rdc1000*cough cough*
haven’t been here before with start-up airlines at Oxford with a varsity tagline using a Jetstream?
Shhhhhhh, we’re not allowed to mention that :diablo:
rdc1000Ryanair would perhaps be on the list because they look for airports which fit certain criteria.
And the airlines we spoke to about southend weren’t interested, station or no station.
rdc1000Yes, they have runway issues. The runway is roughly 1600m, although the TORA/TODA/LDA are all well below that too. The declared distances are affected by issues such as a road and railway adjoining the site, which causes problems for the RESAs.
This makes it too short for Ryanair, who’s minimum requirement is a bit higher. It is adequate for Flybe, who looked at the Airport for a wider range of services, but they haven’t progressed that line. They have had charter services in the past, including services to Malta, so it shouldn’t be a complete barrier to attracting services.
rdc1000But the fact it wouldn’t raise eyebrows in any other situation is completely and totally irrelevant. It wasn’t another situation, it was this one. We all know people make flippant remarks all the time but there has to be a certain amount of thought as to when and where they’re made.
Paul
But what I don’t understand is why we have to feel superior because we’re interested in aviation? To Joe Bloggs on the street, intelligent or otherwise, a flippant comment is a flippant comment, and whilst aviation is a significant target for terrorism, it is not the only target as incidents in Madrid and on the 7th July in London proved. Has the UK really reached a point where a comment of that nature is not acceptable under ANY circumstances?
Those of you who use twitter, or facebook (I only use the latter) need to put it into the perspective of what you may write in your status’, and where you make comments aimed at people or businesses, or situations, then just assume that Joe Bloggs on the street may make the same comment about aviation, and so they should be able to.
I am fully aware of the security issues and potential impact on aviation, but let’s not be too elitist here and either apply the same standards across the board, or follow my favoured route, take such comments (regardless of aim) with the intent with which they were written.
rdc1000Absolutely the same thing. Southend has tried hard to attract services too for a number of years, but has failed on the whole, with the exception of the Jersey flights by BE. The airlines don’t want to go there for a reason.
rdc1000You cannot take the airport out of the equation, as you put it because that is exactly the reason for the problem and the debate we are having. Anyone will know, unless they have been dwelling in a cave for a decade, just how sensitive anything to do with flying and security is. So to tweet what he did makes him either wilfully irresponsible or stupid, or both. Either way he is a moron.
I took the Airport out the equation to show that people make flippant comments all the time in this way, and security or not, this comment, airport related or otherwise, reflects the type of flippant comment that wouldn’t raise any eyebrows in any other respect.
rdc1000Not necessarily the runway expansion which will bring benefits for the maintenance business which underpins the Airport’s business currently.
But they are investing huge and unecessary sums of money in the new railway station and associated terminal in the hope it will attract airlines. It’s like the Field of Dreams, i.e. “if you build it, they will come”, but it doesn’t work like that. They are unlikely to attract large scale ops to cover the costs associated with the new terminal (putting the station costs to one side as it will act as a parkway to London also), and therefore will cripple their business for no need. Furthermore, any airline which chooses to use them will want low charges to start with at least, but again that doesn’t help cover the cost of the development. They’d have been better off refurbishing the terminal (if at all) and continuing to try and attract a carrier, oly once you had an established basis would you want to think about building.
Therefore the white elephant comment is regarding building something that you don’t need, and which may act as a barrier to attracting the very airlines it is built for, due to a desire to fund it through route development.
rdc1000Oh, come on Paul. I didn’t say it was Twitter’s fault – Twitter is inanimate, after all. What I am saying is that if this, to me, infantile communication medium did not exist he could not have sent his stupid tweet. I am not condoning the actions of the authorities in any way. In that I agree with you.
Are you 102 years old? I’ll bet you didn’t like mobiles, or the internet when they first came out eh?? “Not god’s work!”
He acted like a moron and the authorities over-reacted.
