Air Greece?? Get a life Air Scotland!!

[trainer too 2]

Unbelieveable that a year on Air Scotland is intending to go back to a Greek AOC after all... After trying to use one last year and then using Air Hoilland for a while I just read in Flight that Thomas Cook will lease a 757 to Air Greece for an operation for Air Scotland... :yuk:

Don't get me wrong, nothing wrong with wetleasing, but Joe Bloggs doesn't know he is flying with :mad: airlines.... Maybe an idea to let the Scottish consumer know what is happening?? Anybody with more insight :confused:

[Joe Curry]

Air Holland sold to KLM? and now unable to service Air Scotland?

Air Scotland have an ongoing programme, perhaps Air
Greece was the only one immediately available.?

What's the Thomas Cook connection? Anyone?

[eurostar builder]

I beleive that it is a Thomas Cook Aircraft on lease and registered greek

[Caslance]

Correct, eurostar builder. SX-BLV is c/n 26278 and was, until recently, G-JMCG with Thomas Cook.

[Electric Sky]

Extract from www.abtn.co.uk :

THOMAS COOK AIRLINES has been busy in placing various aircraft with a number of operators. Until the end of April one of its Boeing 757s is being dry leased to Greece Airways to fly on their AOC as Air Scotland. The programme is to the Spanish Mainland and Portugal largely based out of Glasgow and Edinburgh, with some operations out of Newcastle.

ES ;)

[Stratocaster]

Greece Airways ? Sounds like a new entrant in the faaaabulous world of charter operations, set up exclusively for Air Scotland. Anybody knows who's running that company ? Could this be the latest avatar of Electra ?

:hmm: :)

[Lite]

I have to keep asking myself firstly "why Air Scotland would use the Boeing 757-200 in the first place?".

I know that the 733 would probably have some difficulty in flying on some of the Med routes out of Scotland, but surely they could have found a wet-lease operation flying the A320 or the 73G series of aircraft. Whilst these aircraft do have less seats (which would ultimately mean less cabin personnel for a low-cost outfit), they can also be turned round in about 35 minutes on long sectors. I know from experience with Air Atlanta, that the airline will not guarantee to be able to turn round its 757s in under 55 minutes. That's a long time!

Surely the airline would want to use smaller types to be able to mix business routes with leisure routes and also to keep costs down?

And even if they did want to use the 757, why not use Thomas Cook directly, rather than some foreign outfit noone's heard of, especially after the Electra Airlines debacle!

[trainer too 2]

Can any one find out if the Electra postholders are the same as the Air Greece ones? Why such a Greek connection. Does not make sense :rolleyes:

[sparkymarky]

Air Scotland are much maligned, but the only time I flew with them (on a charter not a scheduled service) they were actually pretty decent.

I don't know what drove their choice of aircraft type, but it may be to do with the fact they are not a 'pure' loco. They seem to be more of a hybrid loco/charter op, so maybe the 752 is more suited than the 733 to some of their longer sectors?

[Stratocaster]

I tried to get some info on the website of the Hellenic CAA (www.hcaa.gr), but the English section is still under construction, and I know only two words in Greek. Anybody here fluent in that language who could help ???
:8

[10 DME ARC]

I think you will find Air Scotland is purely selling off the extra seats of what is a charter operation.:)

[Speedmaster]

i believe Greece Airways has been set up by the same guy who owns Air Scotland. There is some tax advantage to being based in Greece and once again the crews are all Greek apart from a couple of Scottish ones who travel and board as "passengers" before commencing services. Rumours also flying about that they are dispensing of all their Scottish ops/admin staff apart from ticket-desk staff, due to moving their ops out to Greece.