Twin Otter was the nicest aeroplane in the world though it did have a few things every pilot should know.
No 748s from Air Anglia they were Fokker F27-200s.