Eastern and bmi launch MAN to INV and Dundee

[ajamieson]

Press release just in...

Release date: October 10, 2002 Media release ref:
166/02

NEW MANCHESTER-DUNDEE AND MANCHESTER-INVERNESS BUSINESS LINKS FROM NOVEMBER 4

Eastern Airways in association with bmi has announced that from November 4 it will operate new services from Dundee and Inverness to Manchester.
There will be three daily flights each way between Manchester and Dundee and Manchester and Inverness from Monday to Friday, providing business travellers with a convenient means of commuting around their working day.

The services will also provide Scottish business and leisure travellers with easy access to a key intercontinental gateway offering direct flights to over 170 destinations worldwide, including Europe, North America, the Middle East and the Far East.

Journey times on the Dundee route will be 80 minutes, with the Inverness service taking around 95 minutes. Eastern Airways, which operates from Terminal 3 of Manchester Airport, will launch the services using an 18-seat Jetstream 32 aircraft.


Manchester Airport Managing Director John Spooner welcomed the
announcement, saying: "We are delighted to welcome these new links. Manchester offers business travellers excellent services to European, US and worldwide financial centres like Frankfurt, Geneva, New York and Singapore. We are sure the services will be a big hit with business and leisure travellers in Manchester and Scotland."

Manchester Airport Chairman Councillor Brian Harrison said: "Manchester Airport has long been many business people's first choice for travel. Now we are making our service even better with the addition of these important new Scottish links."

Eastern Airways Managing Director Richard Lake said: "It has long been our wish to start these services from Inverness and Dundee to Manchester, the UK's third largest airport. We are starting these flights in response to passenger demand."

Eastern Airways also operates three flights a day between Manchester and Norwich from Monday to Friday.

To make a reservation, call Eastern Airways on 01652 680600 or visit www.easternairways.com.

(edited to remove the flight times which won't tabulate properly...)

[Deeko01]

Its fantastic news for Inverness and Dundee ecspecially Inverness, its good to see you dont get penalised for living far north now they have the choice to get to Gatwick, Luton and Manchester, fingers crossed Ryanair will resolve there differences with HIAL and operate from Inverness and Stornoway.

Also good news for Scottish Aviation as a whole!

[canberra]

nice to see dundee getting a new service, but jetstreams? dundees runway is less than 5000' ive always been under the impression that the jeststream 31 and 32 need more than 5000', at leuchars we used to get a lot of corporate jetstreams in they reckoned it was safer to use us instead of dundee. i wonder if they actually mean leuchars? cos ryanair are on about using leuchars.

[ajamieson]

Jute, jam and Jetstreams :D

It is good news for DND, although the fares on these routes aren't the lowest around...

Return fares for Manchester-Inverness cost from £188 (incl tax). Single fares start at £94. Return fares for Manchester-Dundee cost from £184 (incl tax). Single fares start at £92.

I spoke to BD press office and the routes will qualify for earning and burning Diamond Club points. Connections will also be fully marketed by BD, so it will soon be possible, for example, to book DND-MAN-ORD on the website.

Alastair

[chiglet]

AFAIK,
Eastern operate from T1 NOT T3
Usually Stand 16, alongside the BD E145s
we aim to please, it keeps the cleaners happy

[Hogg]

Good luck to them, nice companies , nice crews , nice aircraft, good airports , can i do a route check ;) ;) :cool: Hope it works. ONya Hogg

[Scottie Dog]

Hi Chiglet

As a domestic flight the checkin will actually be done by Bmi and therefore it technically is Terminal 3.

Cheers and I think another pint is due to be downed!

Scottie Dog

:p

[Tiger]

....and MAN-DND is new? Was it not operated by Business Air who was taken over by British Midland, and the route was later dumped?

[dundoniandean]

DND/MAN was indeed operated by (the much missed) Business Air until about 1997 in their own livery and then continued to be operated by British Midland Commuter for a little while before they scrapped it. Business Air's pax figures weren't fantastic but never extremely poor either. Business Air used to operate INV/DND/MAN and back in the morning and then two separate flights in the evening - one going INV/ABZ/MAN and the other ABZ/DND/MAN. The average DND/MAN sector would attract about 12-15 pax I'd say but that was with only two sectors in each direction each weekday. I think Eastern will have to be a bit more reasonable with their prices on the DND/MAN route than with their other routes to be able to attract an 18 seater plane full of passengers three times a day. I'd advise them to advertise the route very well locally - a failing of Business Air's that I'm sure didn't do the route any favours. A lot of people in Dundee were unaware that there was a DND/MAN route when Business Air operated it.

Good luck to Eastern. Nice to see DND getting on a bit better too. All DND needs now is a carrier willing to operate to LTN and offer industry employees a hefty discount!!!

[canberra]

i stand corrected they are flying in to dnd and not adx! but i wonder how often they'll divert to leuchars? dnd did have a run to lhr in the mid 80's, it went via cax. very often it was running late and dnd were as bad as abn for closing with aircraft inbound, so the 748 of euroair would end up at leuchars. ive always thought of dnd airport as the blk of scotland!

[Mister Geezer]

Great news for INV and DND :)

Eastern deserve to do well and I wish them all the best.

Will EZE be nightstopping crews at DND and INV or will they be basing crews there? Any ideas or does any one know?

INV will always miss their LHR route and with BA moving most of their long haul ops out of LGW to LHR, it is good to see that the Highlands will have a new link to worldwide connections out of MAN, the bmi code share can only be a big plus for the passenger for both routes. Hopefully for many, a car journey from Dundee to EDI to fly to AMS/LHR/LGW etc will be a thing of the past for Dundee locals who can now start their international journey from their own door step!

I would agree on the point on strong advertising. If the locals don't know about it then it will not be a success - simple! However since these two routes will be a nice catch for the Airport operators, then I am sure Dundee Council and HIA will do their bit and try and promote the new route!

Good luck EZE! ;)

[P.Pilcher]

Rumour has it that they will be basing crews at both Dundee and Inverness. Good luck to any new crews that they take on. From what I hear, they will need it!

[Meeb]

P.Pilcher, do you know if Eastern are recruiting for DND and/or INV? Their website does not have any recruiting information anymore.

[P.Pilcher]

Meeb:
It is hard to say. Before they announced these routes they certainly had surplus crews at some bases and they had started to reduce their flight crew numbers. Then they seemed to suffer a bit of a change of heart due, possibly, to negociations for these routes becoming nearer to fruition. In the current situation I doubt they will openly announce recruitment for anyone as they are almost certainly receiving loads of unsolicited CV's every day so thy will just pick a few of these if they need more crews. From what I hear, they are treating their flight crews like some other organisations tend to when there is a surplus of pilots. Thus they will be another company who wonder where all their pilots have gone and panic about how they are going to operate their routes when the situation changes.

Sorry I can't be the bearer of better news.

P.P.