LGW-BHD-MAN-LGW (Flybe, BACON, Jet2) 21st June

Spent another day flying just for the sake of it, which this time took me to Belfast and Manchester using 2 new types of aircraft for me – the BAe146 & Dash 8. Unfortunately, I only had my longer lens with me for the camera so there are hardly any flight pictures:(

I’ll get on with it then…

BE962
GATWICK – BELFAST CITY
G-JEBB (BAe146-300)
Scheduled Departure Time = 0910
Actual Departure Time = 0925

Scheduled Landing Time = 1040
Actual Landing Time = 1040

I checked in online for this flight the day before and was assigned seat 11A, which meant nothing to me because I didn’t know where abouts it was on
a 146. At least it had a window, I thought:). After by-passing the queues for Flybe Check-in, I went directly to Security Control, which was not very busy today, and only 5 minutes after I had been dropped off, I was in the packed Departure Lounge.

There were plenty of flights going, mainly charter, and many had delays. The ‘highlights’ included a Monarch flight to Alicante delayed by 1 hour, a Monarch flight to Rhodes delayed by 2 hours, another Monarch flight to Rhodes which was delayed by 8 hours (!) and, yes you’ve guessed it, another Monarch flight to Fuerteventura was 2 hours late.

The flight was called to board at around 0830 from Gate 5. When I arrived,
the BAe 146 was just pulling up from Belfast City and a Sterling 737-500 arrived from Billund. A large number of passengers disembarked from the Belfast City flight, almost full it seemed, although my flight had only about 70 people on board.

Boarding started at 0900 and after we had walked up some stairs to the
airbridge, we were directed onto G-JEBB. Cabin seemed nice and clean and I was surprised by how wide it was – I didn’t know that the 146 had 3 by 3 seating. My seat was 11A, just behind the engines with a perfect view of the underside of the wing.The captain came on when boarding was complete at 0910 and announced that we would be off shortly, and true to his word, we pushed back at 0915.

After the engines had kicked into action, the flaps were lowered to 18
degrees and I had the ‘pleasure’ of watching the mechanism, which revealed
itself after the flaps had been lowered. :rolleyes:

Take off was very smooth and quiet and shortly after take off we turned
left, flying directly over London:

The rest of the flight was uneventful as we routed towards Manchester, Liverpool and the Isle of Man. The descent started at about 1020, just before we passed IOM, and we then burst through the clouds and some light turbulence as we flew over the Northern Irish coastline.The flaps were lowered and that funny sound that people here when the flaps are lowered
was heard – quite eery when you hear it for the first time. The captain did warn of some strong winds, but I could hardly feel any turbulence on final approach and we landed bang on time, parking yup next to G-JECF.

It was a very pleasant flight and I would definately fly Flybe again.

BA7604
BELFAST CITY – MANCHESTER
G-BRYZ (Dash 8-300)
Scheduled Departure Time = 1300
Actual Departure Time = 1315

Scheduled Landing Time = 1400
Actual Landing Time = 1400

This was the flight that I had feared the most, because it had the potential to ruin the whole day – the same flight the day before was cancelled and part of me was dreading that the same would happen today. Fortunately it did not, but there was a 15 minute delay posted on the departures board when I entered the lounge.

Time passed quite quickly, fortunately, and soon enough we were invited to go through Door C to Gate 7, where G-BRYZ stood whilst the rain poured down – needless to say I got a bit wet running from the gate to the plane:)

I had seat 12A and I had someone sat next to me. It wasn’t that busy, with only about 25 people on board, but at least that meant that the flight boarded in about 3 minutes! We took off at 1315, which wasn’t bad given that the flight from Manchester only landed at 1250!

Just after take off, we hit some fairly turbulent conditons which chucked the plane about, quite violently at times, for about 10 minutes. Eventually
it stopped as we reached the cruise altitude of 17000 feet for the short 45 minute flight. The BA CONNECT menus were issued to everyone, although I do
not think that anybody took anything.

The captain announced about 20 minutes after take off that we were beginning the descent and that we would be landing on runway 24R at Manchester, so that meant that we had to fly past the airport to the north and then do a 180 turn. Despite this, we landed bang on time at 1400 and taxied to the gate where we were bussed to the arrivals area.

LS905
MANCHESTER – LONDON GATWICK
G-FLTC (BAe146-300)
Scheduled Departure Time = 1800
Actual Departure Time = 1825

Scheduled Landing Time = 1905
Actual Landing Time = 1902

After having watched Portugal v Mexico on a screen in Terminal One, I went
through security at about 1700 and very shortly afterwards, passengers for LS905 were asked to assemble at Gate 9. The plane was already there and so it was obvious that we were going to depart pretty much on time.

The dispatcher came upstairs to the gate and announced that boarding was ready to begin, but the door at gate 9 wasn’t working and wouldn’t open, so they used Gate 7 instead and made us walk along the apron a bit. I got on the plane at 1735, just as an Air Berlin 737-800 pulled up alongside. This time, I had seat 9F, which was adjacent to the engines. Boarding was very swift and there were way more people on board that I had expected – about 90 passengers i think. Unfortunately we had to wait an extra 10 minutes after everyone else had boarded for 2 latecomers to arrive. :rolleyes:

The captain announced that we were ready to go at 1800, but then he returned shortly afterwards saying that they had discovered a problem with one of the engines and that he wanted an engineer to check it over – it apparantly turned out to be an engine ‘clip’ which wasn’t fastened. Soon after, we were on our way and whilst taxiing to 24L, the cabin crew “took us through the safety features of this British Aerospace 146 ‘Whisper Jet'”. 25 minutes later than planned, we departed and turned left, climbing to 19000ft. The flight seemed very short and no sooner had we reached the cruising level, we began to descend into London airspace and position for an arrival onto 26L, which meant we flew to the south of Gatwick and then turned 180 to the left – therefore I could see where I live:).

We touched down very softly at just after 7pm, 5 minutes early which wasn’t bad considering that we were 25 minutes late in leaving! We followed a Sterling 737 to Gate 10 where we disembarked and walked to the Pier 1 terminal building. The new Flybe ‘Logojet’ was there alongside us, as were many easyJet aircraft and another Flybe machine.

In all, the day was great and I loved all of the flights – the BACONnect one was probably the most exciting, though, because of the turbulence:D

Hope you liked.
Tom