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Dublin Airport had one of its first visits by a Hawker Horizon this week when A6-SHH arrived from the Dubai Air Show via Bucharest. The aircraft is msn RC-21 and arrived in the small hours of Monday morning. Pictured above in Derek Gannon's copyright picture the aircraft is seen shortly before departure Monday afternoon.
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Just months after SR Technics announced that it was shutting its Dublin Airport facility with the loss of 1,135 jobs the company has announced that it is to set up a facility on the island of Malta. The announcement of the investment by the Dubai based company was made by the Prime Minister of Malta, Lawrence Gonzi at a press conference last week. When complete in 2012 the new facility will consist of 4 hangars which will be used for base and heavy maintenance on narrow body aircraft. SR Technics will commence operations at an existing hangar which will be used for the duration of the construction project. It is believed that the decision to establish the facility was prompted by the signing of a contract to renew and extend SRT's maintenance business with easyJet. The new agreement is designed to run for 11 years until 2020 and is worth $1.6bn to SRT. The Malta Independent reports that the renegotiated contract will save easyJet $295m over the next 11 years.
The manner of SR Technics exit from Ireland and the €26m hole which it lefty unplugged in its Irish employees pension fund hasn't gone un-noticed in Malta where Prime Minister Gonzi's comments regarding SR Technics trust in Malta in the context of a world recession are being treated with just a little suspicion.
With Lufthansa Technik already operating a narrow body MRO facility in Malta, one can no doubt expect the staff pinching to commence shortly.
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Ryanair announced today from March next year it will establish its 37th base at Rygge. Three aircraft will be used to serve 16 new routes operating over 100 weekly flights to / from the Norwegian city.
The 16 new routes will link Rygge with Aarhus, Berlin Schonefeld, Dublin, Weeze, Eindhoven, Gdansk, Krakow, La Rochelle, Malaga, Memmingen , Palma, Paris Beauvais, Riga, Wroclaw, Valencia and Trevisoand will increase the carriers traffic at Rygge to 1.7 million passengers p.a.
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This morning's flight BAW 112 routing JFK to LHR diverted to Shannon in the early hours. The flight operated by B747-400 G-CIVZ was captured on stand following its arrival in the copyright picture above by Alan Meehan.
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The delivery of Ryanair aircraft continued this weekend with the delivery of EI-EGC which arrived in Dublin on Saturday afternoon. MSN 38492 and hex code 4CA7B9 the aircraft provided variety by landing on R16 as seen in Michael Kelly's copyright picture above.
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Visits by domestic US carriers to this side of the pond are few and far between so Sun Country's visit with B737-8Q8 N809SY to Shannon ranks as one of the more interesting movements in recent weeks. The aircraft, msn 30683 is a 2005 build frame and arrived from Minneapolis last night as flight SCX 900, returning to Portsmouth, NH this lunchtime using the same flight number. Sun Country are a contractor to the US military so today's flight may well have been a proving flight for non domestic flights. Pictured above the irony of "Sun Country" won't have been lost on the submerged residents of Co. Clare who have been under water for the past 5 days.
Sun Country traces its roots back to 1982 when a group of former Braniff employees established an airline using a former Braniff B727 based in Minneapolis. After a period of slow if not spectacular growth in the 1980's the airline grew fom B727 size aircraft up to Dc10 size but eventually competition from local heavyweight Northwest and the fallout form 9-11 caused Sun Country to shut up shop in December 2001. Through new investment, Sun Country re-emerged in the early 00's to be acquired by the Petters Group Worldwide in 2006.
In 2008, Tom Petters the owner of Petters Group resigned after the FBI uncovered a massive financial fraud at the Petters Group. In October 2008, Sun Country filed for Chapter 11 protection to distance itself from the other companies in the group. On Friday last, Tom Petters took to the stand at a Federal Court in Minnesota to deny that his companies were involved in a Ponzi case which resulted in the defrauding of investors of $3.65bn.
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The Fedex 757 program took another step today when the airline ferried B757-2Q8, msn 24965 registered N993FD across the pond to the US. The aircraft in question was registered to Fedex as N993FD on Thursday last having previously served as SU-BPY with Air Italy Egypt subsidiary EuroMediterranean. At lunchtime today N993FD made a fuel stop in Shannon having arrived from Chateauroux en route Bangor. Pictured above in EuroMediterranean colours minus titles N993FD is seen on finals to R24. With the sale of SU-BPY, the sole aircraft in the EuroMediterranean fleet, Air Italy Egypt presumably no longer exists.
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Privately owned Nigerian operator Bellview Airlines is attempting to get back in the air with former Gulf Air B767-3P6, msn 24496 registered A9C-GK. Until recently the aircraft was a long term inmate at Dublin Airport where it had been one of a number of machines covered by SR Technics contract with Gulf Air. It arrived in Shannon on November 3 last for painting with Lufthansa Aircraft Paint. On Monday last the aircraft emerged from the LAPS hangar in the colours of Bellview Airlines. On Friday and yesterday, Saturday Novmber 21 the aircraft performed test flights using the US registration as callsign.
