London City applied to the planning committee of Newham Council a few months ago to increase the movement limit from 80,000 to 120,000 per year. The closing date for representations about this has now passed and the council will presumably decide in the next couple of months, so plenty of time to get things sorted out before the 2008 season.

LCY will have made the point that this will facilitate traffic to the Olympics. Newham love anything that boosts the Olympics so there we go .......

Good news about Ba's new routes for lcy but why Nice from LCY and drop LGW service on same day !

1. Trounced by Easyjet from Gatwick.
2. No chance of Easyjet at LCY.

Parked at EDI.

3. An olive branch to the corporate travel managers who they have annoyed by getting rid of the LGW route (same goes for the move of WAW from LHR to LGW and its instatement as an LCY route as well)

No aircraft going back from Cityflyer so they will have 12 airframes once the 2 85's arrive.

Hmmm. Fairly sure that G-BXAR and G-BXAS are going back soon. G-BXAR was returned and repainted all white but there was a delay in the delivery of the RJ85s and it was pressed back into service.

*CORRECTION*
Reading below I hope I am wrong. Great news for my local airport. Shame it's in Newham :( lol

I believe the pilots are based in EDI but they have cabin crew at LCY.

Think you were right Towser this was on the BAe 146 Yahoo Group
The below extract has been taken from a BA press release.
"The airline is increasing its regional jet fleet to 12 aircraft to
operate the extra routes. Last month BA CityFlyer announced it had
signed leases for two new Avro RJ85 aircraft, and will now retain the
two RJ100s they were originally scheduled to replace"

BA Cityflyer
 

Can anyone tell me, do BA Cityflyer have a base at LCY? I realise that they operate ARJs but are the crew based there or away at other airports?

EI-BUD

Quote from the IOM-thread - posted by IOMSpotter:

I should consider becoming a clairvoyant :p

Nice to see them retiring AR & AS , i remember flying on them at CFE @ LGW!

Cityflyer's new routes are Warsaw, Nice, Barcelona and Amsterdam. Maybe dropping Malpensa. Keeping Both RJ100s so a total of 12 aircraft.
Not nearly enough pilots, so here comes a quick recruitment campaign.

Flyer's getting Big BAs destinations out of London and not a whimper from the Mainline guys. Perhaps they're working so hard they ain't noticed yet. :D
Long live Willy.:}

The entire BA 146/RJ fleet is ex-CityFlyer at Gatwick. They were delivered between 1997 and 2001, then were transferred on to Birmingham and Manchester, and have come on to LCY from there. 10 years is not at all old for the oldest in a fleet - BA have even got 777s that are older than that.

Summarizing your contributions and others on various forums, I must say in the end, I dont have a clue of what CJ are doing :
1. launch of LCY operations, including MAD
2. Jayzus, we didnt think about it, RJ100 cant make it to MAD, lets have a look on RJ85. Mesaba are releasing some of them
3. Jayzus, we didnt think about it, very complicated to retrofit them, forget about it, talk with Blue1, take back AR and AS and we will then have 12 a/c in fleet
4. what could we do with them ? DUS ? but no slots. Why not AMS - good business - and also these guys complaining with WAW transferred to LGW and NCE gone with GB : LCY-WAW and LCY-NCE

What next :
Hem, we didnt think about it, WAW a bit far too far for full pay load
And Ams so much competition we have to drop it

Intresting. Now, I just read a report claiming Cityjet requested slots for LCY-AMS as well. Can anyone confirm this???? That would be the 4th carrier on this route, talk about a air bridge! :cool:

Here's what I found so far:
CityJet
D AMS CJ8450 31MAR 24OCT 1234500 110 AR1 0530 LCY LCY
A AMS CJ8451 31MAR 24OCT 1234500 088 AR8 LCY LCY 0910
D AMS CJ8452 31MAR 24OCT 1234500 088 AR8 1005 LCY LCY
A AMS CJ8453 31MAR 24OCT 1234500 110 AR1 LCY LCY 1315
D AMS CJ8454 31MAR 24OCT 1234500 110 AR1 1415 LCY LCY
A AMS CJ8455 31MAR 24OCT 1234500 110 AR1 LCY LCY 1540
D AMS CJ8456 30MAR 04APR 1234507 110 AR1 1610 LCY LCY
D AMS CJ8456 07APR 24OCT 1234500 110 AR1 1610 LCY LCY
D AMS CJ8456 06APR 19OCT 0000007 110 AR1 1610 LCY LCY
A AMS CJ8457 24OCT 24OCT 0000500 110 AR1 LCY LCY 1905
A AMS CJ8457 30MAR 23OCT 1234007 110 AR1 LCY LCY 1905
A AMS CJ8457 04APR 17OCT 0000500 110 AR1 LCY LCY 1905

Hmmmm.... anyone with more info on this?
Thanks

Cityjet has also applied for slots at FRA, Cityflyer at DUS. Applying for slots is one thing, obtaining them another thing, and actually operating the flights, well, a third.

