unless of course, the 737s are operating with restricted take-off weights which reduce their range

Correct

Looks like Aurigny, the Channel Island airline, could be sold to Blue Islands…:( (the sad face is because I really like Aurigny, even though I’ve never flown on them, I just love the look of their aircraft. Will defo have to go on a flight with them before the sale goes through, if anyone is interested in joining me PM me!)

However, Aurigny’s perferred choice of selling to Blue Island has, of course, upset another close competitor (Flybe), who released this following statement a couple of days ago:

Whilst I can in part understand why BE feels hard-done by, seeing as it has made several attempts already to buy Aurigny in the past, I personally think that Blue Islands is actually a more suitable carrier to take on the Aurigny name/brand because they already have experience of operating both ATR and Britten Norman BN2A Mk. III Trislander type aircraft whereas BE has not (they’d probably replace the ATR’s with Dash8 Q400’s or E195s, but will have to keep the Trislanders for the short island-hop routes to Alderney!) and also because Aurigny are always marketing themselves against FlyBe, as the attached image shows.

Anyone else got an opinion on the matter, please feel free to post below.:)

Because Aurigny advertise against FlyBe, FlyBe shouldn’t be allowed to buy Aurigny? Because FlyBe would want to get rid of the ATR they shouldn’t be allowed to buy Aurigny?

Those arguments don’t make a lot of business sense!

They look nice on the outside but some of them are really showing their age on the inside!

We know what the likley response will be about those F class pax (and also with the reputedly healthy bookings for F class on EK) is that they are only feeding into a hub and so not really useful for an airline operating on a point to point basis. But if you aren’t willing to try, you will definitely get no passengers booking F out of a regional.

I can’t say I’ve ever heard that argument from anyone, it is a ludicrous one! Emirates certainly aren’t targeting the point to point market especially not in their premium cabins.

Manchester has always had a small but strong First Class demand, in the past it flowed almost entirely through Heathrow. These days a lot of it still flows down through London (BA certainly don’t continue to fly MAN-LHR for economy point to point traffic!) but more and more are moving out onto the new big seats out of the regions.

Exactly, at the end of last year I paid £250 for a Ryanair flight between Belfast and East Midlands. I only paid £220 for the bmi Business Class ticket from London that same day!

Very nice, wish I’d thought of heading round to Heathrow today!

In Flight Entertainment on all those flights will be pretty good and the seats will be broadly similar.

On AA you will earn 10,000 miles. These can be used for a oneway BA flight anywhere in Europe. On the other two airlines you will get pretty much nothing.

I’ll second that, we had a superb set of flights on ANZ last year. The entertainment system made the 13 hour flights totally effortless.