Harry,

so we are not talking about regulation, but about enforcement of regulation. Those are two different things.

However, can you be sure that, for example, the CAA has a resident inspector at various European airports from which bmi regional operates without ever touching UK soil - eg. the sizeable network they operate out of MUC, the routes operated to France and Belgium by a BRE-based aircraft, or their operation in the Swedish wilderness? Could be, but I doubt it.

"Maybe some of these routes could be a target for the likes of Loganair or Eastern albeit with slightly larger aircraft.

Can see Glasgow and Belfast being a good fit with Loganair on something like GLA-IOM-BHD-IOM-GLA routing."

Not sure about Blackpool and Gloucestershire as seemed a bit of a niche operation.






Not a bad idea , if we wind the clock back a few years Twin Otters plied the route between Blackpool and the Isle of Man daily - don't Loganair have a couple:ok:

I believe they operate a couple of shiny new Viking Twin Otters which the Scottish Government bought for PSO services to Barra. Unless you can make a business case for Barra-IOM :O, or cover the aircraft standing costs for nearly-new Twin Otters (clue: rather a lot more than a LET-410), I don't think you'll be seeing any Loganair Twin Otters from IOM without exceptionally strong binoculars.:hmm:

virginblue,

There are regulations (FTL's) regarding how many hours, days, accumulative hours, rest periods, days off a crew member may work.

I began to read the report of the Citywing (Manx2) ORK crash, from what I read it appeared the operator had crew members operating flights, but only on paper, when in reality it appeared that the first officer who lost his life in that crash had been working day duties as well as night duties whilst the first officer who the operator claimed to be operating some of those flights proved that he was nowhere near to Ireland during that period, he provided a boarding pass proving that he was back in Spain.

Now that operator was busting those regulations and clearly the Spanish authority didn't act sufficiently to enforce those regulations which could have been directly responsible for the subsequent loss of lives, this is serious sh1t!

With regards to the BMIr example you set, firstly inspections will take place at their operations centre, if systems are in place and paperwork in order then that is generally a pretty good sign, often the inspector will get a feeling if the operator are professional or a bunch of cowboys.

Then the inspector will do jumpseat rides, you mention a MUC base, without knowing BMIr's route network it is feasible that an inspector could jumpseat to/from MUC and do a couple of jumpseat rides whilst out there.

With a smile I recall our French inspector when I worked for a Luxembourg cargo operator, we had one aircraft working Europe and another aircraft working French Africa from/to CDG.

He wanted to jumpseat a rotation, we tried to persuade him to stay in Europe but he wasn't having any of it, the flight he rode was destination Bangui where there were thunderstorms resulting in the flight diverting to Kano. Upon arrival in Kano the Nigerian authorities determined that our inspector wasn't an operating crew member thus he had entered Nigeria illegally and they locked him up.

The subsequent telephone conversation we had with the first officer, once he had found a telephone, was one of those telephone conversations that one will never forget ... "Our inspector is in prison" :)

The Cork crash was with a Spanish airline, if I am not mistaken. Vanair is a Czech airline. Citywing has also employed a German airline (FLM) in the past, they are now using a Danish airline and a Polish airline. So while I get your point, it ultimately means that you advocate that only UK airlines may serve UK airports with UK based aircraft? So where to draw the line - how about the airlines from all over the world that operate into the UK? Does it make a difference if the aircraft is overnighting in the UK or just being turned around?

Thanks Harry for the reply, fully understand now

Not at all virginblue,

I'm a Brit and as well as working for operators in England, Scotland and Wales I have also worked for operators in Australia, Belgium, Luxembourg and Netherlands whilst these days I have my own business in the Philippines.

I'm don't have the island mentality that UK is famous for, let's not even get in to Brexit :) , by all means let European operators work UK airports but regulators are for a specific purpose, to REGULATE, the Spanish authorities failed to regulate that Spanish operator that killed people in ORK and it seems the Czech authorities are failing to regulate Van Air bouncing off runways in Ireland etc.

What would you do if you were a UK CAA regulator, allow them to continue or kick their butt?

Van Air operated a PSO route from CWL to VLY. You can insert quality weighting into the tender competition but you have to accept any airline with an EASA licence is qualified to submit a tender.

The problem I have is that a UK devolved government can put their citizens at risk because they are forced to award the contract to an operator from another European country who may not be prepared to provide adequate regulation in the U.K.

So if you have concerns with the Czech CAA, what is your take on Czech Air operating into the UK? And how about Smartwings? Travelservice?

virginblue,

There was a video that I viewed on youtube some time back "stalled in the sky pilot error", it appears to have been removed now for copyright infringement, but it was an eye opener, I recognised the traits of many a cargo flight crew member that I previously worked with, and in this instance it resulted in a tragic loss of lives.

