It's simply trying a different talent pool than their usual net being cast. It's something I do for my own company when the usual spots don't find something I'm looking for.

No need to look into it too much, if you watch when new bases are announced THEN ads go out for base crew. Egg before the chicken.

FlyBe's Donny-based flight crew are great. It actually makes a difference if, as a passenger, you are from the same area as the crew.

New for S19 is Endifha (Tunisia) with TUI.

Good to see all these routes return to DSA and back on sale. Of course with the new addition of Hurghada now going year round.

Any idea why a Ryanair aircraft was doing circuits over DSA today. Pilot training?

This happens reasonably frequently with Ryanair, EasyJet and Flybe. I suppose it is convenient with the long, wide runway and most flights concentrated in the morning and evening.

Thanks for that. Although I live fairly close (20 miles away) I'm not on the flight path and wasn't aware of these flights.

Do we have any reasons why pax numbers were lower this January and February compared to last year? Did we have less flights operated? Just curious. The winter program is low, on some Wednesdays, only 4 flights per day.

Exactly that. BE had a single aircraft based at DSA this past winter compared to two in the past. AGP, PMI, FAO were completely stopped for the winter season.

:D

Another epic fail from Timmy Doncaster Sheffield Airport

Good to see Wizz replacing the routes lost with another, Debrecen, Hungary. Granted for the winter season but its better than nothing. Did they operate Budapest from DSA at any stage? So popular at the moment as a destination, I'm sure it would have high pax from DSA.

My bug with DSA is route retention, Berlin for example going with Flybe, such a shame.

No, Wizz have never operated from Doncaster to Budapest. Debrecen seems an unusual choice as there seem - I might be wrong - to be less Hungarian residents in Yorkshire and the adjacent counties than from other eastern European countries; and routes from Kosice in Slovakia and Lublin in Poland are to be axed.

There is in fact a relatively substantial Hungarian population in the Doncaster and surrounding areas. I believe it to pre-date the increase of the Polish nationals moving to the UK of more recent times. I presume Wizzair will have completed sufficient enough market research to at least see it fit for them to give the route a go.

As for the Lublin and Kosice routes being "axed", a reminder that they were discontinued due to Wizzair closing down those bases.

Sorry if my post appeared to be negative - it wasn't. I don't know about Lublin, but there is a relatively substantial population in Doncaster and its surrounds from eastern Slovakia, so I would have thought the route from Kosice would be popular (yes I know about yields v loading) and I thought maybe Wizz could have done a W-flight pattern to serve it. Still, if they've fallen out with Kosice airport...I tried finding out about Hungarian-born people in Yorkshire and got a great headache trying to penetrate census figures. All I managed was that there are about 30 000 Hungarian-born people in England who live outside London and the south-east, which is a lot less than other eastern European nationalities. I just wonder why they chose to serve DSA from Debrecen rather than Budapest - maybe no competition. Good luck to it!

DSA offers flights to Bucharest, but not Budapest.

Debrechen isn't too far from Budapest, the airport has decent road connections, and it's under two hours by road to Budapest. If you're wanting to go to Budapest, Debrechen would be an option if the price was right

Sounds like the bait-and-switch tactics Ryanair used to make...

As already observed (#159) Flybe's W18 programme for DSA looks very thin. They started with 2 E95s in S16. In S18 it is down to 2 E75s. Their plan is to base an (underutilised) E75(?) in W18 but to me it looks like that most of these routes can be served with aircraft based somewhere else (as they do in EMA, NWI and LCY).

Winter 18 will no doubt be as sparse as Winter 17. That's my concern for the airport. With TUI operating 1 or 2 flights per day and Flybe offering 2 maybe 3 flights. People still travel out of Summer season, its always so annoying having to go Leeds or Manchester to get anywhere.

I am surprised Ryan Air haven't jumped on these routes from DSA as there is a demand for none package holiday flights out of Summer Seasons.

Tenerife South (Previously Operated)
Las Palmas
Arrecife
Alicante (Previously Operated)
Faro (Previously Operated -I think)
Malaga

City Break routes

Pisa (Previously Operated)
Rome
Budapest
Berlin

Flybe problem is they are too expensive, For example This year it worked out cheaper for me to go on the train to Manchester and get an Easyjet flight to Berlin and in September its again cheaper for me to get the train to Manchester and fly to Dublin. I really want to fly from DSA but I refuse to pay silly money. When speaking to family and friends they are often saying the same.

Same here, I'm flying into MAN and out of EMA in a couple of weeks. I'd love to use DSA all the time but sometimes you just can't argue with the prices.

Incidentally, stage 2 of the link road was due to open in April wasn't it? It still isn't open unless I missed something.

Carillon collapsing is what happened. It was taken over by Tarmac and is pretty much complete and will be open within the next few weeks. Then that will be both stages of the M18 link complete through to the airport front door.

Incidentally, well done to the airport cargo team. In addition to the regular scheduled heavies there has been a lot of ad hoc heavies recently (5 today alone) for specialist contracts (F1, bands, auto). It's doing no-ones reputation any harm with the success.