The LHR switching to an all ERJ operation is just the type of medicine the route needs.

Good to hear about GSM and I look forward to seeing the winter schedules, I think we may see Prague returning, or another ski holiday equivalent such as GVA or CMF even.

bmi, LHR and Open Skies
 

Quote from yesterdays Independent:

"BMI would be free to deploy some of its ample supplies of precious slots at Heathrow, presently used to shuttle to places like Palma and Teesside, to launch services to key US cities: New York, Washington, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles."

Just been on a driving lesson to MSG, the signs are being changed at a pretty fast rate, I saw some that were still Teesside International just a couple of weeks ago that are now, "D'ham Tees Valley".

Regards.

Where is D'ham ?;)

It's abbreviated on some of the signs due to a lack of room.

Well that just about says it all about the name change:confused:

First Flyglobespan flight from the base departs a week today, fingers crossed everything goes well and we have a good summer this summer, what with Wizz joining in July too.

Looking through the bmi schedule for the summer it seems they're loving destroying the LHR route. First flight out on a Monday is 1125 on the 333 down to LHR! Also latest flight back up on a Friday is the 332 arriving at 1055! No teatime arrival or late night arrival.

Big mistake by bmi if this is true.

A ludicrous schedule - I think their attention is a few thousand miles to the West...

Ludicrous, yes. Accidental...no.
bmi know exactly what they are doing and trust me when I say that MME does not feature in their future plans. The route has been maintained purely as a slot protection exercise. It is not in their interests to upset thousands of loyal pax when the route finally is pulled, hence the steady erosion in timetable over the last few years.:mad:

... and the open skies agreement of the last week is just what they've been waiting for.

The MME route will be effected by the open skies agreement, but I cannot see it going altogether, as bmi need their regional routes to feed the future LHR-USA routes, so yes, we may loose one or two rotations a day, but I cannot see it going completely.

Also, bmi regional are a much more respected company, they have high load factors and are currently the best performing of all the bmi Group, so bare in mind that the MME-LHR route is now 100% in their hands, they have the potential to resurrect the route, whether they actually do or not is a different matter...

DTCAirportWell lets just say that that everything is relative..........
Then are Peel / DTV just perared to sit back & continue to be messed about? & if so how long does the current agreement last ?:ugh:

What can Peel/DTV do about? If bmi don't operate MME-LHR, nobody else will.

I think it would be better for all involved if bmi was to leav altogether. I say this because at the moment bmi are stopping other airlines from starting routes into London, I don't mean there is an agreement, just that at the moment they are providing enough competition to make airlines think twice about doing flights into London.
I think what would be better now for MME is for someon like Flybe, Ryanair or Globespan to do a twice daily Gatwick and for KLM to go to at least 4 daily on the AMS with F100s. This would then cater for the London area traffic as well as providing decent connections (through AMS) for onward travellers.

I think now 'open skies' has been agreed the government should step in and allocate slots into London on some sort of basis. It doesn't have to be all into LHR but as long as each regional airport outside of x miles of London has some sort of link. Just an idea though.

Do you have any grounds as a basis in making this statment ?

I think he is meaning no-one else can operate it at the moment on account of the slot problems at LHR.

Someone, probably GSM, would almost definitely launch LGW if LHR goes down the pan.

After months of speculation on what aircraft type Flyglobespan would send us, we finally got Boeing 737-600 G-CDKT this morning.

Regarding the LHR bmi flights, from the bmi website, it apears to be operating Mon-FRi 4 times a day? Where did it say about no flights on Mon am and Fri PM? Having said that the cheapest fare you can get on some flights apart from the 330/345 is up to £190 single! So hopefully they are making lots of money!

127pax on the first flygobespan flight to Palma on Saturday. Does anyone know how many the 737-600's can take?

mmeman
The B736 can carry 130 passengers pax. So it looks like FlyGlobespan have made a good start!

It did cross my mind that the number of advanced bookings may have effected the size of aircraft they sent us, so at first I was skeptical about the B736, but if they're filling her up then it can't be bad.

Yes I have noticed that as well.. It did originally say 2 B733 for Durham so maybe they have a lot of bookings already for the summer so will be moving there aircraft round at a later date!

EMA01

I heard everything from 2 733, 1 736 and 1 738, 1 733 and 1 73G, the list of combinations is almost endless - I even fell for an April Fools joke that they were temporarily sending us a B763ER!! :O :ugh:

Lol. Im sure the most average aircraft there will be a B733 though because bmibaby operated them. Atleast GSM are doing well!

