Thank you for correcting me, no Viscounts shown on a fleet list that I recently read. My understanding is that only Cambrian's Viscounts operated into Swansea.

I have a copy of Airline Publication and Sales 'UK and Eire Commercial Airports' published in 1974. It refers to a seasonal service to Jersey operated by Dan Air from Swansea Fairwood Common using the 748 together with charter operations by Alidair (Viscount) and BIA (Herald).

Viscounts, both 700 and 800 series, flew in Dan Air colours in the early eighties. Not sure whether they were owned/operated by Dan Air or on some sort of lease agreement.

Jersey was, until perhaps the nineties, a very popular destination with multiple flights on Summer weekends as both schedule and IT charter services from all main airports, at least in England and Wales.

Swansea, along with other places like Coventry and Gloucester/Cheltenham that no longer have scheduled services at all had summer flights to Jersey. Going back to the fifties even Northampton Sywell had a (DC3) service to Jersey.

I was an ATCO at Jersey at the time, & DAN definitely operated Viscounts to Swansea. If I remember correctly, one was G-ARIR & another was G-BCZR. I have several photos of the 800.

DAN also used the Viscount on Carlisle - Jersey services; for a short while.

So in theory the runway at SWS can cope with the modern ATR 42, ATR 72 & Dash 8 then.

I’ve also seen a BAe 146 and Hercules on the ground there back in the 80’s but that was RAF movements.

Be interesting to see what aircraft / airline we will see but got to say the publicity from this announcement has been pretty good !!

After DAN ended their Swansea service, EXS (Channel Express) took it over using Heralds for a couple of years. I can't remember when the route was abandoned altogether, but I'm guessing around the mid/late 80s.

I am thinking nothing has been spent on Swansea for years, as it just doesn’t have the income.

Going to Company House and looking up the accounts makes for an interesting read.

It's been a week since Swansea airport posted about a new airline. Is there a date when the name of the airline, the destination or a route start date will be revealed ?

The destination is named in the FB post at #1 (it's Exeter) as is the start date (end of March). Air Alderney feature on the front page of their website - anybody else would be a surprise.

Unless it’s adhoc charters, ie an air taxi service, it’s not going to happen any time soon, my post 8 explains why.

Having been financially burnt badly once putting in the infrastructure to support operation of scheduled flights by Air Wales, Roy Thomas is not about to do it again.

From a regulatory point of view, could a service be operated using Islanders without these? Thinking of Loganair's operation in the islands. Agree the whole idea looks commercially improbable but what are the legal requirements?

You are perhaps referring to Barra. Using that as an example the minimum requirement to ensure some sort of flight regulatory (allowing for South Wales' weather record), while not strictly a legal requirement, there would need to be AFIS (in lieu of ATC) and RNP instrument approach procedures (in lieu of ground based navaids), neither of which are currently available at SWS. The capital expenditure to provide both and secure regulatory approval IMHO well in excess of £60K. The time scale to provide both 3+ months?

The other problem is the level of security required by law, related.to screening of passengers and baggage. Add to that the staffing required to provide it, and the mandatory screening of staff by national government to obtain security clearance. None of these currently available and would take many months and considerable capital expenditure to put in place.

Finally the Rescue Fire Fighting category currently available is up to A2 with A3 on Remission. Same as Barra so max size aircraft would be a Twin Otter.

So the idea of a route happening in March is nothing more than somebody's wet dream ?

I was thinking more about the Islander routes in the Orkeneys. Is there an exemption from the securtiy requirements for flights under a certain number of seats. 18/19?

Would certainly look that way.

If Messrs Air Alderney are involved its similar to a stunt that they pulled a year or so ago, when it was announced that they were going to start operations into "Solent Airport" (ie Lee-on-Solent) a GA aerodrome,just down the road from Southampton, in competition with the Alderney/Southampton route which Aurigny operate.

.While Lee has AFIS, it does not have instrument approach procedures or passenger handling/processing facilities, but is in an infinitely better state of repair than SWS!

Couldn't answer that, but from what I saw at Gloucester a few years ago when they had a LET 410 schedule from/to IOM there appeared to be full passenger screening facilities.

https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/155...olent-airport/

Swansea was actually mentioned as a potential destination from Lee-on-Solent in 2017. The services never began.

I gather that Air Alderney unfortunately only discovered Daedalus didn't have instrument approaches after it had made the announcement that it was to begin scheduled flights - just as it announced scheduled Alderney route before investigating whether there would be a spare check-in desk available. There wasn't; five years on, still no scheduled flights.

I've been on a few inter-island flights in Orkney and, to my knowledge there are no physical passenger screening requirements at all. Might be some electronic checks on your criminal record etc. but nothing physical. Last time I flew out of one of the outer island airports I don't think I even set foot in the terminal, just gave my name and walked through the gate (literally, a five bar gate in the 4-foot-high airfield wall) to the aircraft.
EDITED TO ADD: Not sure if this is relevant, but airfield security seems to be less regulated at airfields only served by sub-approx-20-passengers flights. At Scilly, St Mary's (as at outer island airports in Orkney) there is no physical barrier to walking on to the airfield from the approach road.

I believe the regulation is that there is no requirement on 19 seats or fewer. The problem is that if you wish to deposit passengers at a screened area at the destination, they must be screened to an equal level. So AA would probably need to use a portacabin at Exeter rather than the main terminal unless full security were to be in place at Swansea. The same arrangement is in place at Islay ('terminal 2') for Hebridean Air Services' flights to Colonsay and Oban. Mssrs Brem-Wilson, who run AA, tend to deride this sort of thing as 'bureaucracy', so maybe they intend to surmount it.

Thank you I think that's a very plausible explanation.

If any operator is crazy enough to commence flights at SWS in the immediate future, are they going to fund the destination portakabin (s)?