I know, seems now the Cityjet flights were listed as CJ, and BA flightnumbers under the cityjet name. So no Cityjet to AMS. If anyone knows otherwise please let me know.

In reply to previous questions. BACF from LCY will drop Milan and raise ZRH from 4 to 5 daily incl a nightstop. Furthermore;

LCY - AMS, from 6th may 2008 4x daily (+ KLM 6x daily and VLM 12x daily)
LCY - WAW, from 6th may 2008 daily
LCY - BCN, from 6th may 2008 daily
LCY - NCE, from 6th march daily

In answer to you question EI-BUD


Cityflyer have a large Cabin Crew base at EDI and a smaller one at LCY. Not sure but all flight crew used be based at EDI

Cabin crew based at EDI and LCY, flightdeck based in EDI only

When did Air One stop the Rome service? Was going to book and it seems to have ceased. Poor loads?

Swiss RJ100
 

I see the Swiss RJ is not in its temporary hangar on the Red Bull strip on the other side of the dock.
The hangar is being dismantled.
Presume HB-IYU is back in service with a patched up bottom.
Anyone with more info?

Should have gone this afternoon I believe. They've done a cracking job of getting it repaired.

Well done Swiss :ok:

So much for the machine, what of the captain?

Flight report that SAS Denmark are recommending CRJ700/900's as Q400 replacements - interesting LCY relevant quote:

"According to SAS Group Pilots Association president Capt Mogens Holgaard, the Q400s could be replaced by an equal number of CRJs. He adds that the switch from turboprop to jet would not prove problematic. "We believe it fits in well [with the network]," he says. "The only route it doesn't fit is Copenhagen-London City." He says the recommendation is likely to favour using Airbus A318 on the London City route. While SAS Group is an A320 family customer, it has not placed orders for the A318 version."

VLM Airlines to be bought by KLM/Air France and to closely co-operate with Cityjet.

http://www.reuters.com/article/marke...0071224?rpc=44

Now that will give BA a headache at LCY.

"Now that will give BA a headache at LCY."

Good - they need it. Cityflyer on the surface looks like it belongs to BA but when things go wrong (like yesterday with all the flight cancellations) BA service tends to disappear and the customers are left on their own:

- No advance information that the flights were likely to be cancelled (BA ask for our mobile number but don't seem to use it)
- No LCY information on the BA website (LGW and LHR cancellations mentioned though)
- LCY Bookings on the BA website can't be changed online (so not possible to change to a Gatwick or Heathrow flight)
- BA reservations line "too busy to accept calls", so can't change flights on the phone either.

In the end I didn't bother going to LCY but just caught a train to Luton and flew home with easy instead.

If I were CityJet I'd be on the phone to the Royal Bank on a regular basis offering them a nice deal on EDI - LCY seats. With the shoddy treatment of its customers at EDI since they subcontracted their ground handling and check-in, BA don't look very interested in keeping their existing LCY customers.

I wonder if 2008 is the year when BA stop doing domestic flights altogether. They do seem to be behaving as if they want us to fly with the competition.

13Alpha

I'm sorry to read your LCy experience. I agree with you on the ba website with it's LCY/BA Cityflyer info. Unfortunately flights get cancelled last minute. Annoying for pax and crew but there are a lot of people working hard behind the scenes to be at everybody's service. But sometimes you can't beat the weather... I ended up with two cancelled flights due weather, then A change of plan and of to GLA, with Flybe to Southampton and onward to FRA iso LCY.

After the startup problems at EDI with Aviance it seems to work well now. BA will not stop flying the GLA/EDI-LCY sector in 2008. It remains a busy sector.

Hope you didn't have too many discomfort. Hope to see you back on board in the future.

I don't have any quibbles about the frontline staff at BA Cityflyer - they are very professional and friendly in my experience. So if you are one of them - thank you! :D

It's the BA "machine" (website, customer services, call centres) which is supposedly supporting them that I have the issue with.

And while the issues with Aviance at EDI might be solved from the cabin crew/flightdeck point of view, I can assure you from a customer perspective that they aren't. The service at check-in, in the lounge and the baggage handling has deteriorated significantly since the BA days.

But anyway - this is the LCY forum, not the BA or EDI one... :)

13Alpha

New Routes
 

Anyone know of any new routes apart from the Lufthansa Berlin and the recently announced BA routes? All seems a bit quiet.

Can we see a Guernsey route every happening its desperately needed. A link between London City and Guernsey as two huge financial jurisdictions is long overdue.

Well with Scot, Cityjet, VLM, KLM and Air France all wrapping up into one big organisation it seems some consolidation is more likely.

