FlyBe Flight Report 13th Dec LGW – BHD – LGW

After the fiasco that was Wednesday, where my flight to Belfast was cancelled, I finally made it to Gatwick airport this morning by 0800. I joined a practically non existant queue (A far cry from Wednesday where it was doubling back on itself) and was given seat 1F, plenty of leg room and a nice window seat too! Arguably the best in the house!
I quickly ventured up onto the spectators gallery for a few minutes. Here I saw GulfAirs first flight to LGW, A4O-LH, theur newest A340, ZS-PBI, Nationwides 767, and a few other bits and pieces.
I wandered back downstairs and through the large security queue, and all the way down the dark, even dank corridor that leas to the Domestic pier. Here I got my first sighting of my plane, G-BVCE.
This BAe 146-300 previously belonged to National Jets Italia, and was painted in BA colours as part of a franchise agreement. FlyBe have only recently acquired it, and as such it is still in basic BA colours with a Flybe sticker on the front:

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/459584/M/

After a short wait, and being the last person to be called up I borded the aircraft, and took a seat right at the front. The air conditioning didn’t seem to be on, and the interior showed that it had been in storage for a while. After a short delay, we got going, however several high power engine runs were done before we got taxiing.
We held short of runway 26L for about 30 minutes before departing, however for about 15 of these minutes GB Airways brand new A320, G-TTOI was parked next to us, awaiting her maiden flight. Never have I seen wheels so clean!
Shortly she was off, and not long after so were we. A couple of feet into the air and we were in turbulence, something that didn’t dissipate until the same altitude over Belfast! The flight was very rough and uncomfortable all the way through, and was rather unpleasant. Eventually we were on finals for runway 22 at Belfast City, and after a very turbulent approach, which saw us yawing, banking, and having excessive changes of thrust deplyed from the engines, we finally settled about half way down the runway after one very hard, and one not so hard bounce.
We vacated right, and I was off the plane, surrounded by a whole host of other FlyBe, and one BMI aircraft.

I had already been checked in for my return journey, but was a bit miffed to see I had been given seat 3D, an aisle seat on a 146. I was 100% certain that the flight was 146 operated, I’ve never seen, or even heard about a FlyBe Dash 8 at Gatwick! We sat in the restaurant cum viewing gallery in the terminal, whilst listening for the announcements telling us our flight was delayed 20 minutes. The lack of any 146s on the ground was beginning to worry me, considering there was only one FlyBe Dash 8 inbound on finals at the time. Listening with my scanner I was surprised, flabergasted, and then very excited to hear the Tower Controller giving the landing Newcastle Dash 8 his slot time for Gatwick!
The aircraft was G-JEDJ, a Dash 8 Q400!
http://www.airliners.net/open.file/340677/M/

At the correct departure time we boarded her, and the lfight was approximatley half full. However some people had chosen to move around becasuse of this, and the FA had to get quite stroppy because it was going to effect the aircrafts trim!
Eventually we got off however, and I was a bit dissapointed in that it felt just like the 300 and Q300 varients I had been on last month. We had an uneventful flight, with the turbulence only picking up approaching London. I have still yet to have a really bad flight in terms of turbulence, and although the bumps were only moderate, this evenings was still the worst I had ever expereinced.
Eventually we were on the localiser for 26L, and only this time was I to become aware of the differences between the 300 and the 400. The turbulence was still quite bad down the approach, and a fair bit of rudder was being used to keep us steady, however the extra flex the plane was producing becasue of its elongated length was really notriceable, verging on the point of making me a touch disconcerted!
However we touched down with no bounce, and taxiied back to the same gate we left from.

All in all the flights were OK, the service was let down by the first flights cancellation on Wednesday, but for the same price as Easyjet, or a full fare Ryanair, there is really no contest, and it will be really interesting to see where FlyBe stand in terms of destinations this time enxt year!