Looks as if there are going to be 2 a319s and one 320 this summer in Belfast. The lgw route seems to be back to a 319. Odd I thought summer would have been busy for them.

Oddly enough I had a feeling both LON routes would be on A319's over summer. Be good if EI did launch something new from BHD, I did read somewhere previously they were intending to open up a new route from BHD roughly one a year, also that they wanted to increase frequency particularly to LHR.

Apart from reducing the aircraft size on the Gatwick route from 320 to 319, the booking engine now has departure of the 1st flight of the day at 0740 (same as LHR) arriving in LGW at 0905. It would appear that Aer Lingus is handing the morning business traveller business to BA and the Flybe. The latter on LCY would appear to be having an impact on Aer Lingus route to LGW already...

Rumours of the A320 at BHD moving to DUB

AerRyan,

You mean that there would be 3 x 319's?

My understanding is that the current 320 will stay to serve sun routes and an additional 319 coming up from Dublin in place of the usual 320 that comes.

I can see that there are quite a few routes ex Dublin that would be better served with 319 than sun routes ex BHD. SNN has one. So that makes 4....

Hence, I doubt 3 x 319's....

EI-BUD

I should have clarified, for summer season 2016 the A320 will be moved to pattern and sun routes operated on a W pattern. Not a 3rd A319 but in fact only 2 aircraft.

EI-BUD

In fact EI's LGW and LHR flights are scheduled in like a near mirror image of each other - I don't quite catch the logic but I'm sure there's some in there somewhere.

Yes Mart901, I saw that re the timings. It is all a little ironic, given that Aer Lingus moved to the City Airport to chase a business traveller offering, and now there is no service arriving into the London area before 9am. Hence, no passenger can expect to be in London pre 10a.m. on business.


Flybe early to LCY and BA 0655 can each look forward to accommodating the business traveller. Disappointing.


Comments re Aer Lingus doing W rotations with Dublin aircraft makes little sense to me. Firstly, is the plan to cut back on the crew numbers at BHD? Secondly, there will be a huge amount of ferrying crew between bases and finally, the fact that under union arrangements, staff on Belfast contracts are not permitted to work on flights ex Dublin Airport. How does any of this make for operational sense?


Unless they are planning to add additional routes to Europe over and above the existing services flown by the based 320????

Strange, time will tell. It might be that they want more utilization of aircraft, it would enable night flights ex Dub.

AMS loaded for winter, daily, at a later departure time.

No tues or sat ams flights. What's the point in later flights. Surely earlier would have been better to allow for better connections.

Sorry I didn't look properly through to see its 5 weekly. Earlier would be better but depends on aircraft availability, also plenty of later connections across Europe. I'm grateful its keeping going, hopefully it will build up nicely across the year.

KLM concentrates its movements at Schiphol in seven banks / waves of 90 minutes each. All except the first and last are a mix of long-haul and European movements.

So long as the Belfast City flight can align to a bank then it should be useful.

Winter schedule isn't completed yet so watch this space ;)

AMS
 

I still think we will see a night stopping klm yet over winter

Third aircraft for Aer Lingus joining the other two aircraft for the summer.

EI-EPU A319 joins EI-EPR A319 and EI-DEN A320.

I noticed vueling at bhd today, thought that didn't start till May?

Vueling from Barcelona started on Thursday past.

By May they might have had enough practice to even be on time!

This was advertised as a May start when it was first announced. Nothing on bhd website or in press to say it had started. Has it been a catalogue of delays?

From the launch of the schedule there were always two flights in April scheduled. Makes some sense to wait until the route starts on a frequent basis to shout about it...

Vueling
 

I hardly think a less that 10min delay on second of two flights warrents comment on its time keeping but the lack of press coverage or publicity about the route does. As part of IAG I for one would have thought that I would have seen more marketing as it is code share with BA amd IB with thr option of onwards connections via BCN

Thursday: wheels hit the City runway at 12:44. It was meant to be at the gate at 12:30.

If they can't make it on time with today's padded-to-the-max timetables, on their inaugural flight, then I feel justified in criticising them.

Many people noticed their tardiness, which is not good for a first impression.

Onward connections to where via BCN ?

The IAG Hub in Spain is MAD !

I don't know what all the fuss is about. These flights start proper in May, at which time all concerned parties will be worthy of criticism if they fail to shout about the service at that time... I expect there will be some good coverage!

The city airport has a good track record of marketing new services.

In relation to a 15 late arrival, despite 'padding' which has always existed, is nothing. Often situations outside of the airlines control.

Vueling have a large short haul hub at Barcelona with flights to destinations across Europe and into Africa. Most of those cities might not connect well time-wise into BCN-BHD and/or are destinations for which a Belfast traveller would need a very significant detour to transfer in BCN - however key Spanish regional cities at least probably have good connections into BCN-BHD

EI Bunto

Who are the "many people"?

It would be desirable to be on time for an inaugural flight but there could be a million and one reasons for the delay,not least the weather which was awful last week, they were about 20 mins late by the time they arrived on stand. You only need a missing passenger or photoshoot at BCN to miss a slot. Vueling delivered 91% of their flights on time in March, not bad going.

I think some on here are confusing Vueling with Volotea who operated the often delayed charters to Verona last summer.

Vueling aren't known for poor time-keeping as far as I am aware. Good luck to them!

Are Voltea operating this Summer?

Nah - flight moved to Jet2 from BFS.

Thomson / Crystal have moved from Volotea to Jet2 at Aldergrove, but the Topflight packages from BHD to Verona are using Volotea, I think in past years they used Air Dolomiti.

KLM seemingly starting to up their advertising. A Metro bus passed me today painted with a full side advert of the nose/front fuselage of a KLM Cityhopper F70.

Did BA use an A321 this evening on their 1420 inbound and the 1421 out? Noticed it on flight radar. Is this the first time BA have used the 321 into BHD?

The a321 has been used on numerous occasions, rare but has been in before. Mostly ex-bmi machines but have had a few G-E ba reg in as of late.

A321 out of City is a pretty impressive departure, flew on them a few times in the BMI days! On a slightly related note, the first BA A320 with retrofitted sharklets is currently on stand at BHD.

Not sure why EI use A319`s on the routes to Heathrow and Gatwick as any time I fly to London with them, the flights are pretty full!

Well since this is a rumour site, the rumour I heard it that they are using-up A319 airframe cycles on the short flights before dumping them in the Winter.

EI-EP[R,T,U] have all cycled through Belfast-basing in the past few weeks whilst EI-EPS is being flogged on Shannon to London.

With reference to Aer Lingus flights being full or well subscribed ex BHD. They well be on peak services but plenty of empty seats On the overall London schedule.

I suspect there may be reasons for returning 319 to LGW ex bhd, e.g. Numbers soft enough and pressure of fare, hence 319 lower cost. May be to do with hiring less seasonal staf. equally, moving the 0645 departure time 0740, makes the schedule less attractive to the business man. I suspect reduced numbers expected. BE have made good go of bhd LCY etc.

What is the return date of the 319', does anybody know? I sense that a fleet without 319's has significance for the BHD base...

Don't read too much into it. They're going because the cost per seat savings are not what they were expecting vs the A320, and that it just isn't worth their while keeping them instead of a couple of extra A320s that can be subbed in on higher density routes ex DUB in the summer.

DC3
 

Is it tru a DC3 is doing pleasure flights from BHD this week?

Dutch Dakota Association will be there with PH-PBA on Thursday to do promotional flights for KLM.

I don't think they are 'pleasure flights' as such, in that you can't book a trip. Invited guests only AFAIK.