The programme was about a turboprop, I think a Q400, operating from, I think, Newark (EWR) on a late afternoon or evening departure.

Both pilots were based in EWR yet the Captain lived in Florida, he would commute but was too tight to pay for accommodation, he would occupy nights in the crew room whilst the first officer lived on the west coast, she wouldn't pay for commercial flights and occupied her pre-flight rest period jumpseating on freighters across the USA.

Both pilots were fatigued as a result of their greed and the CVR of that flight demonstrated just how many mistakes they were making as a result and ultimately they made wrong decisions that resulted in them stalling the aircraft killing all on board ... and all because they wouldn't pay for a hotel and/or a flight.

In the report of that ORK flight I read that the first officer had completed his LPC/OPC, I can't recall if he carried out the mandatory number of circuits and bumps, but he didn't undertake any mandatory line training or a final line check whilst the Captain of that flight was low houred whilst there had been a problem during his command upgrade training and he was, at the time of the crash and his death, only a recently upgraded Captain.

A recipe for disaster, a rookie Captain and a fatigued and untrained first officer deprived of rest periods and days off that, like the EWR incident, resulted in the death of some of us fare paying folk.

Do you defend such operating practices?

This isn't a criticism of the standards of the Czech CAA. I am trying to identify the problem of regulation of an operator with routes not within their home country. It maybe that it was always the responsibility of the CAA in the country of operation and national authorities have only just woken up to this.

Are they bouncing off runways and putting their passengers lives at risk in weather conditions when their aircraft should be tied down?

So Harry, is the problem with Van Air
1) they are a very small airline?
2) they ran a remote operation?
3) commercial pressure from the ticket seller?

runway30,

Size of airline has little significance, size of aircraft operated does tend to have a significance, a previous colleague of mine referred to small aircraft as 'Airfix kits' ... he had a point.

Remote operation, if that remote operation hasn't been regulated by their Czech authority then that is the fault of the authority and not the operator ... Do you recall when you may have gone in to a pub and ordered a beer aged 16 or 17 ... If nobody asks to see your ID is that your fault?

Every operator has a commercial department whether they be in-house, a tour operator or a ticket seller. I have no idea what may have gone on but, as an example, Royal Mail contracts, if a flight operates late then financial penalties apply to the point if it gets so late it is more financially viable to cancel, is that commercial pressure?

GREED?! Utter nonsense! The FO was on $16,000 a year, the Captain around $40,000. Having flown for the regionals in the US for five years before coming back to Europe, I can tell you this is the norm and is in no way caused by greed, but by necessity as many young pilots can barely afford to live.

The crash was indeed caused by fatigue, but also very poor training at the operating airline, Colgan Air. The captain in particular had a very chequered training record.

For risk of a thread drift if they couldn't afford what the position(s) entailed, perhaps 8 hours horizontal rest pre-flight and all that, then they should never have taken on the position(s).

Did they explain to the passengers, that they killed, before departure "Excuse us but we are too tired to safely operate this flight but you are welcome to take your chances with us should you choose to do so"?

Oh well, it was usually cheaper to do GLA-LCY-IOM anyway.......

"10 March 2017
Citywing statement

As a result of Van Air losing their route licenses on Friday 24th February 2017, the company has found it difficult to source suitable viable aircraft to fulfil our contracts. The company has tried to offer a service whilst suffering considerable losses but these have proved unfortunately to be commercially unsustainable.

It is therefore with much sadness and deep regret that the Directors of Citywing Aviation Services Limited have had to take the difficult decision to close the company today and put the company into liquidation. This decision has not been taken lightly and has been made to protect creditors.

Flights on 11th March 2017 onwards have all been cancelled

We request that you do not turn up at the airports for your flights as there will be no one to assist.

A liquidator will be appointed and they will advise in due course on how to get a refund on your tickets.

There will also be guidance on the UK CAA website from Monday 13th March 2017.
https://www.caa.co.uk/home/

For those passengers on the Cardiff to Anglesey service, we have been advised that your Citywing tickets will be valid on train services out of Cardiff, and from stations between Bangor and Holyhead.

On behalf of all at Citywing, we all apologise for the inconvenience caused and thank you all for your support over the last 4 years.

The Directors
Citywing Aviation Services Limited"

Well that's the end of that then! Good riddance to Citywing/Manx2. Good luck to anyone trying to get money back from them for booked flights, I'm not sure it will be the easiest of times for you. Great timing as well - Friday afternoon leaving a lot of people anxious over the weekend about what to do.

