Well if it is true we should just remember that just like a football club being bigger than any player an airport must be bigger than an airline!

MME can survive without bmi sad as it may be given the history between the two-worldwide connections will move over to KLM (who would perhaps go to a fokker 100 or 4 daily on the F70) and a london service would be offered to LGW or STN by either GSM or FR (similiar to their BLK-STN route)

If bmi are planning it I wish they'd get on with it!let's face it the future of bmi the company is in as much jeopardy!

on a more niggling note having to fly from LBA later this week to CDG on LS-any ideas when/if MME will offer this service again. What were the WW loads like?surely with disneyland paris and the attraction of paris itself this could be offered by GSM along with Rome and maybe PRG?Definately would like to see more city break destinations being offered!

DTV

I think it has also been quoted though by someone else on BMI thread and in the press that the number sold isnt far off or is in fact equal to the number acquired through the BMED purchase - prehaps a little scaremongering going on working out which routes are impacted by the sell off but you never know he may have it right - although why sell at all and to your biggest competitor at an apparently knockdown price is a mystery!

Does anyone know what the incident was this morning causing disruption to flights at DTV?

An unidentified bag was found apparently, the Midland 330 was held at Delta 2 for about an hour with its pax onboard, obviously it can't get up to Stands 11-15 because work is on-going on that taxiway, (there is lots of holes in it where they have been digging lol) The Midland came in about 0745 and the terminal building didn't open till about 1000 this morning, no flights had departed before then!

S Insania

I think you are wrong there, Easterns Brussels and Aberdeen had already gone by then

Yeh, your correct..a woopsie by me :ugh: They obviously got out before the terminal shut then nothing left lol

MME4eva wrote
Your'e not being serious there are you? (are you???:rolleyes: )

Something seemed a little strange last night @ MME. I wonder if anyone has any information.

I landed on the KL1539 at around 22.10, and parked up was the BMI RJ, presumably ready for its late Heathrow rotation. At the same time though, a BMI airbus was just taking off, though I don't know to where. Why were there 2 BMI aircraft on the ground at once? Aren't we supposed to be all ERJ operations now?

It may have been a delay on the earlier LHR rotation?I thought we were all embraers now but without being a bmi-hater you never know they might have mixed and matched it again!!

I dont think im the only one here to say bmi might not be around for much longer..if only due to a merger rather than financial ineptitude!!

The evening BD338/8WT came in last night and was an Embraer! Though when it got up here it went tech! As they couldn't fix the problem in time they cancelled the flight but didn't bring up a spare or anything!
The night BD340/9WT came up and was about half an hour early, they obviously needed to bring a bigger aircraft up to put both sets of pax on, therefore they brought the Airbus A319!
The Embraer then started up at about 2230 as Midland 5TW ie the 339 obviously with no passengers on though! It taxied out to the Bravo and asked if it could do a high powered taxi down the runway so it could test out the breaks (the technical problem was with the breaks). It did this run and then taxied back down to the 23 end and took-off safely back to LHR!

Thanks for the replies...answers the questions perfectly!

Durham Winter 07 Released
 

Flights for W07 released:

ALC - Thurs/Sun departure
ACE - Sun departure NEW ROUTE
AGP - Mon/Wed/Sat departure
PMI - Saturday departure
TFS - Tues/Fri departure - Increased Frequency from W06

At the moment, only 1 A/C utilised - more route to perhaps GVA, LPA?

Unfortunately, judging from the dialogue used in Flyg's press release, the winter is dropping to a single-aircraft base operation.

Still a very sensible choice of routes however! :)

MME-WAW starting on 20 July instead of 28 July due to early delivery of new aircraft.

There is a very interesting if sad article in todays "Independant" newspaper. It's the lead in the travel section.

Independent article
 

Link here - if he'd arrived by car he could have mentioned the road signs (last weekend still stated "Teesside airport" on the A1 and A19...)

http://travel.independent.co.uk/news...cle2467315.ece

GSM Maybe should have put some city routes up for winter

Charter flights start Soon :}

Independent Article
 

Having read the ‘Independent’ article then it does paint a rather bleak picture on the area, whilst being fact based. It is a fine example in illustrating that that the saying ‘there is no such thing as bad publicity’ is well wide of the mark !
If it wasn’t for the likely development potential of the land at DTV possibly in some cases with projects with only tenuous links to aviation, then I wonder if Peel would still be around?:E
Although on a lesser scale the case of Sheffield springs to mind !:(

On a brighter note, Wizz flights now start on 13th July, more than 2 weeks earlier than originally planned. They are operating a non-standard schedule in the first 2 weeks of Mon, Wed, Fri flights, before moving to the standard Mon, Wed, Sat from the original launch date (28th). I see they move back to Mon, Wed, Fri from October however.

As for FlyGlobespan, well hopefully they have started encouragingly with loads/yields. Their mix of low cost flights alongside holiday packages should do them well! The winter is shaping up to be a good one for them, more to be released yet as the schedule does not even fill up one aircraft never mind two (if they keep two over the winter).

Summer season starts properly a week today!

GSM winter routes
 

A good set of destinations offered again by GSM that should prove very popular with MME-ers:)

I too hope to see more city breaks offered as there is definately holes to plug in this regard e.g. CDG, PRG and maybe GVA which would be popular for skiiers too!

After all of the good news lately with Wizz and FlyGlobespan, there had to be some bad news....

Thomsonfly look set to drop the based aircraft after this summer, next summer (2008) is showing just two flights, one to Alicante on a Tuesday operated by the Newcastle base (on a W) and also a Saturday Ibiza operated by Air Europa. Of course this could all change as there is a long way to go yet til next summer, but I wouldn't expect the based aircraft to return!

Not worried. Rumour has it XL are ready to step in the very second TOM announce a departure. (IF they announce a departure).