He DIDN’T act like a moron! Let’s take the Airport out of the equation because it get’s people fired up. If you’d been sat at a station with friends and been delayed over and over again because of something you judged to be incompetency on the part of a train operating company, you may make some comment verbally to your travel companioins along the lines of “if they don’t get this train here in the next 5 mins I’m gonna go and smack the management round the face”. It’s EXACTLY the same, a vent of frustration aimed at a view of incompetence, but expressed to his friends via a different medium to verbal, or even text.
rdc1000Lots happening, much of it put in place before Stobart took over. Much of it badly informed and creating a massive white elephant.
rdc1000Not the wisest of moves by the young man!! Then again if the wording of the Twitter entry according to the Independent is accurate, it was clearly meant in jest after a frustrating day trying to get to Ireland. The common sense approach to dealing with this incident would be a quiet word in his ear telling him not to do it again and no more police time would be wasted!
It should never have got so far as to need a “word in the ear”, what nonsense, it was nothing more than an off the cuff frustrated comment.
There doesn’t seem to be a week go by lately that you don’t read about some brain dead imbecile making some sort of silly threat believing it to be funny
It wasn’t a threat, it was never a threat. Somebody at GCHQ appears to have had a panic attack in my view after this showed up on some search system or other. I can’t believe anyobody would have “tipped” off the authorities as mentioned as nobody with two ounces of common sense would have read anything into it. It does make me concerned about the intelligence, or lack of, of our security services and police though!
This to me exemplifies the sad state of Great Britain where it has become unwise to say ANYTHING untowards in jest (whether verbally, or by email, or whatever) for fear it might be taken seriously by the PC-police or even snooped on by law enforcement or by our sinister security services. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realise that such a comment in the context it was made on Twitter is a joke, but sadly the Rozzers in the UK now often have no sense of humour and lack the common sense to distinguish between serious threat and joke, and in failing to do so waste huge amounts of their own time and that of those they misguidedly direct unnecessary attention to.
A
Absolutely!!!!!!! As I said above, I am increasingly concerned about the intelligence levels of people that our government is employing! Furthermore, being that it was on twitter then most of those following this guy would have been his friends, so they would have known the meaning of it. Heck, I threaten things all the time on my facebook status, I use it in the way you would make a face to face comment to someone.
I’m with Mr Rowell. Some things simply cannot be said in jest and this is one of them.
Nonsense, it wasn’t even in the context of terrorism!
rdc1000It’s an interesting strategy, to sacrifice seats for a shop. If it was well balanced then it could be a good replacement revenue stream whilst markets are depressed. However, the fact that they intend to only offer selected items in the shop itself, but offer the full range from a trolley service seems a little strange.
I’m sure a retail expert would tell me that it is an effective way of raising revenues from duty free, it’s probably more effective to let people browse and try. My guess is though, as the market and demand starts to pick up, the shops may disappear over time in favour of seats.
rdc1000It would be unwise of me to comment on a matter relating to my employer going through court, but the article linked to above does not explain the policy correctly.
1L.
That’s because it’s the Daily Mail! They don’t worry about minor technicalities such as factual accuracy.
rdc1000I seem to recall reading that once a flight reaches a certain delay ex-base Ryanair’s policy is to cancel so as to protect it’s punctuality statistics. I would think inbound flights are a different matter as the aircraft needs to be brought back to base regardless.
1L.
I don’t know for certain either way about this to be fair. You could well be right.
The one thing I do know is that my friend who is a Q400 pilot for Flybe has warned me that there are certain flights out of Manchester to avoid at all costs as low loads will regularly lead to cancellations in order to merge flights. Monday evenings and Friday mornings spring to mind. The games the airlines play are interesting, and I guess in this case, BE can do something RYR can’t do because they have higher frequencies and lower loads.
rdc1000It was chaos engine after the takeover, purely because we had doubled in size “overnight”.
I know, that’s why I acknowledged that.
rdc1000Of course it’s defensive, because there’s no statistical backup for rdc’s comment 😉
Anyway we digress
I accept you’ve got better, but your name was well deserved for a while, albeit for 18 months following the purchase of BA Citiexpress when it all went a bit aray for BE.
I think your average delay anyway is only something like 0.5mins better than RYR, and their number of flights delayed by more than an hour is better than yours at 2.6% vs. 3.9%. Since you’re RYR bashing (albeit I think it’s with a pinch of salt) then you have to accept they are better than you in some areas. :diablo:;)
Sign In