Besides, anyone looking at the congestion in the mornings and particularly in the evenings nowadays will realise that all the slots are full. And if you don't serve LCY at business hours you are really wasting your time.

Lcy-gci
 

Would there be enough business for a GCI-LCY route? GCI already has 8 flights to LGW each day (the best part of 600 seats). JER-LCY couldn't be sustained with a three times daily rotation, and with the recent take over of VG by AF-KLM I can't see the arrangement of daystopping an aircraft in JER remainging for much longer. Bearing in mind JER is bigger, the LCY service isn't hugely popular (though has a few loyal customers).

New Eindhoven route
 

KLM cityhopper will start serving Eindhoven (EIN) on March 31, 2008 with two week-daily flights.

KL 992 LCY 0815 - 1040 EIN
KL 996 LCY 1830 - 2105 EIN

The route replaces the long-time thrice-daily EIN-LHR service, the slots of which will be transferred by KLM to Northwest in order to operate transatlantic long-hauls (certainly much to the relief of BAA who certainly did not like the odd Fokker 50 around LHR)

Interesting to note also that EIN was very briefly served from LCY on a scheduled basis in 1996 by Denim Air (before they turned into an ACMI operator).


Well, capacity is maxed out movement-wise, so hardly surprising. Not sure where KLM got the slots (my initial thought was EMX, but they are at different times).Probably they will use two AMS-slots now that they are about to take over VLM and will certainly reduce capacity on LCY-AMS.


Looking at the schedules, it appears that now all but three daily flights at LCY are operated by either Star Alliance, Skyteam or oneworld. Should Euromanx disappear for good at the end of March, the airport would be 100% in the hands of the three alliances with no independent carrier operating anymore.

• Skyteam: Air France, KLM cityhopper, Cityjet, Cityjet by Scot Airways, VLM
• Star Alliance: Lufthansa, SAS, Swiss, Austrian, AirOne, Luxair
• Oneworld: BACF
• Independent: Euromanx

They will be very relieved to get a 330 or bigger at T4 since they have sooo much spare capacity as it is ;)

I assume you mean ATC, yes they should be happy.:ok:

Sorry back to LCY issues :oh:

I guess both BAA and ATC.

I recently read an interview with Luxair's CEO and he said that he was laughed right in the face when Luxair tried to move its afternoon slot at LHR to a more viable departure time. BAA was not accommodating at all making it crystal clear that they are not interested in airlines operating 50 seaters into LHR. As a result, Luxair is now considering selling its slot pairs at LHR and concentrate all LON ops at LCY (so we are back to topic :})

Surely not correct as :

1. Heathrow slots are organised not by BAA but by a body called Airport Coordination Ltd, which is owned by airlines, not by BAA.

http://www.acl-uk.org/default.aspx

2. There are still quite a number of business jet operations into Heathrow (some days up to 30) who are given slots and contribute virtually no passengers at all, far less than Luxair, and certainly very little to BAA's retail side.

3. Luxair used to have good morning and evening slots at Heathrow. No airline can be forced to give up good slot times, under "grandfather rights" provisions. If Luxair let them go in the past that was down to them.

It is not.

I regularly take the BBJ into Heathrow.

If you pay the fees it is not an issue - or does not appear to be.

So you should contact the well respected Flight International from which I quote below (the interview was not with the CEO as I seemed to remember):

That said, it is widely known that BAA is not interested in slots being blocked by airlines that will only bring a 50 seater to the airport that at the same time could be used by a plane that will bring 400 pax from the other end of the world. Technically, there is little BAA can do about what aircraft an airline uses once the airline has gotten hold of the slot allocated by ACL (other than have a fee structure that makes it somewhat more expensive to land a smaller aircraft). After the airport fire at DUS (another seriously capacity constrained airport), regional airlines even took the airport to court when the airport planned to move all turboprop flights to MGL


Luxair has a 0805 (LG4402) and a 1340 departure (LG4404) and was trying to move the 1340 slots to late afternoon. For that purpose it (also) approached BAA. When airlines try to position a product at a certain airport, they of course speak to the airport operator and not only to the slot-coordinator.


Business jet operations are a whole different issue as far as slots are concerned as business jets operate not on a regular basis and do not block a certain slot for 360 days every day of the year. You will find biz jet operations at almost all otherwise slot constrained airports. They are, so to speak, a filler, and seen completely different by airport operators as they are not competing for the same slot with a scheduled carrier.




Looking at LCY, it is interesting to note how many airlines have been cashing in on their LHR slots by moving operations to LCY. Swiss comes to mind, Virgin Express (by way of a VLM code-share to BRU), possibly Luxair. KLM, Air France, Lufthansa all have moved flights to LCY in order to free up slots at LHR.

An oxymoron, surely !

As we are just at Flight International :hmm:





Preliminary pax stats for 2007: 2.9m, up a whopping 23%.