The point was not entirely without some merit.

In the “old days” small airports did have jet service to some nice destinations. In this day and age, it often no longer happens.

For those airports with short runways, the lack of STOL on new aircraft is a real issue. Even CRJ’s and ERJ’s struggle into IOM, and yet in the 70’s a 732 or 1-11 was a routine sight. Nowadays the best we can expect is a 146.

Places like Jersey, Guernsey are in a similar position.

I wouldn’t be too quick to blame the airlines. BAE basicallly does not like airliners and did not want to be involved with them. They pretty much gave up after the Viscount and VC-10:

748: never taken seriously by BAE (or else the ATP would have been better).
ATP: ridiculously poor effort.
J31: Good start, but too uncompetitive compared to the B1900D.
J41: Good start, but no incentive to use them as no J31 commonality.
1-11: Good start, but not taken seriously. The rival DC-9 evolved to the MD-80/90 and thus survived.
146: A joke.

To be fair to BAE, they never wanted to make airliners in the first place, and inherited it all from various mergers/takeovers.

Given that the French/Italians (ATR), Canadians (Dash, CRJ) and Brazilians (EMB) can be successful in the 30+ seat market, there is no intrinsic reason that the UK could not have achieved the same success. But no effort was ever really made.

British aircraft are as good on the world scene as British cars are (ie. not very!)

Nothing to do with Qantas. If they knew in advance that he would be refused entry to NZ, they would be liable to meet the costs for him to fly him back to LA. Plus maybe a fine. Therefore they would not allow him to fly.

Otherwise, I don’t think any airline would turn away business on the grounds of someone being a dodgy historian or a controversial person.

Agree that all prices should be inclusive of “taxes”, though what they call tax and what is actually tax are two different things.

😮 Not quite, alot of work went into making the B717 what it is, it’s a world apart from the DC-9 in terms of systems, avionics, and reliability. We all know that it still retains the DC-9-Type fuselage, apart from the vertical tail.

Indeed, that would be akin to comparing the 707 and 739 or 753; they share a fuselage cross section.

I was supposed to go to Sicily this month, and Alitalia were the only realistic choice. BA for some reason, had no capacity for the return trip.

Sadly I decided that I couldn’t risk my company’s cash with an airline that’s about to go bankrupt. So the trip was cancelled in favour of a less than ideal meeting in Linz next year.

With the amount of food outlets at airports and short flight times I don’t see the need to eat on a plane. I would rather see the fare go down by a few quid.

You really think the fare would go down just because costs have been reduced?

And yet my first ATP experience was LPL-IOM in (I think) the late 80’s. My previous flights had been with a Shed; the ATP was a comparative delight.