SOU-MAN . The published schedule shows twice daily Mon-Fri on the ATR.
However, in practise only Mon & Fri are twice daily- Tue, Wed, Thu appear to be only once- thus not allowing day return & timing not brilliant.

All my flights mid Sept have been downgraded from the ATR to the Jetstream. Begs the question what are they doing with the ATRs that hardly seem to fly?

Both the schedule and type would put me off booking further flights.

Can't see that this improving much,certainly no increase on the horizon and certainly no other airlines ( like blue island) taking a stab at it.
A bumpy ride ahead for SOU for sure!

Fortunately or unfortunately which ever way your viewpoint is, the J41 is Easterns only hope of culling operating losses on thin routes being operated which accounts for pretty much all of them. As the ATRs are leased I’m guessing there will be an operating charge per hour, so keeping them on the ground is the cheapest way of doing things.

Pretty dire in the grand scheme of things to have a leased asset sitting on the ground doing nothing, but is the lesser of two evils. As for their jet fleet, well, least said the better I think. Tough times ahead.

I know RW20 likes to get in a dig, but this isn't remotely a SOU only issue but industry wide. Most schedules at the moment are "best guesses" as the industry tries to match supply and demand, and revenue and costs. Bit of a chicken and egg situation too, cos as Mr A Tis points out, if the flights aren't there, the demand can disappear.

Agreed, tough times.

In the SOU case, MAN was planned to be double daily on the ATR, but the demand just hasn't been there. Average loads are increasing but at a fairly slow rate. The Jetstream has been used more often than not, with some flights on the ATR. As a result it's planned as one daily flight for the rest of September.
Belfast is going double daily on the ATR from the 14th September as demand on that route is much higher and the use of an ATR is justified as they're carrying more pax than a Jetstream could hold.
I think it's been a case of having a plan and adjusting it to fit with the realities of the market right now. As SWBKCB says it's a mess everywhere.

I've been watching the going's on at SOU quite closely and pretty sure there have been 2 MAN rotations every day this week, most if not all on the ATR's, of which 1 seems to be operating (to BHD also) each day, with them swopping in and out of use every 4 or 5 days. Not great utilisation on 2 fairly new and therefore I assume quite expensive airframes.

J41's on the NCL and LBA flights at the moment. MME due to start next week. DUB was due to start also but appears to be getting pushed back?

I think some publicity wouldn't be amiss on the MAN-SOU. The 3 x daily Flybe Dash 8s had good loads.
Domestic travel is increasing & the train from Manchester to Southhampton is the best part of 4 hours & first class fares are eye watering.
I've made a few train trips and they are pretty full.
The Eastern fares are almost half the Cross Country First fares & I'm sure people would prefer 45 minutes in a tube as opposed to 4 hours on train.
Trouble is in my area very few people are aware of Eastern, it's not really a know name in the Manchester area. However, it does need to be double daily ( which it is, only 2 days week)

Totally agree with this. Of all the airlines that have replaced Flybe on routes from SOU, Eastern are probably the least well known and recognisable. Apart from their twitter account I haven't seen much if any marketing for their new routes.
Although you could argue that the Flybe flights had good loads before Covid and many of the business travellers and people feeding onto long haul ex MAN aren't travelling right now.

Agree with all of this. Even at the end Flybe were flying SOU-MAN ~6x daily on weekdays! I wonder is Eastern will struggle on the route once Blue Islands start it at the end of October as I feel that they may be a better known name around Southampton, not to mention to partnership with Loganair allow for domestic connections (something Flybe had a fair amount of through MAN). Hopefully Eastern can establish themselves a little more before they gain competition on the route.

It is good to see that BHD is doing well for them though, hopefully this will continue. I wonder if NCL is paying it's way being on a J41 once a day where Loganair have now grown to 2x daily ER3/4 on weekdays?

Finally, I expect the Irish border restrictions and quarantine is the reason for DUB being pushed back to October. That is another route they'll be competing with Blue Islands on, although if there is demand for it Eastern's current planned 12 weekly morning and evening schedule is a lot more attractive than the 4 weekly lunchtime flights from the competition.

Manchester Airport has had a couple of tweets advertising & welcoming Blue Island to the MAN-Exeter route, but I cannot see any similar tweets from MAG about Eastern to SOU. To be honest I only found out Eastern were operating the route by chance. If there was a choice between the Blue Island ATR or the Eastern J41, I'd be booking the Blue Island.
I see Blue Island is open for bookings MAN-SOU twice daily from October 25th on the ATR with fares half that of Eastern.
It's a bit disappointing given EZE has had a head start to get the service established.

Unfortunately, this is Eastern all over. Rather than regrouping during the pandemic, I wonder if they’ve spread themselves so thin that the operation lacks resilience to be delivered confidently and robustly. I hope they learn but can’t see it happening really.

Flights to where?

Newquay; which was fogbound.

It should be noted that their performance at MME since the relaunch back in February has been *almost* faultless.