I wonder if the notAirline ManxWing3 will appear.

The lesson appears to be that there genuinely is room in the market (probably the wider market too) for someone to set up an airline (as opposed to a ticket seller) to operate very small aircraft from a number of airports in the UK. I wonder if someone ever will!

And there are some genuine actual airlines (like TransAviaBaltika) that appear to be respectable operators of what's apparently the ideal aircraft for routes to IOM...

Something that occurs to me, on all of Citywing's routes, except one, it is their route and they sub-contract the flying to Van Air or whoever, I think I'm correct in this.

But on the CWL/VLY route it was a Welsh government stipulation that the route, the PSO, could only be awarded to an aircraft operator thus, I read, that the route was Van Air's and they sub-contracted the ticket selling to Citywing and, I think, these recent weeks, Van Air have been chartering North flying to operate the route upon their behalf.

So reading Citywing's press release who are they to call time on the CWL/VLY route when, supposedly and legally, it isn't their route to call time on?

Manx3 soon?

North Flying don't have a reservation system so whilst Citywing can't stop them flying, someone is needed to sell tickets.

They don't have travel agents in Wales?

I think you've missed the point runway30 ...

The route doesn't belong to either North Flying nor Citywing, the route belongs to Van Air who appointed Citywing as a mere ticket seller and, just recently, Van Air have been sub-chartering North Flying to operate the route upon behalf of Van Air.

Van Air haven't folded, haven't called in a liquidator, and being banned from UK airspace if they can't afford to continue sub-chartering other operator(s) to operate the route upon their behalf then they, Van Air, are the ones that should be making any announcement, and talking to WAG, not Citywing who are a mere ticket seller.

I wonder how the WAG subsidy works, if Van Air have been paid in advance, I know that if I were WAG I would be studying any contract fine print regarding breach of contract or whatever.

Ding dong the witch is dead.

It adds that Citywing has tried to offer a service while suffering considerable losses but these have proved to be commercially unsustainable. In other words, we are shutting up shop before it gets to expensive. Fear not islanders, ManxWing will be along soon with no debt, liabilities and a clean sheet ready to fly in a few weeks.

I think that's unfair. A short-notice Titan 737 charter costs around £3000 per block-hour; if they'd been worried about things 'getting expensive' they'd never have bothered chartering but would have given-up two weeks ago.

For all the disparaging of Citywing on this forum I don't see many others putting their money forward in an effort to 'do it properly'. Starting an airline in the UK is horrifically expensive and for thin routes contracting-out flying may well be the only option.

Oh dear. I can't believe I wrote 'to' instead of 'too'. Oh the humanity. Mucho embarrassed.

Back to Manx2 2.0, it is true that airlines are very expensive to set up. It has been over two decades without a UK based airline having a passenger fatality on a scheduled service. Not a bad record and long may it continue. The only deaths have occurred have been where those victims bought tickets from this ticket seller. A deadly crash, then once they rose from the dead another one of their contractors gets grounded.

Good riddance to a failed business model and a huge leap forward for passengers safety within the UK and the IOM.

North Flying part-owns and operates all flights for Air Norway that has a booking engine.

As for all other routes, time to get the swimmies, fins and goggles out.

Trivia: Three UK airports have today lost their sole/last remaining scheduled service: Anglesey, Blackpool and Gloucester.

Could Eastern extend their NCL-CWL flights and fly a W pattern for the PSO route? Timings won't be great granted but it'll be more cost effective than having an entire aircraft based in CEL just to fly two return trips a day.

Ahem, to name but one, Loganair have had a couple, 2001 Firth of Forth and 2005 Machrihanish

based airline having a passenger fatality on a scheduled service

Well done for totally misquoting me. The fact of the matter is that a ticketed passenger on a scheduled service operated by a UK airline has not suffered a fatality in over two decades.

A Manx based ticket seller killed six. But keep telling us about how safe they are now rhay that have folded since their contracting carrier has been grounded.

I stand corrected, you did say "passenger fatality" ... Sorry

Another nail in the coffin for Blackpool, I fear.

Get T3 on the route. PSO CWL-VLY with the existing NCL flights already being flown by the existing schedule. The based aircraft can then fit in a midday NCL to further poach NCL bound passengers from BRS and launch LBA ... Winning ! May have to cap the capacity on the J41 to 19 seats mind.

With people losing their jobs, it's never a great thing to see but this sham of an operation needs to be put to bed now. The CAA seems to have done well with doing just that, and Citywing must have no confidence in Van Air getting their license back from the CAA hence the folding of this sham.

If this were to resurface as Manx2 v3.0 then i'm sure the CAA would be in there once again to sort it out.