Surprised TOM have cut back so much. In addition to ALC and IBZ there are two PMI flights, Thursday operated by TOM, Saturday operated by AEA

With XL's pullout of HUY and their large NCL base so nearby, I would be very surprised if they opened MME.

Regards

Mike

Don't forget there were massive statements on here about TOM not being here this year which turned out not to be true.

I think they almost pulled out this year but left it too late, however I do know there is no TOM crews based here at MME this summer, NCL will crew everything. Therefore this summer had to go ahead but then after that will not.

On the subject of XL, well if you look at the NCL base this winter they are selling only 4 destinations so far, compared to their usual 10-15 for the winter (and I think 15-20 in the summer?). This adds weight to the rumour of XL pulling out of NCL.

There also rumours of interesting destinations by FlyGlobespan next summer, not just Europe either.

If everything comes off as planned then it could well be a very interesting summer in 2008!

I've been told XL and LS are equally unhappy at NCL, I doubt we'll get LS though!!

I think GSM could very easily operate MME-JFK 1x weekly successfully, along with a couple of other long haul destinations, I believe SFB and YHM are the rumoured ones, right mmeteesside?

They would definitely get away with the Likes of SFB and Maybe JFK?

Yes, i agree with you mmeteeside i think TOM nearly did pull out this year :sad:

IT flights
 

I know it is early and lots of things can change between now and Summer 2008, but it also appears that MyTravel have cut the Palma, Alicante and Paphos flights for 2008 too. They are not in the brochure and not available to book on the website either. Having said this there is still lots of confusion as Thomas Cook has Corfu on TOM in the 2008 brochure.

If this is all correct, I am surprised at such huge cutbacks by Thomson. We were not expecting a base but to go from the amount of flights this year to just 3 destinations next year is terrible. Do the people of the Tees Valley really only want to go to Majorca, Ibiza and Benidorm? Or I guess they are expecting us to travel to Newcastle to go anywhere else. Looks like the airport will be relying on Flyglobespan for a lot of business next year and will have a job on their hands to persuade people to book direct with flyglobespan and not go to a travel agent and be told to fly from up the road. (and believe me, I have been to 3 travel agents in Darlington today to book a holiday and they all suggest going from Newcastle as a first option)


Some good news is the Ryanair Gerona flight, 4497 pax in March which I work out to be about a 84% load factor, and even Dublin picked up to about a 64%load factor.

The mergers of MyTravel Airways/Thomas Cook Airlines and First Choice Airways/TUI Group could effect us. The way I see it, XL is our only hope, let's hope the airport has the sense to treat them well this summer.

The MyTravel Paphos flight would go, TOM fly it. As for the other 2, well maybe not such a strange decision, based on the fact that Thomas Cook fly them, and also the likely amount of flights by FlyGlobespan next summer to those 2 destinations.

Still a lot of twists and turns to go yet, especially when the mergers take shape at the end of the year.

No chance of XL basing an aircraft out of MME!

NCL is very profitable in the summer and the lack of winter flying ex NCL is due to a company wide cut in capacity. I believe they are concentrating on long haul in the winter as most of the other a/c go on lease to the US and Canada.

From my sources (XLA Head Office Employee), I hear XL are very happy with NCL so don't know where that runour has come from!

The MME PFO rotation is an ex-aJEt route I believe so it is not necessarily new - correct me if I am wrong?

mmemanBut this is the real world! in reality the residents of Teesside are well served for local airports, the distance - access time to reach NCL for most of those living in Teesside is actually better than for many living in other parts of the country to reach an airport with that level of services. In addition those residents living to the South have other options. Given the demographics of the North East then it is well served for airports, albeit long haul requires considerable improvement. So yes unfortunately you are required to travel to access many of those routes where traffic volume does not justify duplication. Unfortunately as in any business there are always going to be winners, others need to adapt their business model accordingly to survive.

The argument is that NCL has more than its fair share, many want to fly from MME but can't. I know it supply and demand but we have the situation of the supply is there at NCL and the those that want to get to said destination have to go from NCL, no one is listening to the demand. What we want to see is a little more redistribution of flights between NCL and MME. Of those 400,000 a month I bet a good 70,000 live closer to MME than NCL and thats a conservative estimate. Yes you have economies of scale etc... at NCL but if you redistributed 70,000 MME you would see some at MME as well.
To be a little controversial, if the, (ex) not sure if he is yet, director at NCL is found to be guilty of whatever he's done (which i've heard on the rumour mill could include back handers) will someone like the office of fair trading step in and remove flights from NCL as it could be said some of the business going NCL's way was ill gotten!!!!:E

Thats the funniest thing I have read on prune!!! :D

If you look at thomson flights for liverpool they have had a big cut also.
17 flights down to 4 i think.

they do some really big cuts and unexpected!

Yeah they've pulled the LBA base this summer, then next summer LPL, MME and I think BRS are all to go.

BRS is still showing in the summer 2008 brochure things still changing daily.

up the road at ncl it looks like seats are now being sold to First choice. times on-line are the same as Thomson even though on FCA website it states FCA as the airline. I think that both DTV and NCL will loose out when the big 4 merge.

FCA this year are buying seats from TCX. Maybe MYT pax will go on TCX next summer so NCL will loose the MYT based aircraft!:

Huh, XL did not even complete their program last summer at HUY!!:ugh:

They rode into HUY talking big, And came out small!!:rolleyes:

XL let HUY down big time.

BYAI

According to the Thomson website there are no long haul flights from Doncaster in 2008 with Thomson. With Liverpool going down to 4 destinations and Durham Tees 3, have Peel had a falling out with Thomson?

A lot can happen between now and 2008. I'm sure nothing is set in stone yet gents, be patient ;)