Swaps do happen, but not that often, mainly because:

1. Aircraft rotation patterns are worked out in advance, and the higher capacity may be required on a later service on the same airplane later in the day

2. In many cases crew availability and qualifications may restrict the swapping of aircraft, especially if night-stops away from a base are part of the crew plots

3. Swiss use some of the GVA-ZRH-GVA services to move a/c from and to maintenance and sell these “ferries” anyway to make some money out of what would otherwise be a total non-rev sector

4. Smaller a/c wouldn’t always work on longer sectors due range/payload restrictions

Andy

Oooo… I only screened that one on a.net a few hours ago, and at the time was thinking “that’s quite a sharp paint job” Nice one! Its going to get quite a good viewing over on a.net, because I put it on the a.net home page banner.

Andy

Tee hee hee……. 😀

Grey, you are nucking futs to go out taking photos on a day like that. Whilst I think its a great image, there’s NO WAY I’d freeze my whatsits off for a photo! :p

Andy

Can’t remember for sure – not long though… Might have been only one summer season. For what its worth, British Midland (Derby Airways) also operated scheduled services on DC-3s to Bembridge many many years ago.

Ah the Dash-7s though – wonderful turboprops they were! I used to like sitting in row one, which faced backwards – quite an interesting experience. I remember flying into BHX one day from LHR, and the Dash-7 landed on the short runway 24. Even better than that though, he touched down on 24 and vacated left onto taxiway D which goes to the main apron, BEFORE reaching the main runway 15/33 – must have been no more than 400m landing roll – quite amazing.

Another useless fact about British Midland’s Dash-7s – one of them was used to open the new Welshpool airfield some years ago. The airport has an 830m runway. I think that the local population had hopes that its landing there signalled the possibility of scheduled services from Welshpool but it never happened and I presume that the Dash-7 is the largest aircraft to have ever landed there.

Andy

Didn’t fly on charters very often… My list includes only British Airtours 707-400 (Conway powered), Dan Air Comet 4b and 4c, Orion Airways 737-200, Aviogenex 727-200, British Airtours 737-200, Dan Air 737-400. And that’s about the lot – I fly “real” airlines now!!!

Andy

Hey, that’s not quite right A330… Gemini did a VERY nice JMC DC-10-30 a while ago.

Andy