Begs the question, why isn't there an airline in the UK doing these services if Van Air and the likes seem to do pretty decently out of it ? Citywing are merely a ticket seller, a concept which the BBC seems to have failed to grasp. I guess T3 are the only small aircraft scheduled operator left in the UK in addition to Loganair.

Anyone fancy setting up an airline and creaming some WG money for CWL-VLY ?

Just been reading about the Manx2 crash. Is outrageous that they "got off with it"; to me it is clear that they crossed the line into operating an airline (the thing that clinches it for me is that the airline didn't know who was flying their plane). IMHO even if that wasn't illegal when they did it, it should have been made so afterwards to stop it happening again.

It also looks like there should be a common European Regulator. Can the Spanish / Czech authorities effectively regulate operations on a small island in the middle of nowhere, nowhere near and virtually inaccessible from their countries? Of course they can't :-(

Well, ever wondered why there are millions of Eastern Europeans doing the plumbing, roofing, cleaning, washing the dishes in the UK? Might give you a clue.

That is the nice thing about statistics. Let us look at, say, a 30 year instead of 20 a year timeframe. During that time, properly regulated UK airlines have killed ten times as many passengers as said Manx ticket seller.

And how many more passengers have properly regulatated UK airlines carried compared to said Manx ticket seller?

Sorry, but if your arguement is on a technicality or if you have to go back 30 years in history then you really don't have much of an arguement do you? Why stop at 30? Why not completely prove me wrong and show me up by showing stats over the last 50 years or 70 years?

Huge advances have been made over the last 30 years and it's been 22 years since KnightAir. That's 22 years without a ticketed passenger death on a UK passenger airline vs. a fatal crash and a grounding by the CAA.

Not the same, not by a long shot. Manx2 and Manx2 the Sequal are gone. Let's hope they don't come back from the dead. This is a tremendous win for passenger safety.

The point is that any statistic on the safety of a specific airline is moot because of the overall low number of incidents. Because of that, any new incident turns the previous results pretty much upside down (just think Malaysian Airlines). That is the reason why everybody with some knowledge about statistics is always mildly amused when the annual "airline safety" articles are published.

The annual airline safety award published by Geoffrey Thomas which always names Qantas as #1 is published to keep him in the Chairman's Lounge and nothing else.

You have a very valid point. Malaysia will likely forever have a reputation as being unsafe as statistically, they probably due to the two crashes, but I'd fly them tomorrow. They're a real airline, they are accountable, if I'm killed my family know whose door to knock on.

This is not the same as a ticket seller masquerading as an airline. It's branding says airline. It's name says airline. It's name is on check in desks. It's name is painted on the side of planes. It's website it like any other airline. They even did the rostering for flight 7100.

It wants to be an airline without the hassle and investment of being an airline and when things go t^ts up they were quick to walk away and say 'we were just the ticket seller', Flightline BCN were the bad guys. They killed your loved on. Oh, and then shut up shop mysterious soon after then appearing with the exact same heavily criticised setup, same management, same airlines operating service (minus Flightline BCN) but with a different name.

I apologise if I seem overly harsh and I'm sorry for anyone who has lost their job, but life is very precious. It cannot be risked by some two bob outfit who runs like an airline but seemingly without the vast amounts of safety systems that a real airline has. If you want to be seen as a real airline, then you need to put the same effort into safety as a real airline. Manx2 and Citywing have had a decade to get things right. They've continued to get it wrong and it is only fair that they be shut down.

The reason for the ticket seller getting an exemption from ATOL regulations is that the passenger at the point of booking gets a ticket on a named airline. If the ticket seller goes out of business the passenger should still be able to turn up for their flight.

However, this ticket seller has gone out of business, the airlines instantly vanish and the passengers don't know where their money is.

This shows how much this was an abuse of the intention of the regulations and how badly the regulations were written to allow this to happen.

What???

Particularly after the ORK incident I would have expected that they improve themselves, keep their image squeaky clean, to ensure of no repercussion, It's not as if they can say "But we didn't know about Storm Doris"!

If that is true, that Manx2 were doing the crew scheduling, then surely an inspector should have questioned them with some pretty basic Spanish FTL questions which should have dumbfounded them ... unless they were outside the jurisdiction of any airline regulatory authority!

Were I a ticket seller then, admittedly with my background, I would be my own Quality Manager checking that things were being operated legally ... But then I may have fellow workers/management telling me that I could do whatever I liked as long as it didn't impact upon the bank balance.

If just some of what I have been reading is true then good riddance to Manx2, Citywing or whatever they may be calling themselves next week and I'm still curious what the UK CAA were doing in IOM on that fateful day, I wonder if that story may ever be heard!