Amber Air
 

Any info on the short lived charter carrier operating the 737-200? I heard that they were going to call the airline Diamond Line, but British Midland objected.

Now you're testing my memory cells ... Amber Air, I think it was to be called Diamond Air or Diamond Airways, was the phoenix that rose from the ashes of Airways International Cymru ... more affectionately known as "Air Crummy", can't recall though if Amber had the same chairman as Air Crummy, and indeed Cardiff City Football Club, who subsequently served a prison sentence for his sins.

If I recall it wasn't the -200 that Amber operated but perhaps a -300 and it was short lived, perhaps just one season, before it was taken over by Paramount Airways of Bristol.

Paramount, like Airtours, started off with MD80 (family) aircraft and signed such a deal with MD that they could only operate MD aircraft so, to get around this, Paramount bought out Amber so they could operate Boeings, or whatever, under the Amber branding whilst Airtours subsequently bought out Inter European to do likewise.

By the time Paramount bought out Amber, and I stand to be corrected on any of this, Paramount were already in financial difficulties themselves, something to do with a director or two having legged it with a bucket load of money, and the Amber/Paramount 737, which was actually owned by Ansett Leasing, ended it's UK registered days operating for Ansett and the Queensland government during the Australian pilot's dispute of 1989/1990.

There ya go :)

Funny coincidence; when doing some research for a book I'm writing about Aurigny at the moment, I came across this the other day: http://www.flightglobal.com/FlightPD...20-%203415.PDF

I have photo somewhere of an Amber Airways 737-200 which I took at Luton. Midland objected to the Diamond name.

White, brown and gold from memory, Mr Relic may remember?

Iberia tug - Luton ? Maybe not Buster !

Amber Air
 

In 1989 Amber Air had at least 2 B737's - G-BKMS B737 2Q8 22453 and G-BOZA B737-204 20808.

Not sure about the ealrier post that it was taken over by Paramount as it could only fly MD83's. Paramount, towards its end, had G-PATE B737-33A 24093

Only taken me nearly 4 years to find the photo, not a very good image though and taken on the South Stands at Luton.

http://i66.tinypic.com/21b1ull.jpg

Whoever designed the logo obviously didn't have a clue what amber looks like.

BtB wins the perseverance award...

That's because it's a diamond, not amber. The airline was originally going to be called Diamond Airways but British Midland raised a legal objection to it shortly before launch due to infringement of its Diamond Service trademark at the time. [British Midland was also running four 737s for Owners Abroad on dedicated charter contracts at the time and there were strong rumblings that it was going to put the four aircraft under a different title - Diamond Line - to avoid confusion between 737s with full Y seating capacity and pay drinks versus those running the scheduled services with greater legroom, free booze etc.]

Anyway, Diamond Airways changed its name about a month before starting operations and for its short life, became Amberair. I seem to recall that it did indeed run one summer season from Manchester and Cardiff (1988?) before merging with Paramount, which then flew four MD83s, one 737-300 and two 737-200s including some flying from Berlin and the 737-300 based at Newcastle for its last year in business. Ironically, Paramount's main customer was Intasun which ended up putting money into the airline (despite owning Air Europe) to keep it going after the Chairman ran off with the contents of the bank account mid-way through the summer.

Our Chairman was also Chairman of Eagle Trust from whom her stole £12.5M and 1.7M shares.
He was convicted of theft in 1992 after a ten month trial.
Finished off a fun and pioneering British airline and cost us all our jobs.

Here's the related news item ...

Eagle Trust founder convicted of pounds 12m theft from company: 'I am prepared to take whatever comes along,' says ex-boss - Ten-month trial gives SFO its second triumph in a week | The Independent

Wonder where Ferriday is now?

It seemed to be a run of events at the time. If I remember rightly, another airline before Amber Air had run into some financial troubles after the company light aircraft crash-landed at Jersey one Friday night with an engine failure on the way to France with the airline's entire week's-worth of cash bar and duty free takings on board. That all unravelled pretty quickly afterwards.

It's no bad thing that the industry is rather more "corporate" nowadays but it's certainly not as colourful as it was....

I belive Amber Airways operated
737-200
G-BOSA 20808 ex Airways Int Cymru Apr88-Oct88
G-BKMS 22453 ex American West Apr88-Oct88
when they passed to Paramount, with G-BKMS passing to Dragonair during November 1988 with
G-BOSA remaining till April 89 when it followed to Dragonair

I remember an 8 hour delay when Skiathos was still a tin hut! I remember it as I was on crutches at the time.


Definitely a 737-200 - I remember the roar!