EMA01

Good start by sounds of it for GSM but it just goes to show what offering popular low risk destinations results in-full planes!!Anyone fancy a return to KNOCK??!!

As for FR it looks like GRO goes from strength to strength and what do people think about them returning to a daily DUB and maybe even a CIA 3xweekly?

Back to GSM and possible future destinations I am going to be bold and say GVA will be a dead cert for the winter and one thing that has surprised me is their announcement of flying YHM from NCL originating from STN on a 757-surely wouldnt it have been better to route through MME and give her a trans atlantic as NCL already has their Toronto flights!!

The Wednesday DUB rotation is returning, although I think it's only temporary. I would love to see it back at 1x daily. They won't touch CIA again, although I believe FCO is in GSMs route network, they could certainly make a success of it.

I assume by now the Ryanair NCL-GRO route has launched, has this had any effect on our GRO route? If not, I feel a frequency increase coming on, to 4x weekly I think.

Gerona
 

Dont think the start of the NCL - Gerona will affect the Durham Tees Valley flight at all. In fact I would expect it to do better than the NCL service as there is competition at NCL from Easyjet to Barcelona and I think a few other charters from NCL. There is no competition on the route at Durham.

Generally I would think all the GSM routes will do very well, again with no or little direct competition, unlike NCL where there seems to be on some routes numerous operators in direct competition causing over capacity.

What the hell is going on today? Why have we had 13 flights cancelled on the first day of Easter weekend???

Cancellations
 

DTV please elaborate...

Which flights were cancelled? If it was just T3's to ABZ and BRU this is the norm given these are predominatly business routes and it being a public holiday-same happens at christmas.

Dropping my brother off on Thurs for the 6am AMS flight and noticed troops were congregating for a flight-anyone know what airline/equipment came in for them?


Why won't FR touch Rome (CIA) again? By all accounts the route was popular.

Route cancelled today are:
TAY15C/16G
EZE580/581/582/585/586
EZE4461/4462/4467/4468
BMA332/333/339/340

The troops you saw on Thursday went out on XLA8806 G-BOPB Boeing 767-200ER, which arrived as XLA006P, probably from either London Gatwick or RAF Brize Norton. This aircraft also wears their new livery. It arrived at 07:07 and departed at 07:55 according to the DTVA Group. It returned today as XLA8807 at 08:58 and left again at 09:55 under the same flight number.

Yes, the CIA route was popular, but it obviously didn't work for Ryanair otherwise they wouldn't have chopped it.

Has somebody mentioned already Eastern reduce all there services around bank holidays, because they are a business airline and most businesses close at Easter hence no traffic, what is the point of running empty airplanes and burning holes in the sky.

The flights shown as cancelled were never bookable, and simply do not opperate over bank holiday periods.
It is something that happens at Durham T V airport each Christmas, Easter etc.
Cant understand why they dont just simply "not" put them on the departure/ arrival boards after all there are no PAX booked on them.

Well in that case we've got some serious problems, because we should be easily able to fill 75% of those routes on Easter weekend.

This happens at all airports not just MME, Eastern barely operate over Xmas, Easter etc because there is just not the passengers required. TNT don't operate on weekend so why would they operate on bank holidays ?

bmi don't surprise me running only 2 out of 4, I presume KL took at least one of theirs off too?

You would think Brussels and London would be popular with holiday passengers looking for a weekend break?

FR DUB-MME

CAA stats for FEB are showing DUB-MME at just over 50% load factor, its small wonder they dropped frequency. I cant see it going back to daily ... I wonder if FR are considering dropping it completely??

Also, The Wednesday service is only resuming for the month of May and September

DTV, you don't have a clue do you :confused: , you think just because a few flights were cancelled we have serious problems :mad: Eastern cancel flights over christmas and easter as several people have already said and as Wellington Bomber stated, what's the point in flying planes that have no pax!!
Come on, use your common sense! :ok:

Well ok, I can understand Eastern cancelling, but all the other operators should have easily been able to sell their flights.

Thanks for the info on the troop flights DTV.

I honestly don't feel there are any issues at MME at the mo-FR's GRO route has got off to a good start, BRU seems to be ticking over and GSM have started postively and most importantly punctually!

It is a shame bmi have down sized but we have to remember KL will always offer cheaper fares and better connections and having an LHR service at all is the envy of most other similar sized regionals.

The only hope I have now following the miraculous recovery following our friends from Castle Donnington's departure is that the likes of GSM, FR and perhaps Wizz begin to build up their destinations over time.