From todays Sunday Times:

FLYBE, the regional airline formerly known as British European, is this week expected to place a $700m (£445m) aircraft order with Bombardier, the Canadian industrial conglomerate. The purchase is likely to be the largest order by a British airline this year, with Flybe expected to take up to 18 Q400 planes from Bombardier.

Where do they get the money from?

Part trade-in of owned 146's & the company is also cash-rich from £££ compensation agreement from cancellation of RJX order. Heard a strong rumour they're going to an all-turboprop operation, but will have the lowest average fleet age of any European airline.

Jim French was on record in an interview with Airliner World magazine saying ideal fleet size would be-if i remember corrctly-twelve to fifteen 146's & 20 Q400's. I suspect the larger 146's will be around on higher density routes for a while yet

The Sunday Times is very slow - the professional aviation press had this deal pinned down a week ago.

With the introduction of the Q400 I have heard that they will change to:

FLYmayBE.


(bad one, I know...)

700 Millions for a bunch of turbo props ?!?!?!

Why not get Saab 2000´s ? Sure, the Saab 2000 is a bit smaller then the Q400, but the speed, range and comfort level is about the same.

Maybe Swiss will have some nice ones for sale in the near future !

They have choosen to go down this route because of the economics of the Q400. Over the same route as a 146 of say 1 hours flying time and a passenger load of 75% the Q400 will take around 7 minutes longer but will consume 50% less fuel!!

Now the only problem is the reliability of the Q400, if they can sort out those problems then they will have a very competitive service that they can offer.

But will passengers prefer turboprops to jets? It doesn't matter a fig if the accountants are happy if the passengers are not.

Exactly. Are todays' pax happy to spend 60+ mins in a turboprop - especially if the competition operate jets? Low fares and no-frills may work on jets. But with turboprops.........., I'm not too sure.

With the new base out of southampton, surely flybe cant expect their pax to travel to milan etc on a turboprop. They have had some humerous press saying "Q400 the new generation jet"!! Who do they think they are kidding?? The Q400 may be a great (but unreliable) turboprop, but pax usually see a prop driven aircraft as something from WW11!!!!

No the Q400's will not be used on longer routes like Southampton to Milan, FlyBe are retaining the 146's for these longer routes. The new Q400's are going to add to the dash-8 fleet numbers as well as replacing all of the 200 and 300 dash-8's that are on the fleet now.

Turboprop v Jet

For instance on the Bristol - Belfast route, I know which I prefer 45 mins by easy 737, or 1hour 15 by Flybe Turboprop, answer jet everytime, quicker more comfortable etc.

.....And use the 30 minutes saved travelling by road from BFS to Belfast City centre Saving £££!!!.....
Mind you having recently bought an Eazyjet tkt LGW-EDI at £126 one way who said they are ' low cost/fare'????
Carry on flybe.

Artificial Horizon - The 400 is operating Southampton - Milan now, as well as Birmingham - Milan, and with virtually full loads. The pax are generally very happy.

OWC - The 400 does not currently operate Bristol - Belfast, you can expect 50-55 mins when it does.

Babydoc.... No such route LGW-EDI. Closest server to EDI would be BHX and agcat's already moaned about the driving side of things (BHD/BFS)!!!

Sure there's always this issue with jet versus prop... but at the end of the day people are looking for cheap and easy ways to get away. New routes from/to new places. The initial shock of seeing the aircraft is soon forgotten about and the last time I looked all aircraft look roughly the same on the inside.

Well they may be very happy, but they would be a lot happier on a jet, even a 146. The Q400 is anything but quiet, it vibrates and the noise it does make is an annoying turboprop throb that is far more intrusive than the sibilant sound a jet (any jet) makes.

The Q400 might be cheap to run, but that is its only attribute. The surveys that are done to establish customer satisfaction are very easy to manipulate- If I want to go to Milan, a turboprop is better than nothing, so of course I will be happy.

The Q400 might be OK for short routes, but it is a nightmare for sectors over an hour (I've done a few on it). Hopefully an over-concentration on a turboprop that nobody else wants will not turn out to be a big mistake...

Anyone hear about the deal involving ex Aer Lingus 146's, obviously its off the cards now???!??

Snooze.

Why are sectors over an hour a "Night Mare" ?
Exactly how many sectors have you done ?








..who shows bright lights and wants to know.. ?

Silver_tongued_cavalier - rumour has it that the Aer Lingus 146's are still being looked at - as well as a couple of other operators including one that's just been taken over and had nice yellow aircraft
Also hear rumour that a couple of National jet Italia a/c that have been in storage may be joining the fleet in the very near future..

Don't BAE still have a few unsold (new) ARJ's?

Pity BE couldn't have wrapped up a deal for those as part of the RJX cancellation compensation (presuming, maybe in ignorance, that fleet commonality wouldn't be too much of an issue??)

Still, as has been said, plenty of 146's on the market at the mo.