Buzz Airlines UK and easyJet 737's Your help needed....

[EZYA319]

Hi Everyone

I'm currently in the process of writing a couple of articles and was wondering if anyone could help me with some research regarding the subjects.

Firstly, I am writing an article regarding easyJet and the forthcoming retirement of their Boeing 737's. The article is going to discuss their role in the airlines fleet and how they helped to make it one of the worlds largest lo-co airlines, and subsequent move over to rival Airbus. I intend to speak to pilots and crew who have flown on both the boeing and airbus and get their perspective on what it was like to work on the 737, plus any passenger memories. Also intend to discuss any incidents, different liveries the aircraft have worn etc. I basically wanted any information anyone could possibly give to me regarding this.

Secondly, my other article I a history of the STN based carrier Buzz. This will be a general look back on the carrier from it start up to its eventual take over by Ryanair. Again any information anyone has on this carrier would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[BEagle]

Ah, buzz - what happy memories!

Between May 00 and Sep 02 I flew with them on 13 return trips from Stansted to Frankfurt to visit my ladylove. I was still serving in the RAF then and they'd changed the leave rules, so that a long weekend became feasible without needing to take 4 days leave as long as you weren't required for duty on Sat/Sun.

So, I'd leave home at 1000 on Friday with my overnight cabin bag, walk to the local bus stop and get the bus to Oxford, then the airport coach to Stansted with just one stop at High Wycombe. Check-in with the friendly staff at Stansted, then have a bite to eat, buy something from the Duty Free shop, before taking the monorail (the PA always sounded like Charles Kennedy!) to wait for flight UK2294.

The flight itself was excellent and quite quick - and they served a nice gin and tonic. Or, in winter, one of their mini-cafetières of good coffee with a miniature of Bailey's instead of milk...:ok: At Frankfurt it was a quick bus to Terminal 2, then the monorail to the central concourse and the S-bahn to Niederrad, then the tram to the flat. Timings were ideal and costs were much cheaper than Lufthansa from Heathrow.

On Monday morning I'd catch the tram to Niederrad, then the S-bahn to the airport. A quick breakfast, then check-in for UK2291. Another straightforward trip back to Stansted, then the coach and bus home. Excellent!

But then they changed the coach timetable, so I'd drive to Stansted and use the long term car park. However, buzz had a 'First Class' lounge by then, so for a few quid you could relax in comfort before catching the flight.

They only let me down once (when they left the bar behind after failing to NB the tailwind, so would have been overweight at Frankfurt) - although once it was touch and go whether they'd get me back in time for the Oxford coach.

buzz was assuredly the acceptable face of low cost flying and I will always remeber them with fondness. Delightfully friendly, efficient cabin staff, a professionally run airline all set to expand - and then the wooden-headed, wooden-footed people at KLM sold them off to Mikey-the-Pikey. I was devastated. So it was back to Lufthansa and I've never flown from Stansted since.

RIP, buzz -

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a341/nw969/buzz146.jpg

A great little airline torn down in its prime. It was such a sad day when they ceased operations.

[jumpseater]

eJ 73's

Don't forget to ask about Yankee :mad:ing Foxtrot! ... :oh: :ok:

I have some stunning eJ 737 shots, let me know more about the project by PM.
js

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c351/refshots/IMG_6475.jpg

[Groundloop]

Buzz were about to open a new base at Bournemouth and had already sold a lot of tickets. When Ryanair took over Buzz they announced that they would NOT start up the Bournemouth flights.

A senior RYR manager who visisted Bournemouth to explain the reasons was nearly attacked by an angry crowd that had turned up.

[BEagle]

The Bournemouth routes looked extremely promising to many living in the south with friends living in France.

A lot of people were very disappointed by Mikey-the-Pikey's decision to not to go ahead with Bournemouth - and it's probably true to say that buzz attracted a 'different class of client' compared with that of....other low cost airlines.

As posted in Nov 2002:

buzz LAUNCH AT BOURNEMOUTH AIRPORT IS A HIGH FLYING SUCCESS

buzz, the UK’s third largest low cost airline, has had a phenomenal reaction to the launch of its second base in Bournemouth. As well as five European routes, buzz will be flying to two domestic destinations, seeing the South Coast benefit for the first time from low cost fares to Scotland and Northern Ireland at a fraction of the price of British Airways.

Since they went on sale a week ago, over four thousand seats have already been sold on routes from the airport to Amsterdam, Belfast, Bergerac, Glasgow-Prestwick, Malaga, Murcia and Paris. Murcia, Malaga and Bergerac are currently the most popular destinations.

