Did todays outbound Emirates not operate? I saw the inbound land.

Centrefix:
see post 24th May 2011, 20:20

looking at flightradar the ash cloud now extends over southern UK and into Europe but lots of flights operating over LHR etc.
Seems as though the rules get re-written when the southern airports would be affected.

Emirates departed about 07.45 this morning.

The 'ash cloud' shown on flight radar isnt what airlines or the authorities use to decide whether its safe to fly!

BA test flight:

"Initially it flew over the north of England, Newcastle, Glasgow, Edinburgh, back to Newcastle. The aircraft then returned to Heathrow and has been examined. We have made initial checks of the aircraft, including the windows, engines and moving parts such as the leading edges. All the filters were then removed and will be sent to a laboratory for further testing. The simple answer is that we found nothing."

go to youtube and type in "newcastle airport arrest", happened yesterday while itv were doing their live report.

Looks like Air Transat/Canadian Affair are upgrading the YYZ flight to an A330 for Summer 2012, still operating inbound via Exeter by the looks of it though

Probably more due to the A310's getting withdrawn !

If that's the case, good to see that the route will continue, and not go the way of Edinburgh and get dropped.

There still doesn't seem to be any signs of the new airport hotel opening any time soon and as for the viewing area, it's still rubble surrounded by Heras fencing............shame.

KNIEVEL77 - Hotel, last I heard, on here, was that it had been sold to a large chain but these things don't happen over night!
Viewing area/old terminal/flying club - The airport as is the whole of the UK going through very difficult times at the moment with past and present governments wanting to tax UK civil aviation to destruction and never mind the general spending cuts/job losses! Do you think in this climate any company has money to burn on non core items?
Its very difficult for the airport at the moment people are just not booking holidays in this climate, then the ash cloud appeared again more evidence to sway people from going abroad this year!! The airport still has to service loans and provide a dividend to its share holder, local councils and CPH Airports. The one silver lining is the the DXB keeps going from strength to strength, mind you with latest APD rises average return to DXB is another £80 more! In fact the lowest return fare has gone up in the last three years from around £285 to £455! Mostly to the UK government but with some fuel surcharge from Emirates!

10 DME ARC, I believe Emirates have now dropped the fuel surcharge again.

airport hotel within the next 4 weeks....(so a little birdie told me)

I See EZY are opening a base at SEN, what's our chance of getting our low cost London connection back then? They are proposing 10 or so routes (mix of sun and business)/

No chance as the demand would be lower than to Stansted. The announcement suggests all ten routes are to the continent. Maybe it's good news as far as NCL is concerned that EasyJet is prepared to run small bases with 3 aircraft.

May provisional stats are out.
The airport handled 411665 pax (-0.6%), and so YTD it's now at 4386537 (-0.8%).

Main routes:
Gatwick +4%
Heathrow +34%
Belfast City -8%
Belfast Int +15%
Birmingham +28%
Bristol +10%

Brussels +28%
Paris CDG +4%
Dusseldorf +23%
Hannover -36%
Dublin +28%
Amsterdam +8%
Dubai -4%

Mixture of Ups and Downs on the sunshine routes.

Passenger numbers
 

Quite encouraging. It would have possibly been a growth figure vs last year but a lot of passengers were lost with the ash cloud affecting NCL in May.
I think the LHR were up so much because of last Mays cabin crew dispute. Good news though.

Air Berlin website is showing Newcastle on the destination map. When you click onto it, it shows a number of routes to destinations in Germany, but you can't currently book any of them. Is this a sign of Air Berlin arriving at NCL? Or is it more to do with the BA codeshare agreement?

Air Berlin
 

I think so, as it also shows BA domestic destinations like ABZ and GLA that they currently don't fly to (or they may be making a big push into the UK market:O)