Bellview Airlines is a privately owned Nigerian airline set up in 1992. Its network of dometic and regional routes had previously served only one European destination in London Heathrow. In October of this year the airline ceased operations due to a lack of aircraft.In mid October the airline was suspended by IATA from its ticket clearing house on the basis that Bellview was no longer operational. In a notice on its website, IATA directed that all travel agents should stop selling Bellview tickets and issue refunds. The exact circumstances surrounding the grounding of the airline were unclear with Bellview denying that the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) had grounded it. Bellview told the media that it was merely restructuring in order to provide a better service to its passengers and that it intended "to bounce back" in November when the six aircraft it had ordered would be delivered. A "News Flash" on the Bellview web site is currently announcing that the Lagos - Heathrow service is back to full strength from December 1 next.
Pictured above, N183AQ is seen on finals to R24 at Shannon on Saturday afternoon following its test flight.
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Following the collapse of skyeurope, GECAS took back a number of aircraft which had been operated by the Slovak low cost carrier. Among these was B737-76N OM-NGK, msn 34756 which was subsequently transferred to the Czech register as OK-GCF. At the end of last week, OK-GCF arrived in Shannon to be painted at the Lufthansa Aircraft Paint facility in the colours of its new operator Aerolineas Argentinas. Aerolineas has only recently retired the last of its Classic 737 aircraft as it upgrades to NG standard. Pictured above OK-GCF, which will become LV-CBT on delivery, departs Shannon for Ostrava where final predelivery work will be completed.
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Shannon had a visit today from a relative old timer in the shape of Dassault Falcon 100 registered N1993, operated by TCC Air Services. The aircraft is a 1982 vintage, msn 195 and is one of the later Falcon 10 series aircraft out of the total of 226 frames produced. Pictured above N1993 taxis for departure off R24 for Iceland on the way home.
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Iberia's Airbus A320-214 registered EC-HDN visited Dublin today in One World colours. The aircraft, msn 1087 and built in 1999 is one of a batch of Iberia aircraft not to undergo re-registration during its lifetime with the airline. Pictured above in Michael Kelly's copyright picture, EC-HDN operates as flight IBE 3183 to Madrid.
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EI-EGA on finals to R28 at lunchtime today
Preceded by EI-EGB...
Ryanair started on another alphabet today when EI-EGA and EI-EGB arrived in Dublin on their delivery flights. First to arrive was flight RYR 800B registered EI-EGB, msn 38491, hex code 4CA7B7. Fifteen minutes later flight RYR 800A, operated by EI-EGA, msn 38490, hex code 4CA7B6 touched down on Dublin's R28. Both aircraft are pictured above in the copyright photographs by Michael Kelly.
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Speaking at a press conference in Dublin yesterday, Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary said that the airline will need to have reached tentative agreement with Boeing by the end of this month or very early in December to allow a formal agreement by signed by year end. If a deal is not reached by the end of the year, Ryanair will walk away from its long term relationship with the aircraft manufacturer. "I'm not wasting another Christmas holiday trying to talk to guys in Seattle", said O'Leary downplaying any expectation that a deal is in the offing.
O'Leary also said that the compnay could start paying very substantial senior management bonuses and shareholder dividends from 2011 "in that order. I think I'm worth it" he said.
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Ryanair announced today that it would be increasing its base strength at Bristol and Liverpool Airports.
From
March 28 next it will increase the number of frames at Bristol from the
current 4 to 5 and at Liverpool it will add two frames to bring base
strength to 8.
From February 25 next Ryanair will increase add ten new routes and increase frequency on others as follows :
New routes :-
Liverpool to Lodz (Commencing 01-04-10), Rimini (31-03-10), Trapani (30-03-10)
Prestwick to Carcassonne (31-03-10)
Edinburgh to Tampere (01-04-10)
Bristol to Faro (31-03-10), Gdansk (01-04-10), Palma (31-03-10), Treviso (31-03-10), Valencia (25-02-10)
Increased frequencies :-
Liverpool to Faro, Krakow, Wroclaw, Poznan
Bristol to Malaga, Malta
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Ryanair has called for the closure of the Commission for Aviation Regulation's office following the recent direction by the Department of Tranpsort to the CAR to raise passenger charges at Dublin Airport next year to pay for T2.
Ryanair contend that the Aviation Regulator's office can no longer serve an independent function when its decisions are being constantly overruled by the DoT which first directed the Regulator to allow the DAA build T2, a project which started out with an extimated cost of €170m but which current estimates reckon will reach €1.3bn.
Ryanair's chief executive Michael O'Leary said today that "Ireland is returning to the bad old days of the mid 1980's when the Dept of Transport was protecting Aer Lingus by proposing legislation to jail travel agents who offered to sell discounted air tickets on Aer Lingus' services. The Dept of Transport is unfit for purpose. It has presided over the building of a white elephant second terminal in Cork and is now repeating this failure by protecting the DAA's building of a €1.3bn white elephant T2 at Dublin Airport. The existing terminal (with the new Pier D) now has capacity for 30m passengers p.a. This year Dublin Airport's traffic will fall to just 20m. In 2010 it will fall to less than 18m passengers, while the DAA opens a €1.3bn new terminal that the airlines neither want, nor need." , adding that T2 should either be moth balled or converted into a shopping mall or conference centre where it might serve some use.