Says buzz Chief Commercial Officer, Tony Camacho, ‘The reaction and support we have had from people living in Bournemouth and surrounding areas has been fantastic. People on the South Coast are obviously making the most of buzz’s competitive fares which give them easy access to Scotland, Northern Ireland and a network of European destinations. This is just the start of our plans for Bournemouth. In the next year we will continue to expand and develop our destination portfolio which will position Bournemouth as one of the UK’s leading low cost bases.’

What a sad day it was when buzz was sold off by the idiots at KLM....:mad:

[longer ron]

I have fond memories flying Buzz Stansted - Marseille/Marignane(sp ?)
On one occasion - instead of the usual approach over the etang from the north,the crew told us we would be approaching from the south (ie from the med and approach over the coastal hills).
I was in a cheeky mood that day and asked if possible to get the jump seat for landing (I explained that as a rigger - I would not be distracting the crew with silly questions LOL).
I could not have wished for a friendlier crew,the capt was an ex Hatfield rigger and the F/O had also worked on a/c.
The F/O even asked my return date and told me he was flying that day and that i was welcome on the flight deck,that didn't work out as there was a 3rd crew member aboard (and anyway the weather was crap :))
If either of the pilots frequent prune...thanks again for a great flight - it was a great little airline.

[WHBM]

I believe there was never an actual Buzz "airline", and it was all a brand name done on the old Air UK AOC.

At the time of startup I was a regular on the Air UK operation from Stansted to Edinburgh. This wasn't included in what was branded as Buzz, but they used the same 146 aircraft so we got them. There was a Buzz in-flight magazine in the seat pockets, which actually printed the Buzz timetable on the back pages, seemed a very old-fashioned way of doing things.

When Buzz were sold to Ryanair, they took over the fleet of 146s and 737-300s, neither being Ryanair types, and did the most shambolic and tatty minimal repaint, with Ryanair decals just stuck randomly over parts of the Buzz livery.

Ryanair didn't seem too keen on these trunk routes to Glasgow and Edinburgh, so another newcomer, Go, stepped in and became dominant, which is why those routes from Stansted are now Easyjet territory rather than Ryanair. Air UK, or KLM UK, or whatever it was called at the time, just gave them up.

[EZYA319]

Folks, thankyou all for you feedback it's a great help so keep it coming.

I never knew Buzz was intending to open up Bournemouth, what might have been hey?

Thanks again everyone and I will keep you posted on the articles as and when they are completed. Bit tricky doing them at the moment as rushed off my feet in work.

I'll keep you posted.

Thanks again!

[Groundloop]

Ryanair didn't seem too keen on these trunk routes to Glasgow and Edinburgh, so another newcomer, Go, stepped in and became dominant, which is why those routes from Stansted are now Easyjet territory rather than Ryanair.

I'm afraid this cannot be correct. BA sold Go to 3i in June 2001. 3i sold Go to easyJet in May 2002. KLM did not sell Buzz to Ryanair until March 2003.

[WHBM]

I'm afraid this cannot be correct. BA sold Go to 3i in June 2001. 3i sold Go to easyJet in May 2002. KLM did not sell Buzz to Ryanair until March 2003.
Indeed, although I can't put my finger on dates of any overlap of Glasgow/Edinburgh service by Air UK and by Go. It's compounded in recollections by Easyjet keeping the Go fleet in the original livery and branding, and on the same routes, for quite some time, possibly more than 18 months, after the takeover.

Air UK divided themselves into two, the Stansted-to-Europe routes which were rebadged as Buzz, and the Amsterdam-focused routes from many UK provincial airports which progressively got renamed from Air UK to KLM UK to KLM as the years passed. These trunk UK routes from Stansted didn't seem to fit into either group, although they were now using the repainted Buzz aircraft on Air UK flight numbers, and somehow just faded away.

Use of aircraft with different livery had happened earlier on these routes as well, as Air UK had set up a holiday flights division, branded variously over time as Air UK Leisure, then Leisure UK, operating 737s. Out of season they seemed to do a lot of subcharter work on scheduled flights for Air UK, from Stansted to these points. Pax checking in at Stansted were solemnly told "your flight is on a Leisure aircraft today", which of course to most of them meant absolutely nothing.

Regarding the "tatty repaint" of the Buzz fleet when taken over by Ryanair, Buzz were just acquiring some secondhand 737s from Continental in the USA at takeover time, which just had the Continental name removed and Buzz decals applied, followed almost immediately by Ryanair removing random bits of this, repainting some panels in a non-matching shade of white, and applying their own decals in odd spare corners.

[EI-BUD]

Just discovered this thread! I have very fond memories of travelling on Easyjet B737 (300 & 700).

For some time EZY and Go competed on EDI & GLA to BFS at high frequency and the fares were very low due to overcapacity!!!

Go were wet leasing a 146 from Titan (I think) to operate the routes. Was good for the customer but alas not the airlines - ie the competition.

GLA BFS is a nice trip, can be very quick, and on a 146 is lovely for seeing the views!

