I sincerely hope for those who’ve already been recruited, the airline actually starts operating very soon, there must a huge amount of cash flowing out of the coffers at present, one assumes the owners must have very deep pockets. Good luck.

Whether the start date is April/May, they need to get on with announcing routes and getting reservations in, otherwise they will be flying a lot of empty planes around and draining the coffers

Flymaybe 2.0

Rumours online tonight that they will announce Leeds-London Heathrow. Even BA dropped that in a time when they were slot sitting a lot of routes.

looks to be BHD-LHR, BHD-LBA and LHR-LBA!

On BHD to LHR Given the competition and capacity provided by Aer Lingus and British Airways, is there demand or scope for a third operator on the route?

The ONLY reason BA flew LHR-LBA was to connect to long haul. Flying a Q400 into LHR with no BA codeshare with the cost regime at LHR vs. rail is insane. If this is true, it's desperate stuff.

IF these are true it would confirm my often stated opinion that Flybe 2 is very much a slot play.

Seems like a big risk to go against BA and EI on what is their territory. They would need to have a lot of code shares. I'm sure most passengers travelling to LHR have a lot of luggage that could be very restrictive on a Dash. And for those business passengers im sure they would much rather the comfort of an Airbus

100% this. Lot of people being taken for a ride here, they're simply going to damage BA and EI with no business case to make money on their own then drop both routes as soon as they can flog off the slots.

And in disruption they have no agreement with BA to swop passengers onto BA. Its a cynical slot game. Those slots are worth so much more than the revenue from 20 or 30 passengers per flight.

I don't see how it affects EI, these are UK domestic routes. Why is it so unreasonable for a UK carriers to apply for and hold slots into the major UK hub, just like domestic carriers are able to link into the global hubs in other Countries. Why is this always seen as some kind of underhand Scam?

Because a) these slot shave real value and b) they're used to support anti-competitive behaviour

EI operate from Belfast to London and have done for years.

True but surely this should now be done by EI (UK) using their own crews in G- reg machines controlled from their UK subsidiary.

Aer Lingus have seemingly found a workaround for this. When the rules changed on 1 January 2020, the BHD-LHR service was allowed to continue on certain EI registered aircraft as a wet lease with British Airways. They were even able to step in following the collapse of Stobart and have continued to operate domestically from BHD to LHR, MAN and EDI.

Aer Lingus is either still operating this wet lease for British Airways at BHD or has found a more permanent solution without having to re-register some of their A320s. We can assume this same deal will be in place for Emerald until they secure their UK AOC later in the year.

Ryanair was caught out trying to use this same ‘flag of convenience’ tactic with their Ryanair UK subsidiary. The problem for Ryanair was they planned to have just a token aircraft registered to the UK and would then wet lease the remaining aircraft from its other subsidiaries. This meant the majority of RUK flying was under foreign registered aircraft, the CAA put a stop to it.

Aer Lingus didn’t have this problem wet leasing to British Airways because it didn’t impact the majority of BA flying.

OH I GIVE UP!!!!!
Easyjet operate Austrian registered aircraft in and out of the UK on a regular basis. They also used Easyjet Swiss aircrafr before and since Brexit.
Who cares anyway

EasyJet Europe/Swiss do not operate UK - UK or UK to non EU routes. That’s the difference.

Give me strength...I'll say this slowly so the hard of thinking can get it....They can't sell the slots. I'll say that again....They can't sell the slots. That's right, the slots are not and never will be theirs to sell as they are remedy slots and would be returned to BA.

They can, however, be held onto and utilised and become part of the enterprise value to any prospective buyer of the company.

Get the picture now?

WRONG
Easyjet Swiss can operate any Easyjet route with their aircraft. When it arrives in the UK from Switzerland can operate 2 sectors on behalf 9f Easyjet UK or Easyjet Europe. The costs are picked up by whichever Easyjet company is the lessee