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.

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.

 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.

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.

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

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.

One of the first casualties in a recession is business aviation activity. But just like swallows returning after winter, an increase in bizjet activity in recent weeks may indicate that the wirst of the recession is over, especially at Dublin where volume had dropped off significantly from it's previous highs of recent years. Derek Gannon's pictures of a selection of vistors to the Capital this morning give a flavour of current aircraft movements.

The Government of Macedonia's Bombardier Learjet 60, Z3-MKD is pictured at the start of taxi on its departure. The aircraft is msn 60-279 and was noted at Stansted on Wednesday morning last. Z3-MKD was delivered through Shannon on April 15 2005.

 The Gulfstream 150 is an uncommon visitor to Dublin. N511CT, msn 234 is registered to the ubiquitous Wells Fargo Bank Northwest.

 European Net Jets Dassault Falcon 7X, msn 30 is believed to have been on its first visit to Dublin, having been delivered in November 2008.

Triple Alpha Aviation's Bombardier Challenger 300, D-BUBI is msn 20145 and is a 2007 build. It was also noted in Luton on Wednesday afternoon last.

The UK CAA has published traffic figures for October 2009.With the exceptions of DUB-LHR (Aer Lingus / BMI)  DUB-STN (Ryanair) and BFS-LGW (Aer Lingus) the bloodbath of red ink on passenger figures in recent months does appear to have slowed if not stopped altogether on routes between London and Ireland, north and south. The trend was first noted in September so hopefully the recession has bottomed out in air travel.

Dublin-London

Dublin's Gatwick traffic which is split between Ryanair and Aer Lingus showed no YoY growth at 93,986. Heathrow and Stansted both showed negative trends with LHR down 13% again this month to 133,456 passengers and Stansted (a Ryanair preserve) again down 18% to 69,331. Luton was down 1% YoY at 29,975. Once again no surprises with the trend following previous months with Gatwick and Luton remaining relatively unscathed at the expense of Stansted and Heathrow. 

Cork-London

At Cork, Gatwick traffic was down 3% to 9,598. Heathrow was down 2% to 42,349 while Stansted, a Ryanair route was up 5% to 27,349.

Shannon-London

Shannon has fared similar to Dublin and Cork with Gatwick showing no YoY change for the month at 17,788 and Stansted down 6% YoY, to 27,645. On the Heathrow - Shannon route the total for the month was 14,250, recovering from September's dip.

Belfast-London

On the Belfast City - Heathrow route, BMI will be well pleased with its October performance where it managed a 3% YoY growth on the route with 46,326 passengers. Over at Aldergrove, Aer Lingus has seen its slide on the - Heathrow route continue with a 6% YoY decline with 23,132 passengers. BMI 1-0 Aer Lingus once again.

On the Belfast City - London Gatwick route, operated by FlyBe, passenger figures are up 25% YoY at 19,494. EasyJet's Belfast International - Gatwick route suffered again this month with a 18% YoY fall in numbers to 25,769 although this figure still represents a higher monthly total than in September. FlyBe 1-0 easyJet. From January next, easyJet will be moving its Belfast - Luton service from Aldergrove to City. Is this the start of a trend designed to claw back market share ?

 The Air Accident Investigation Unit (AAIU) of the Department of Transport has issued a preliminary report into the loss of Irish Air Corps Pilatus PC-9M serial 265 which crashed on October 12 last with the loss of the instructor and student pilot crew.

On the day of the crash the aicraft departed Casement Aerodrome on a navex with an intended routing via Carrigallen, Co. Cavan, Maum, Co. Galway, landing at Galway Carnmore for refuelling. 265 departed Casement at 16.20 utc and was followed by two further aircraft at 15 minute intervals, all three intending to follow the same route. At 16.39 hrs, 265 reported to Shannon ATC that it was over Carrigallen at an altitude of 1,500ft, setting course for Maum, Co. Galway. It was last located by Shannon Radar at 16.55 hrs over Lower lough Mask at an altitude of 1,300ft.

