Well at least the so called cowboys can spell "airborne"!

Ive heard that half the fleet is going this year. Has RL had enough after the £3.6m loss. Has bristows had enough.

Any idea what aircraft they are getting rid of? The J41s? The Sabbs and E jets?

Saab’s....

They won't bin the J41s until they absolutely have to; they are a reasonably reliable fleet to be honest.

Most aircraft are reliable if the operator has an appropriate spares back-up ... The one exception to that rule being the ATP :)

Has only a single aircraft, one J41 been painted in flybe colours? Doesn’t the franchise agreement say if we are going to sell all of your flights for you as “flybe” you have to at least embrace our branding?

MAJK is the sole purple Jetstream. I reckon it's at least the fifth paintjob it's worn.

Aren't SAAB stopping support for 2000 in 2020 so wouldn't it have to be phased out by then anyway?

I hear eastern basing an airframe in BHD from March. Any truth in this do we know?

Is this right - I know the airline fleet isn't huge but they've been selling AEW and special mission versions in the last ten years or so

https://saab.com/civil-aerospace/Reg...-2000-support/

Flybe end SYY - GLA and ABZ - KOI leaving Loganair to operate routes. What routes are left that they are competing with Loganair on ? Are there any islands routes left ?

ABZ-MME :O

Any update on BHD ops?

I hear redundancy notices and GLA closing.

Moving GLA to BHD?

How many aircraft are based at GLA?

Apparently Eastern will release all of their reservations staff soon as everything will be done through Flybe. Great, so when (not if) Flybe realise that partnering with Eastern was a huge mistake (if they haven't already) and bin the partnership, Eastern have no reservations staff! Doh! RL really does take the p~~s sometimes!

Eastern is a rival of flybe. flybe goes into partnership and lets ea use their back office systems and prop them up financially. flybe are the total idiots here. I will give RL credit for making flybe management look like sheep on smack.

Less staff at Eastern = More money for RL before he and Bond Aviation Group break up the airline.

I actually think they will sell off whats left of the schedule airline business to Flybe.

Eastern Airways will then become a ad-hoc charter airline. operating the profit making oil/gas and Airbus charter work.

Except that their true identity is Air Kilroe ... Eastern Airways went t1ts up in the 1980's

Hopefully they'll include PSOs in that!

While Eastern has made some problems for itself, you do also have to feel for them. They are scrabbling about trying to find the biggest role they can have in a market where roles for people like them are fast disappearing. By no means at all are either all or the most serious problems (like bigger airports being less welcoming to small aircraft as they approach capacity) of their own making.

Taking on Loganair may have been fated to be a disaster, but it's one of few things they could try in a market where almost anything they might manage to make a go of would immediately be grabbed up by someone with bigger planes! Given that FlyBe has been a previous beneficiary of that, having a link with them isn't the most insane idea. And given that they carry so few pax a day, having their own reservations staff was perhaps a luxury they couldn't afford, while trying to market only their own flights was perhaps a headache looking for somewhere to happen.

There is a role for a respectable operator of small aircraft (ManxWing2 perhaps best showed the need and the opportunity), but it's a role that it is hard to carry out in isolation.

Eastern focussed on the the micky mouse airfields such as Norwich and Humberside feeding Aberdeen.

As such they are very vulnerable to the North Sea gas and oil industry which is in decline.

It was a good thing to focus on for a long time; and they probably didn't want to focus on larger airports needing larger aircraft because other people already did.

I remember when they had flights to those places leaving Edinburgh at business friendly times in the morning. I imagine Edinburgh feel they can do better things with peak time capacity these days :-(

They had an opportunity to develop a network of flights out of NQY, LON, MAN, Scotland, Ireland etc., after they bought Air Southwest, they could have painted up a Saab or few in ASW livery, but rather than accept such an opportunity they opted to shut ASW down as quickly as they possibly could leaving the door open for the likes of Flybe to move in.

......and of course it was their decision, no one else's, to treat their staff so badly that everyone that could leave did so, flights couldn't be crewed, bases were opened and closed, the schedule fell apart and effectively drove their pax away. Feel for them......no chance!

what RAFAT said
 

EA will put financial losses and low pax numbers down to oil.

Try horrific customer service, incompetent man management and a philosophy of hatred for their staff.

Remember, 'if you dont like it you can f&ck off'. (quote by CP).

It would probably be a very successful and profitable charter airline if they had some people in HUY without the need of professional psychiatric help and a course in motivation.....and decency.....and management........this list could go on all day.

01475. Manx2/CityWing is not a good example.

But there is little other operator(s) to make a comparison with, there is a corner shop type market out there for a 20 (ish) seater type operator, it just needs somebody to take the bull by the horns and prove the point whilst not placing commercial pressure upon the crews to go bouncing off Irish runways and landing in 50kt winds or whatever :)

Firnas have a Jetstream 31 painted up at Hurn.

Indeed jamestkirk, it's hard to comprehend why that guy is still there!

I used it deliberately. People died on a not-a-Manx2 flight operating at the limits of weather conditions, yet not-CityWing were still able to keep operating flights on routes like Gloucester and Blackpool that nobody else could, for not-them to operate at the limits of weather conditions again.

To me that proves there *really* is potential demand. However I don't think it can be met by someone that doesn't have economies of scale behind them for marketing, and bigger aircraft up their sleeves in case something is surprisingly successful and therefore attractive to larger competitors.

And I also don't think it can be met by people that use crowdfunding platforms...

I reckon the only people that could pull it off would be FlyBe... and that in the absence of any reason why they should want to pull it off it'll never happen :-(

Redundancies

HUY Reservations staff went last Thursday couple kept on for Customer services. Dam shame, demise of a Commuter Airline. Acknowledging the critics of the 2 founder directors what cannot be taken away is that they took the gamble/opportunity, put their own money in to start Eastern and grow it. This enabled many to take a Job with Eastern develop their skills and progress with other airlines. Food for thought perhaps?

They also treated many of their employees with contempt, or worse.

They didn't do it for the good of anyone else or from the kindness of their heart, and many felt undervalued, under-compensated and treated without a basic respect which doesn't even cost anything.

And paying themselves way more than any equivalent leaders in other regional airlines. Sympathy will be in short supply, I don't doubt.

My apologies for speed reading the latest posts, but has Eastern gone to the wall, or is it just a consolidation?

Albert Hall

Wasn't after sympathy just sometimes one has to reflect. There are obviously some very raw people on here, but the question is have you ever taken a gamble putting all your collateral up? Why shouldn't the gamblers take a benefit. That's what happens when you play poker, you may win but you may just as easily lose!