Eastern Airways selling 4 Jetstreams
 

Eastern Airways has put four of the Jetstreams up for sale. It is G-IJYS, G-EEST, G-OAKJ and G-CBDA. Looking for upgrading to bigger or ?

Interesting!

Where do you see or hear this?

G-IJYS was never owned by them. Just available for thier use.

I for one sure would be interested to hear where this came from. IJYS (which is, I beleive, owned) is I beleive the only ac in the fleet in VIP config used for charters so Im not sure how that would be replaced. OAKJ is one of the older Kilroe machines so I could see the logic there. EEST too is the only 18Y J31 and is a bit of a dog, so I could understand that too.

But CBDA? Entered service a couple of weeks ago after months spent in the hangar bringing it upto Easterns standards after coming from [Japan I think]. Its also the newest in the fleet being one of the last 32s off the line.. so cant quite understand. Anyone have any more info.......?

As requested : have a look at dkaviation.co.uk

This may well be due to the fact that they now have a class A operating licence wef 19 April 2002

CR

I don't know about their other operating stations, but at Norwich the intentions are to upgrade as follows:

NWI - ABZ : from EMB135 to EMB145 (4 times a day)
NWI - EDI: Already operated by a JS41 - 3 times a day, (unfortunately an itinerant tug bumped into it recently and there have been 2 JS32's replacing it three times a day).
NWI - MAN: from JS32 to JS41 - 3 times a day.

Eastern will also be operating some of the Sat/Sun summer charter services to EGJJ/EGJB using the EMB145.

I flew with Eastern between MAN/NWI/MAN 18 months' ago - they were OK.

Jad A1, your info is years out of date.

G-IJYS was originally owned by BAe, and was the demonstrator for the Formula-1 J31. It was in Jackie Stewart's livery, and was placed by BAE on Air Kilroe's line @ MAN. Jackie Stewart got a good deal for the use of it, as did AKL, on the premise that it was demonstrating the 9-seat exec fit. Later on AKL bought it and it was transferred, along with the rest of the assets of AKL to Eastern when they bought AKL from the Kilroe family.

Does anybody know whether Eastern intend to aquire their own Emb 145s or are they leasing in aircraft and crews from Skyways Sweden?

I think the EMB145 will be leased (from Swedestar or someone else), however, they are cross training a number of their own crews on the EMB135.
I assume that they intend to at least have their own first officers on the EMB145, if not fully crew it themselves.

:) Good luck to Eastern, the pilots are a top notch bunch who work very hard to keep the company in business and the customers happy, (even if their op's staff haven't got much of an idea :rolleyes: ).

ninak:

I agree with you, T3's crew seem a very professional bunch, and as someone connected to the company I'd also say that such professionalism extends to many other departments in the company.

I'd really like to know why the staff in operations there, in your opinion 'dont have much of an idea'? As someone who in the past has had experience of numerous ops departments (including some major UK carriers), I'd say those at Eastern are some of the most professional and on-the-ball that I've met... presumably you know them better?

Perhaps delays are a bit too regular out of Norwich.. I'd say almost nothing to do with Eastern, more to do with some of the seemingly inadequate staff in almost every department at Norwich (mainly pax handling, baggage, security, fuellers and occasionally ATC).

Please, dont slag people that I'm sure you have very little actual experience of working alongside. And your info... FO's on the 135 coming from Eastern.. that seems to be news nobody else knows about, and a J41 from Norwich to Manchester, a route which seems to average about 10 passengers, wouldnt have thought so but perhaps you know better?

Tightturnaround

The reference to the Ops staff is directly linked to delays caused by their lack of knowledge ( and perhaps experience) of upper air operations and the way the slot system works, and more importantly, their lack of ability to take advice and the help offered from those who have the ability to influence such things. I realise that perhaps this may be a small number of their personnel within the ops department, but on more than one recent occassion, it has led to significant reroutes and airborne delays.

With regard to the F/O's on the EMB135, it's simply a case of voices that were on the JS32 now being on the EMB135 - maybe they've all jumped ship!:D

As for the staff at Norwich - a bit of a blanket critisism there, it's rare that delays are actually caused by the airport staff there, and when it does happen, unlike most places, they generally hold their hands up and try to learn from any errors. If there have been any deficiancies, particularly in ops/atc, by all means let them know or post them here.

Excellent Co
 

I used Eastern for a day return HUY ABZ saved us a lot
of time good company

May be able to shed light on the F/Os familiar voices on the Emb135. Two of our J32 pilots moved a year or so ago to bmi and trained on the Emb145. Sept 11th and all that they were laid off and luckily both got jobs with CityAirlines! Very pleased to be "working" with them again. NWI crews are currently training on J41 and the NWI-MAN-NWI routes are very full indeed peak times, hence the hope that more J41 will be taken on to cope. Please lay off our Ops, they are a super bunch, with qualified ex ATC among them, so odd that someone has the impression they don't know what they are doing. As a company we have grown steadily but very fast, nearly 70 pilots now, so with all the JAR OPS and AOC approvals on top things may not flow quite as smoothly sometimes. However we are all extremely proud to be with Eastern, as it still retains such a really friendly and good natured workforce. We all work hard to make things go well, and timekeeping at NWI is one of the best now.

There were rumours - admitably a number of months ago - that T3 were going to increase their network into Manchester. Talk was of Newcastle, Humberside, Inverness and possibly one other.

I understand that Newcastle is still be talked about, but it is a route that they previously operated on - and unfortunately withdrew from.

Anybody able to make any further comment? I appreciate it might be a 'no comment' item at the moment.

Cheers

Scottie Dog

I hadn't heard of the Newcastle possibility, but it would be a good route from Norwich, especially as there doesn't appear to be a STN - NCL service since Gill went tits up. The only trouble is the size of available aircraft, I imagine that the route would demand at least a 30 seater with appropriate baggage capacity, as most of the passengers would be business or offshore related.

As for the Inverness route, this was suppossed to be MAN - INV, timed to link in with the NWI - MAN service ( :confused: ), it all seems to have died a death which is no suprise given the availability of low cost services to INV from Luton and the Gatwick (not so low cost) service. Bear in mind that no one has ever successfully operated a MAN - INV service.

As has been stated before, T3 specialise in operating primarily for the business customer, getting the passengers there a lot faster than the train or by car, but for slightly more than the 1st class rail fare. Unless they're subsidised, I can't see them commiting themselves to any route that involves similar competition.

STN-NCL = GO services 3 times a day (?) with a 737

Oh well - there's the answer to that one then.:p

Another rumour surfacing, is that KLM UK are not renewing the leases on the ATR72's they presently use on the NWI - AMS services.
Rumour (totally unsubstanitiated), has it that Eastern are interested in operating the service using a leased ATR.

They would almost certainly be pipped to the post by KLM City Hopper, who have expressed a strong interest in operating the service 3 times a day using FK70's.

Although Eastern want to operate it as it is now - 4 times daily (the average load factor is 87% per trip plus substantial baggage), with only one suitable aircraft for the route, I can't see them either being accepted on it or being able to sustain it.