Eastern Airways Summer Schedules

[richardhall99]

T3 summer schedules are starting to appear....and guess how broing they are....cery boring..they are all the same as the play it safe BA timetables:
5x ABZ
4x BHX
4x SOU
hopefully once T3 get sorted out they may operate on the own schedules....but bare in mind the MME to ABZ aint changed for years

[Go-arounder]

Richard
What exactly do you want them to do?
5 X Day EGPD
4 X Day EGHI
4 X Day EGBB
That’s great for business connections!
Is it spotters boring or passengers boring?

[johnwalton]

The schedules may be the same, but the prices certainly arn't. At the moment BAs prices start from £99 on NCL-BHX, the T3 prices quoted on their site start from £194. Thats nearly a 100% hike. I guess T3 are looking at the business market, and thats it. Disappointing though, and quite dangerous with EZY coming on the scene, it would be easy for them to start flying to ABZ twice daily.

[Mister Geezer]

I have spoken to people who have used the ABZ-NCL route and there are many occasions when a BACX J41 is not full... so why should EZE operate extra flights and risk bleeding money since their aircraft are not full. It does not make sense! Also remember that Eastern are using BACX J41s from NCL... therefore they might be tight pushed to operate extra flights compared to the current BA timetable, simply due to not enough aircraft being available!

If easyJet have any sense then they will not even consider a ABZ-NCL. The route is far too short for a 737 and the load factors on a 737 will be a joke!

Eastern are not the cheapest airline in the business but they seem to have a solid business plan. Their 2001 profit (after tax) jumped 6.5 times compared to the 2000 value. They are not strangers to picking up routes from other airlines... often when others could not justify their existence!

[johnwalton]

I flew NCL-ABZ in October and the J41 was full bar one going out and full on the return. ABZ is currently a 1hr flight from NCL with the turboprop equipment, granted a 737 could do it in 50 minutes, but that is only 5/10 minutes less than NCL-STN and just as long as a flight such as MAN-STN.

I don't have a problem with the current (and proposed) schedule. My problem is with the fares. If you're not travelling on business then its just not worth it.

Barring the BRS service, all of the services to ABZ from NCL are operated by NCL-based units, therefore Eastern will be positioned exactly the same as BA at present.

[Mister Geezer]

A 737 could do NCL-ABZ in around 30 mins max, and probably slightly less than that figure if the conditions were favourable (i.e. straight in approach and all that stuff).

[niknak]

Look closely at T3's scheduled operation, and you'll find that the routes they operate in almost every case have no competition from another airline operator.
Their fares are only slightly higher than the open 1st class return rail tickets to and from the same city's railway stations, and of course, they do the job in time for anyone in business to return the same day within a reasonable schedule.
Their aeroplanes may not be luxury personified, but they do the job more than adequately, the crews are also very professional and efficiant.
The airline has a solid business plan for the future, and won't get carried away with asperations of granduer.
Apart from that, they're utter crap.:p

[johnwalton]

A 737 could do NCL-ABZ in around 30 mins max, and probably slightly less than that figure if the conditions were favourable (i.e. straight in approach and all that stuff).

Well, NCL-ABZ is a similar distance to NCL-BFS, which has a journey time by 737 of 55 minutes (on EZY's website).

NCL-ABZ: 150.91 Statute Miles
NCL-BFS: 181.76 Statute Miles

(figures from Air Routing Group International)

The figures above give the distance (and therefore flight time) from NCL-ABZ to be 17% less than that of BFS, which is an equivilant of 9 minutes less.

Therefore, one would logically assume that the flight time between NCL and ABZ would be approximately 45-50 minutes.


However, that wasn't meant to be my point. I was trying to indicate that there would certainly be a demand for a "low-cost" alternative on the route, for both the leisure and business markets, whatever the frequency may be.

[richardhall99]

Summer timetables for BRS to NCL are:
0745/0900 DH8
1325/1440 DH8
1705/1820 DH8

NCL to BRS are:
0935/1050 DH8
1515/1630 DH8
1855/2015 DH8

and there are no jets just the old turboprops back up again with no stop overs

[LTNman]

Used to fly Luton to Liverpool in around 30 minutes even though the timetable showed flight times of around an hour:eek:

[4321zip]

A while back on this forum, there was a topic about Eastern Airways' fleet plans.
Talks about Eastern getting new ERJ-135/ERJ-145 which would certainly have been nice!
Has this now been put off because of the J41 purchase?

[johnwalton]

Its true that some of the flight time is taken up by taxiing etc, and favourable winds can reduce flight time etc, but the slated flight time for NCL-ABZ would be at the very least 40 minutes.

As far as i'm aware Eastern have no plans to introduce any more Embraers at the current time. They will probably want to get the new routes settled before thinking about changing frequencies annd passenger capacities on their network.

[Mister Geezer]

John

You could well be right however I was comparing it to past experiences. A relation of mine was travelling NCL-ABZ a while ago and the BACX aircraft went tech so a Flightline 146 stood in. The flight crew said they would do the trip in 20 mins but it took about 25 mins in the end. Those figures are off the top of my head but it was not far from that. The 737 can be a little bit quicker as well but on such a short trip the difference would probably be negligible!

4321zip

Apart from the current NWI-ABZ route that the 135 runs on, there is not a lot routes within the network that actually require a jet. Two routes that spring to mind are the INV-MAN and the new proposed route INV-BHX. However I think it would be some time until we would see any expansion on those routes, since one is very new and the other has not even started.

Cheers