When is the 737 being withdrawn and how many are left at LTN?

EI-BUD

[olympus]

The story going around at the time of the KLM re-organisation that resulted in Buzz was that they (KLM) would have preferred to get rid of the 146s completely but were locked-in to leases which would have been expensive to terminate and so had to cast around for something to do with them. Buzz was the result.

For me, Buzz provided over three years of the best flying. After years of night-stopping in dreary Scottish hotels and flying a very small number of routes (GLA, EDI and ABZ to Amsterdam, Stansted and before it was given up, Gatwick) with unfriendly locally-based cabin crew (well, they seemed unfriendly but I guess it was just that they went straight home after work whilst we went back to the hotel) we were suddenly going to interesting places with (for the most part) good loads. This suited me perfectly; I was very happy to fly the four sectors per day that the roster usually required and then go home. Of course, the guys that had been commuting long distances to STN and then night-stopping at the company's expense were not happy as the company-paid accommodation suddenly stopped.

Looking at my logbooks, my first Buzz flight appears to have been to Berlin Tegel in November 1999 and my very last was to/from Berlin SXF on 29 March 2003. Coincidentally, both were in the same aircraft - G-BTTP, the last Hatfield-built 146. In the meantime I went to lots of interesting places - Bordeaux, Grenoble, Brest, Dusseldorf, Poitiers, Marseilles, Paris CDG, Toulon-St Tropez, Toulouse, Milan Linate, Limoges, La Rochelle - all visited in the last month of Buzz operations.

BEagle

I operated UK2294 and UK2291 many times in the period that you mention and might well have flown you to or from FRA; I am pleased and grateful that you are able to speak highly of our operation. We tried very hard!

UK2294 was usually the third sector of a four sector 'double FRA' roster and it was a long day! FRA was possibly (for me) the least attractive of all our destinations. On arrival, we invariably had to hold and then played the 'guess the landing runway' game, with Approach not giving us a clue until we were on a closing heading for the localiser (which if landing to the west could be 20 miles or more out!) We would brief for one runway with the proviso that 'it might be the other...' If we'd guessed wrongly there ensued a flurry of hands as we re-set the aids for the correct runway. There was often a load/fuel problem especially with the usually-full early morning UK2290. Frankfurt Hahn was always filed as our alternate and this meant having to carry more fuel than we wanted to or would have needed to with a closer alternate.

Longer Ron

I would have said that the 'usual approach' was from over the Med and the hills, rather than over L'Etang de Berre from the north. Of the many times I went to MRS I would say that over 80% of the approaches were from the south.

I can't think who the ex-Hatfield rigger captain was.

[longer ron]

Hi Olympus
Sorry I had not written that very well...I really meant that of the trips I made with Buzz to Marseille,that was the only time that we made that approach.
I thought that the Capt had said that he was an ex Hatfield Fitter !of course I might be misremembering !! Istr that he had a very slight accent - but so slight that I could not place it.

rgds LR

[Herod]

buzz, with a lower-case b. The best lo-co by far, and proof that cheap need not necessarily meant tacky. I was lucky enough to be able to operate the 737 with them from the beginning to the end. It was a shame that KLM didn't really want to be involved, and just saw the airline as a way of using the 146, which they couldn't get rid of. If more 737s had arrived quickly, it might have been a different story. As it was, the extra aircraft didn't start arriving until late 2002, and the airline was sold off early in 2003.

[gonzo57]

For KLM buzz was a bit of a "toe-in-the-water" on the low cost thing using the bits of the AirUK fleet that they had no interest in. At one point there were talks on KLM buying GO when BA put it up for sale. After the Airfrance takeover of KLM, buzz was an obvious target to disappear. At the time Airfrance had just seen off their own French low cost competition only to find that buzz had added internal French routes to it's network. The proof that the plan was for buzz to just dissapear was the way it was given away to Ryanair. However O'Leary had the last laugh when just as he took ownership he sacked the most of the staff leaving KLM with the redundancy liability which they thought they had off loaded. Big shame as it was a nice company to work with.

[gonzo57]

The awful state of the buzz 737 300s was due to the sell off coming at the mid point in the delivery of 6 ex Continental Airlines aircraft. Up to that point 1 jet was painted in the complete new buzz livery with the jet on the tail, 1 or 2 others were just painted yellow and the rest remained in the basic Continental livery. After the sell off Ryanair took the 300s leased through KLM as part of the deal. These had stickers applied across the fuse with a basic Ryanair logo. They were a bit of a dog's dinner.... Ryanair kept a couple of 146s to service the routes that couldn't handle the 737s. An interesting fact was that during the 146 hand-back (8 aircraft) Of the 32 engines installed across the fleet, not one engine was on the correct airframe. During the April that the airline was grounded the engines were reshuffled back to the correct airframes at STN.