I would have been so much more confident if it had been another airline rather than Eastern....oh wait..there are no other UK airlines!

The UK airline industry is in a bit of a kerfuffle ( I know..can’t spell it) at the moment ,is it not?

The document posted is clearly commercially sensitive and not for the public domain, one suspects the TVCA will have tasked the airport based special branch with investing some time in forcing the pprune hierarchy into revealing PintofDoom's true identity!

Think they will be more concerned in making the routes work? Interesting few months ahead ..the Teesside public/ or in this case business community need to start booking?

Newcastle with a bigger financial market couldn’t make London City work.
Couldn't make Cardiff work
Couldnt make IOM work
Couldn't make Belfast Harbour work

Dublin and Southampton should be ok?

lets see....

The document quoted above was the same one I got, so if its circulation was restricted, then it wasn't marked as such and wasn't particularly controlled.

It doesn't say anything on the page above that line about the 75% / 25% share. I read it as Teesside foots the bill for the operation and Eastern takes 25% of the ticket sales to pay for its aircraft costs, but I may be wrong.

There's still no sign of any flights on sale, which is very odd. There is also no mention of Flybe in the document which is very odd. Are Flybe fully on board with this or are Eastern going to somehow need to resurrect their own booking system for this? The flights aren't going to get very far if no-one can book on them and there was nothing to say that tickets would be on sale from a set date on a set website. It's all a bit odd.

So basically, Eastern are contract flying for the airport with the airport taking most of the risk?

Eastern's own press release makes clear that this is still a Flybe franchise operation. Exactly what involvement Flybe have other than selling tickets (so presumably taking a cut!), isn't clear.

That's the way I read it, yes.

Eastern's press release mentions Flybe but there was no mention of Flybe at the press conference and none in the document. The flights aren't on sale with no date given for that to happen. I am beginning to wonder if Flybe is not on board with Eastern or Eastern is not on board with Flybe on this one, I don't know which.

Big question is will Flybe still be here by the summer

Just maybe it takes FlyBe some time to update their systems to add new routes, fares, fare rules, setup any interlining and any potential codeshares?

All the sort of things you'd expect to have been sorted before a launch?

As some people may or may not know, Eastern current record is sketchy to say the least, they did not commit to the Glasgow base which closed after 3 months, Southampton has opened and closed multiple times and more recently the closure of their Norwich base which was run down by the company.

They have no sense of direction a dying fleet of J41s, The Saab 2000s they were trying to dispose of, 2 145s with no real commercial purpose and 3rd one sat at Humberside they won't fly. And the two ATRs they operate on behalf of Bristows.

I cannot see such a venture actually working as their is not much time to get everything up and running fully and crews will be brought in from all over the remaining bases adding to the costs that need to be covered.

The first sunday flight from NCL-CWL was cancelled due to technical issues with the aircraft after it had a whole saturday sat on the ground.

Also the document i posted was not labelled as sensitive/private.

I would thing Loganair are busy as we type ,looking to see if they can fit in a double daily Cardiff from Newcastle.Ryanair looking to slash Newcastle and Leeds fares to Dublin and a new player jumping on the Harbour route.This will be the problem I suspect and the new routes as always will be squeezed from all angles.
Eastern will have to perform like never before..with competitive fares and reliable aircraft.

........and that’s exactly where the whole operation will come unstuck! Someone is going to be losing a whole load of money along the way. It smacks of desperation from both sides that this whole operation has been devised and IMO it’s not going to end well.

I doubt that they would go double daily but I could see a daily flight working. I'd also imagine that their phones are red hot at the moment!

Far too much negativity on here; Eastern acknowledged their shortfalls at the press conference and gave their planned solutions so from this point on it's innocent until proven guilty.

Might give us more confidence if Flybe decided to update their website and stop flying from 'Durham Tees Valley'
Their complete silence on these new flights is very worrying.

Moving on, can anybody confirm how long IOM is planned to operate?

I seem to remember Dan Air using a HS 748 did quite well on the IOM route.

I'd love to see the business case for this one - I'm sure there are better ways to spend £6m on public transport on Teesside

Teesside Airport railway station to see potential £6m investment

Best case would be to move it nearer to the entrance road so the houses of the extended village could use it and the local service bus could pass on the way to the terminal.

SWBKCB..agree...amazing waste of valuable financial resources.I’ve said so many times..all of this money would be much better spent on improving the whole transport structure on Teesside !
Another pointless Vanity Project!