BBMF Dak arrived at Leuchars around 1245 this afternoon. Did a lovely flypast before landing. Spitfire and Hurricane arrived 15 mins later.

The charges are set to whatever the airline has managed to negotiate with each airport hence the variation, although certain charges are fixed, such as airport departure tax.

Basically each airport charge the airlines a fee for each passenger that passes through the airport. The fees cover such things as baggage handling, security checks, use of airport facilities (toilets etc), use of check-in desks, etc, etc.

I am not a genious in this area but it seems to me that it is only ryanair who have these kinds of problems!!!

You never hear of Jet2 or air southwest having these sorts of issues with airports!!!

Trust me Ryanair are not the only ones with this problem, its just that Ryanair use the dispute for publicity and to put additional pressure on the airport(s) in question.

To be frank its a very complex subject. However as someone who has seen the effects of fleet commonality, I can tell you the cost savings are not to be sniffed at – i.e. several million ££s!!!

With regards to the benefits on the crew side of things, if an airline operates a fleet of 10 a/c for its short haul operation, regardless if its a single type or mixed fleet, the airline will still need approximately the same number of pilots.

BA have issued a press release on their website, (http://www.ba.com) with regards the future of the BA collection, if anyone is interested.

The VC10 is up for the chop too, with the ‘intention’ of sending the front section to Brooklands, along with some parts of ‘technical interest’.

The aviation industry is not as ‘fuddy-duddy’ as you think. If you were able to view ‘behind-the-scenes’ of any airline you would more than likely find a relatively ‘young’ management team. The first airline I worked for, was originally setup by two people in their mid-twenties, with a couple of 19 seat aircraft, operating ad-hoc charters for the oil industry. Nine years later it had a fleet of eight SF340’s and a single BAe 146 operating across the UK and Europe and was sold to a large UK airline group.

Age is not a handicap – lack of experience is. Even though the two people who started the airline were young, they had already gained several years commerical experience with a now defunct UK airline. As with so many others, they came into this industry straight from school/college and worked their way up.