I thought the same when I saw that it was doing the one rotation on the Saturday. It could rotation in on a Sunday am maybe the early LHR rotation

Looks like the E70 operating the the LCY and BHD route is only a temporary thing as flights from 25MAR are showing as being operated by a DHC8.

Donald Milne
 

Donald Milne dead: Rally champion who was Colin McRae's mentor dies in horror air crash after plane collides with helicopter - Mirror Online

There is a historical Aberdeen connection to this tragic fatality in Spain the other day.

Donald Milne ran Apex Tubulars, & I recall he had a Hughes or the use of one (N252JP) that he used to fly between Banchory & Apex T in Altens in the 80s. I think I have a pic of it on the apron at what was the Hawk Hangar in the 90s.

He also flew Cessna 425 N425TV which also lived on that side of the airfield. I recall his wheels-up landing too that the article mentions.

He also had a military plane (Jet Provost?) but I cannot recall if it ever made an appearance at Dyce.

Clearly an all-action guy that loved life .

Geneva
 

Would appear EasySwiss must be happy with the Geneva performance this year as they have made a late addition to the schedule with it now extended into April with twice weekly evening departures.

I do believe loads have been considerably higher than last year - the Wednesday flight really struggled last year - one rotation last January had just 20 pax

EasyJet Swiss have made the same extension to several other routes to Geneva from the United Kingdom including Bournemouth and their recent addition of Southampton so it's not just Aberdeen that's seeing the season extended into April.

Not at work at the airport this week, but I believe there's a sikorsky sky crane been operating in the Keith area helping with wind farm stuff. Hope someone gets some snaps..

Nov passenger figures - upward trend continues
 

https://www.eveningexpress.co.uk/fp/...-city-airport/

Obviously some routes will be better than others, but encouraging overall nevertheless.

Think that Skycrane lives on site for the duration of its contract, rather than overnighting at ABZ. Would make for an interesting movement for sure.

Does anybody have the full list of TUI routes and what days they are operating out of ABZ this summer..........thanks .

Corfu (CFU) - Friday
Dalaman (DLM) - Thursday
Ibiza (IBZ) - Wednesday
Gran Canaria (LPA) - Monday
Palma de Mallorca (PMI) - Monday, Tuesday, Saturday
Reus (REU) - Sunday
Tenerife South (TFS) - Sunday

Rumour circulating that Frankfurt is dropped from the end of the Winter season.

Still bookable but the source is certain that it is a goner.

Hopefully KLM & AF can do something if it is the case.

FRA
 

See post #50.

Not sure how much of a shock it is really though. I was surprised when LH dropped FRA-SVG due to the downturn that the ABZ route didn't follow at the same time. Fair play to LH for trying everything to maintain it but if the demand is no longer there.......

One wonders how long some of the other routes (KEF, CPH) will last.

Wings for Warriors
 

Something a wee bit different anyway, if it gets off the ground so to speak...

https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp...in-north-east/

Hmmm, training a tiny niche market of students at an airfield with a solid track record of progressively failing to sustain any sort of ab initio training operation.

Good luck with that one.

Perhaps Flybe may be interested in it with an Eastern 170? Or could bmi take it over with a 145 and codeshare for LH?

I've done ABZ-FRA a number of times and there has never been more than a handful of FRA terminating pax, always a stream up the escalators to flight connections. BM do BRS-FRA with a LH tie-in but I just can't see anyone taking it up.

Best bet for ABZ is for KLM and AF to go back up to 5x & 3x daily respectively and that will fill the capacity void being created. An extra 737 & E170 daily is all it will take to replace LH (I know that's not quite exactly how it works!)

Source; https://sbnn.co.uk/2018/01/18/aberde...space-take-up/

Hopefully, this will also help Aberdeen Airport.

confirmation in writing from LH:

Lufthansa German Airlines has decided to suspend its operations on the route Aberdeen - Frankfurt as from 25 March 2018. The last flight from Aberdeen to Frankfurt will take off from Aberdeen International Airport on that day.

Der Hammer blow
 

https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp...ankfurt-route/

Made it to the local press. Won't see them again at ABZ. Will we see direct to Germany again?

CHC
 

https://www.offshoreenergytoday.com/...en-facilities/

Some slightly better news on the helicopter front.

Sad to see LH going but I am not not really surprised. I have used them a lot since they started and there seems to have been a gradual decline in demand over time. I have to commend LH on their perseverance after they carried their winter schedule forward into summer last year coupled with the continuation of the E190 in lieu of the 319 but seeing both of these changes was never a good sign. Also having the lunchtime inbound sit on the ground in Aberdeen for a few hours, also prevented that aircraft from being potentially used for an extra sector or two as well, which was never conducive to making it an efficient route. I hope they may return to ABZ one day, as I personally think FRA beats the other hubs hands down and the LH product is very consistent and more than adequate for short haul at least.