Yes it was to NQY, sorry to Mutts Nutts (that'll teach me for copy/pasting from my similar post on the airport thread :O)

METARs didn't look too bad to me, but I know that part of the world quite well and the Cornish mizzle can be very localised and come and go quickly.

Exactly this. Until demand picks up (which with the way Boris and co. are muttering about another national lockdown...could mean never). Lack of flights doesn't cause lack of demand its the other way round, lack of demand causes lack of flights.
Basic economic rule of supply and demand.

Ttfn

How are Eastern doing? many passengers? Heard they're offering pilots unpaid leave for an indefinite period of time or redundancy?
I'd be surprised if they're not haemorraging cash.

Eastern Teesside doing ok...propped up by the mayor and his transport infrastructure money!

When was the last time a J41 flew into LHR? I see the Saab deputised for the Embraer on Friday?

My MAN-SOU J41 trip the other day turned out to be an ATR via BHD. With no cabin service, meaning arriving SOU 3 hours late with nothing to eat/drink On board & everything at Southampton airport is closed. For me my day ended 6 hours with nothing to drink. Be warned if using Eastern or Southampton Airport bring your own stuff.

Wow. BHD isn’t even on route. They will end up killing these routes operating like that. Why would you fly with them again? Did they give a reason why?

MAN is en route SOU-BHD. Presumably consolidating two flights with poor bookings, so it least they got you there, rather than cancelling?

The old Pprune double edged sword is out again, with every other thread having comments along the lines of "what are the airlines doing, they are ruining the economy by not operating business friendly flights".

Lake can only boast about his cash reserves as he keeps shovelling his own money into the company, has done so for years. It’s his pet, always has been and any other normal business would have gone bust years ago. The difference this time maybe is there’s a limit of how much he is willing to pour into a black hole. Paying staff the industry rock bottom and operating clapped out old turboprops is certainly a saving grace financially however.

Having Ejets/ ERJs sitting about not earning any revenue though is of concern as they’re leased.

Well he wouldn't need to if someone saw the light and recommenced production of such a size of turboprop allowing him to buy 'new' should he choose to do so!

When you think about it, having on-book smaller props running right now is actually a stroke of luck and genius versus others carrying ongoing costs with larger aircraft.

I See that the E190 was flown from HUY to MST yesterday Evening.

And the ATR 72- 600 was flown on Wednesday from SOU to MME and is being used on the MME - LHR flights

It looks like one of the Embraer 135s is on the way back to the UK, heading north out of Nigeria via Spain at the moment. Is this for maintenance or has the Bristow thing in Nigeria all come to a dead stop?

Seems a bit strange that the 170 has sat in MME for several days with the ATR drafted in from Southampton to cover the Heathrow flights the 170 would normally be doing. Must be a fairly big issue if it's tech as the DTV Movements site suggests.

https://www.ch-aviation.com/portal/n...xuTkhYnqz07X_A

While it has been talked people wanting BA Codeshare. This might be a codeshare with VS/DL/AF/KL

Looks to me like musical chairs with the fleet mix. Maybe a reduction in seat capacity, hence removal of E190 in to storage and the ATR72 taking over MME-LHR as SOU don't require x 2 ATR base at present. The ERJ35 coming back to the UK will again aid the reduction across the network (37 seats). I could be wrong of course but see this as a cost cutting exercise with the larger e-jets!

The ATR is on its way back to SOU at the moment under a positioning callsign.

The E190 went to Maastricht for maintenance input at SAMCO

The 170 hasn't flown since 1 October. The S.2000 had been doing the LHR until the Atr-72 was drafted in for the last couple of days.

Looking at what is on sale for April 2021 (not the timetable section), the based aircraft situation appears to be:
CWL - 1x J41
HUY - 1x J41
LBA - 2x J41
MME - 2x J41, 1x E70 (LHR)
SOU - 3x ATR (BHD/DUB/MAN)

The timetable has gaps all over the place and fleet utilisation is very low.
Most days there's an early LBA - SOU, but no return on sale, similarly a SOU-MME-ABZ but no flights starting ABZ the next day. Obviously very much a work in progress and all subject to covid restrictions and demand, but plenty of scope for Eastern to expand if they wanted to be a serious player in the regional game.

Is G-CIHD J41 being made airworthy.

Eastern Airways are ripping up the schedule again due to England's lockdown 2


Flights operating

HUY–ABZ = 5x weekly MON, TUE, WED, THU & FRI BAe Jetstream 41

SOU-BHD = 5x weekly on MON, TUE, THU, FRI & SUN BAe Jetstream 41

MME-ABZ = 5x weekly MON, TUE, WED, THU & FRI Embraer 145

MME-BHD = 2x weekly MON & FRI BAe Jetstream 41

Suspended until December 7th 2020

LBA–NQY
MAN-NQY
MAN-SOU
MME-SOU
MME-LHR
MME-NQY

Suspended until January 4th 2021

LBA–SOU
CWL-VLY
SOU-DUB

Suspended until February 8th 2021

MME-DUB

Route launches January 11th 2021

CWL-BHD