Won’t last long with Easterns reliability

The Nutts Mutts

I saw on comment on the airports spotter/nostalgia fb page about how the two regional france routes launched last week seemed like a too sensible decision for Eastern. I can only assume someone from the company read the same thing and decided that a spectacular return to form was needed! :}

On a more serious note, while I'm not sure an E170 is a particularly economical aircraft for the job, in light of the current situation I think I can see some sense in the route. With all the uncertainty about borders, vaccines and the like, Gibraltar is could be in a very good position to attract more British visitors than usual this summer. No border woes, and over 1/3 of their population vaccinated already. Perhaps the local govt have offered some incentives for Eastern to fly some routes from there to capitalise on this, which might make the aircraft choice seem more viable? It has been noted that Birmingham has also reappeared in the booking engine, which is also currently unserved from the rock...

What do you mean by no border woes?

Gibraltar is joining Schengen

You have to pass Schengen controls on arrival at Gib rather than at the actual border crossing

SOU-GIB is now announced and on sale. Flights on a Monday and Friday, Embraer 190. Interestingly, the aircraft will be operating from SOU in the morning, doing a W-pattern to BHX during the day, then returning to SOU at night. So there's potentially an E190 being based for the summer, unless it's positioning in on the GIB days.

Which begs the question what does it do the other 5 days a week!

I wouldn't be surprised to see ALC appearing at some point.

The Nutts Mutts

Glad to see the good news train keep rolling :ok:

The airports press release seems to confirm that Eastern are basing an E190 at Southampton. Hopefully they'll be able to recruit some ex.Flybe Embraer crew locally for it.

“This is also a new destination for the airport and a positive step forward given the challenging conditions our entire industry continues to face. We look forward to working with Eastern to develop this service further and welcoming the first passengers later this year and indeed the basing of an Eastern Airways’ Embraer 190 aircraft to make this route and others possible.”

I wonder where else they'll look at? Alicante seems like the most obvious omission, along with Verona (popular with tour operators and attracted some rather high fares). Beyond that maybe some of the longer French routes - Avignon, Perpignan, Toulon, Bastia. Further out the box would be trying a new unserved market - Croatia has grown significantly in popularity since Flybe served Split and Dubrovnik from Southampton about 10 years ago, as an example.

Perhaps they already have enough of there own crews to operate on the 190.

Does Eastern plan to have any tie up with BA city flyer? Could be a good partnership if risk is shared for expansion domestically and to sunshine spots. How many ERj-190’s can SOU take simultaneously? They’re going to be rather full at weekends 😂

I doubt it. The BA/Eastern deal on the Saab didn’t seem great and then went to Loganair and it seems BA and Loganair have already signed codeshares.

shamrock7seal

will be tight for E90’s if the schedules remain as is. Up to 3 BA on Sat & Sun, 1 Eastern and potentially 1 KLM. 4 stands available!

If you include stand 14 then it’s 5.

Whilst we are on the subject of BA and E90’s, one has just gone over head taking the saints team up to NCL. Even more odd is that it’s using a Jota call sign. Work that one out.

Appears one of the Jota 146s is off so guess they’ve hired Cityflyer to cover a run

Interesting, thanks for clarifying. They do seem to have a monopoly on the football charters, I guess that doesn't keep them that busy during the week though.

stewyb

There are planned to be 6 BA Cityflyer 190s on the ground on Saturday night at SOU, confirmed by 6 scheduled arrivals on Saturday evening. And 6 slot one departures on Sunday morning; Florence, Ibiza, Palma, Edinburgh, Bergerac, Mykonos.

Question;
Is the 190, being a bit shorter than the 195, able to use more stands than the 195 was?

No, the tail is still too tall for nose-in parking on stands 6-12. I think there'll be a lot of towing for overnight nose-out parking on those stands once the pax have disembarked.