At 17.10 hrs the AAIU was notified by the Castlebar Fire Station Officer that a resident of Crumlin Valley had reported an aircraft crashing nearby. Shannon ATC had also been notified of the same event and asked the second Pilatus aircraft to search the area. A limited search was conducted in failing light and weather conditions but did not find anything. Local residents eventually located the search site and directed emergency services. Since the aircraft was fitted with two ejector seats which had not been fired the area was secured until the following morning when the explosive charges in the seats could be disarmed. The crash site was at a height of 800ft on the northerly slopes of the Crumlin Valley. The aircraft was destroyed on impact when it hit the second and lowest of a series of three ridges.

Once the seats were disarmed the bodies of the two pilots were removed. The aircraft wreckage was airlifted from the scene and taken by road to the AAIU facility at Gormonstown Co. Meath. The memory unit from the aircraft Cockpit Voice and Flight Data Recorders was located in the debris field and sent to the manufacturer's facility in the US where the data thereon was recovered.

No technical defects have been identified to date. The investigation continues.

The latest Ryanair B737 arrived in Dublin on delivery this afternoon. The aircraft is msn 38489 and carries hex code 4CA735. It arrived in Dublin just after 14.00 as RYR 800Z. Pictured above in Michael Kelly's copyright photograph, EI-EFZ is seen on finals to Dublin's R28 against a wintery sky.

Flight BAF 612 lands on Shannon's R24 at lunchtime ....

and taxies round for departure again back to Brussels.

The Belgian Air Force's Airbus A330-300 visited Shannon on a training flight today. The aircraft registered CS-TMT (msn 096) is on a four year lease from Portuguese operator Hifly. The BAF took delivery of the aircraft in October. Since then the livery has been enhanced with a roundel on the tail, Belgian flag colours on the winglets and an unusual red dorsal stripe which forms part of a Belgian flag atop the fuselage. Flight BAF 612 arrived from Brussels at lunchtime today and immediately taxied for departure, holding just long enough to let British Airways flight "Speedbird 1" land.

Saturday afternoon at Shannon saw Bombardier Learjet 60 registered N50154 arrive on its Transatlantic delivery flight. MSN 60-379, the aircraft was routing St. Johns - Shannon - Turin where it will be based with new identity I-SDAG. Pictured above N50154 is seen on finals to R24 at Shannon. Thanks to Malcolm Nason for the tie up.

XL Airways France visited Dublin on Saturday Novemebr 14 with A320 F-GTHL. The aircraft is a rather elderly 1991 vintage with msn 169. Its unfortunate pedigree is a roll call of airline casualties in the past twenty years :

• F-OHFR with Volare in its various guises
• G-UKLL with UK Leisure
• C-GRYY with Royal Airlines
  
• G-BWCP with Excalibur 

Comlux Malta's Global Express registered 9H-AFP was an unusual visitor to Dublin yesterday, November 14. The aircraft which uses Comlux's "Millenium" callsign is msn 9167 and was delivered to the Maltese operator in April of this year. 9H-AFP was previously registered HB-JGY to sister company Comlux Aviation of Switzerland and is seen in Michael Kelly's copyright picture on finals to Dublin.

Weather diversions are pretty uncommon nowadays with the availability of CAT II/III and autoland capability. If anything Shannon tends to create weather diversions when fog or crosswinds put the field outside limits for aircraft, so it was a welcome surprise when KC-135 serial 63-8875 diverted in yesterday morning, November 14. The aircraft is operated by the 190th ARW/117ARS Kansas ANG based at Forbes Field, Topeka Kansas and was en route Mildenhall. The storm which crossed the UK over the weekend put Mildenhall out of limits for the aicraft so the crew eleted to divert to Shannon. Pictured above in the copyright picture by Malcolm Nason, 63-8875 is seen on taxiway Charlie on arrival and is expected to continue on to it's final destination at Incerlik on Sunday.