AF are also going from three flights a day to two for Summer 2018.

My crude maths makes that around 270 less seats in total.

Air France were twice daily last summer so the same on a like for like basis. They only returned to three daily for this Winter.

And, to add to a truly disastrous week for ABZ, BMI are binning the NWI route effective 11/02/18.

What next?

Next? The complete withdraw from a low cost airline using bright pink and purple aircraft flying to Poland.

Hmm... would Loganair look at NWI? Wonder how long before bmi bin ABZ altogether?

Yes, I could see that Callum.

As they are in the same group, you'd have thought there would have been a transfer of operator if it was to continue.

Newcastle... fog on the Tyne
 

ABERDEEN 643 688 -6.54

From the NCL thread & the Dec 2017 stats posted there.

Hardly seems worth it now.

I could actually see domestics being pared right back to London, MAN, BHX, maybe Belfast plus of course the N Isles. The rest could disappear.

The CAA stats ex-ABZ are hideously unreliable when it comes to flights with stops, in this case the ABZ-NCL continues onto CWL once a day so the figure of 643 is probably ABZ-CWL. NCL reports 1202 (a slight gain)

Same story with MME, ABZ reports 1012 (!), MME reports a more reasonable 2383.

Two figures that aren’t wrong are ALC & AGP, 72% & 70% respectively - very poor - miles below the almost ridiculous 95% RYR December network wide average. At least the first 10 months performance appear to have been good by all accounts. I don’t think January will be great either, I saw a ALC-ABZ sector being punted for €5 a couple of weeks ago!

Loganair Win
 

The last remaining Island bunfight is over, BE/T3 to cease KOI eff 4/3.

Price war to end on Scottish island routes - BBC News

However, ABZ-SYY to increase to twice daily M-F.

What sort of aircraft is used on the ABZ - SYY - ABZ route, are the pax figures high enough to sustain it at twice a day.

Jetstream 41

Norwegian Air Shuttle
 

Hi all,

Anybody hear of potential Norwegian coming to the ABZ?

Seen the name come up around the airfield.

We periodically hear rumours with Jet2 and ABZ, obviously nothing has ever come of it. What side of the fence is the rumour on?

The rumour is airside currently.

How many based SAAB 2000's does eastern airways have at Aberdeen and what routes do they operate them on.

Jan 2018 v Jan 2017
 

(from Evening Express website):

Aberdeen Airport saw a 6.4% rise in passengers last month, compared with January 2017 – recording a total of 220,427 travellers.
The rise came as a result of an 8.8% increase in domestic traffic and a 10.8% increase in international traffic thanks in part to the popularity of winter sun routes.
Helicopter traffic decreased by 11.1% compared with January 2017.
Aberdeen’s managing director Carol Benzie said: “Starting 2018 with these encouraging figures, we are now looking forward to the launch of two new leisure routes in the coming months, Malta and Reus, which, we hope, will be as well received and popular as our existing route offerings.”

fjencl: Not sure how many based S2000s there are at ABZ. Going by previous oil industry requirements there were usually 3 aircraft + one spare but not sure what it's like these days... I'm going back to the days of British Airferries when it used to be 3 Viscounts!! Plus a 2nd ATR72-600 is due this month (if it hasn't already arrived to join the other one) so that will take over some of the S2000 flying duties. Elsewhere, they can pop up on the network at any time but usually on NWI, but that may be about to change now bmi have pulled out of the route & are supposed to be wet-leasing an E135/145 (can't remember which) to T3 to operate the route.

Noticeable the international growth is being put down to the sun routes, changed days indeed.

Out of interest, how has the number of based helicopters and number of helicopter passengers changed over the decades at Aberdeen? Perhaps a chart of these statistics would give a good correlation with the state of health, and illustrate the long-term volatility, of the offshore industry? A comparison with similar statistics from Norway would be interesting.

Have similar trends happened with helicopter traffic from Shetland or have recent oil and gas developments nearer to Shetland resulted in the proportion of traffic from Aberdeen and Shetland shifting North? Or have longer range helicopters negated any such affect?

I'm hoping someone can point me to industry statistics that will objectively quantify some of these issues.

Quite a significant increase in exploration has been forecast by industry experts so perhaps the offshore related traffic from Aberdeen will start to recover, or at least bottom out, this year.

Sunday service Aberdeen - Wick - Aberdeen
 

Porrohman

I recall that press releases from the airport have highlighted the fact that the northward shift in exploration underlay the fall in helicopter movements. There should have been a corresponding increase in such flights from the various helicopter bases on Shetland.