Afternoon all,
Took advantage of one of Mr O"leary's buses to go to DUB for the day for
French rugby football visitors.
For those of you not familiar with Ryanair, they operate along Southwest
Airlines ideas, extremely low cost.
There has been a few interesting developments over the last few weeks in the
low cost market involving Scotland. Ryanair announced that they were to buy
Buzz, owned by KLM. Buzz are based at London Stansted, which now has slot
issues, and RYR are essentially buying the slots and shutting down Buzz,
other than taking over any profitable BZZ routes.
Although all of RYR's aircraft are Irish registered, and the airline
operates ostensibly from Dublin as a home base, something like 25 of their
737-800s are based at Stansted, with 12 or so 737-200s based at Dublin,
mainly doing flights to the UK.
Glasgow Prestwick - Dublin FR771 EI-CJC Sched: 0700-0745
The aircraft we travelled on was built for Britannia Airways around 1979,
and looked most of its 24 years. RYR recently announced the retirement of
its 737-200s for later this year, so it was nice to get on this one. In fact
I had flown on this craft in its previous guise in 1992, from Glasgow to
Thessaloniki in Northern Greece. That flight was 3 hours 30 minutes, a bit
longer than today's! 'CJC is a logojet, painted in Hertz rent a car colours,
even the top of the wings are yellow!
We pushed back at 0703, but pulled straight back to the gate with an
electrical problem, before pushing again at 0723. On the field were a North
American 757 N756NA doing a trooping flight (I think), and no less than
eight USAF C-130s, doing whatever the military do......
The flight was maybe 60 per cent full, I'd paid about 50 pounds for the
round trip, about US $80, which is at the higher end of RYR's fares on this
route.
We departed at 0743 and landed at 0817, just 34 minutes later.
At Dublin we got a taxi to the end of the active runway, with no security
problems and a fence which dips between photographer and aircraft, shot
quite a few rolls.
Highlights were :
D-CBIG Beech 1900D EEX = Avanti Air
EC-HKR 738 AEA = Air Europa rugby chrtr
EC-IJH 330-300IWD = Iberworld rugby chrtr
EC-IMA 321 LTE (all white) rugby chrtr
EI-JIV Herc ABR = Air Contractors
F-GIXC 733 ARP = Europe Airpost rugby chrtr
F-GVZF AT4 ARF = Airlinair (all white) rugby chrtr
F-GPTC CRJ LIT = Air Littoral rugby chrtr
F-GOAF 732 BIE = Air Mediteranee rugby chrtr
F-GYAM 735 BIE rugby chrtr
F-GYAN 321 BIE rugby chrtr
F-GNFC 733 AIS = Aeris rugby chrtr
F-GNFH 733 AIS rugby chrtr
F-GNFT 733 AIS rugby chrtr
F-GNFU 733 AIS rugby chrtr
F-GIXH 733 AAF rugby chrtr
F-GIXG 733 Axis AW rugby chrtr
F-GNLG 100 BLE = Blue Line rugby chrtr
F-GRND 738 EUL = Euralair rugby chrtr
G-BUXT D228 AWW = Air Wales
G-XLAG 738 XLA = Excel Airways rugby chrtr
G-ORCP HS7 JEM = Emerald Airways
G-MONC 752 MON = Monarch AL rugby chrtr
HB-AFD AT4 FRN = Farnair Europe rugby chrtr
LX-GDE EM2 Luxaviation rugby chrtr
OE-HMS D3J TJS = Tyrolean Jet Service
apparently carrying the Dixie Chicks
OO-DLL 300 BCS = DHL Europe
LX-LGW EMB145 LGL = Luxair
SE-DZB EMB145 SKX = Skyways
SE-LEG HS7 SWN = Westair Sweden
Highlights gotta be either the Iberworld A330-300, which they haven't had
long and is ex- LTU Germany, and a blast from the past, a departing HS748 of
Westair Sweden. Ahh, the sound of the RR Darts.......
Dublin - Glasgow Prestwick FR778 EI-CJH Sched: 2050-2130
'JH is painted in regular RYR colours, and was full due to a big Irish
contingent attending the following days soccer match in Glasgow between
Celtic and Rangers.
We pushed back at 2052, were airborne at 2059 and landed at 2132, again 34
minutes flying time.
All the best from Scotland
Jim