Great Western Coffee Shop

According to BBC Radio 4 19.00 hours news summary followed by, which I am listening too, Profile on Chris Grayling born on April 1st 1962.

Wrong airline!  It is FlyBMI that has gone into Administration

Well, I did get the FlyB bit right.

Thread title updated to avoid confusion.

The end of the last airline with a link to the British Midland lineage - very sad.

Bristol is (was) their biggest UK base.

Thanks Bobm, posted before engaging my brain, should've checked with a Beeb website search before posting.

Also Loganair which shared the same parent continues.

Sad for those stranded and for employees thrown out of work, but good news for environment.
Short haul air transport is very polluting, and largely needless when high speed/long distance rail is available, and could become more available.

Despite my dissatisfaction with certain aspects of UK rail travel, I am in general pro-rail and anti-airline on environmental grounds.

The opening of the channel tunnel was a great opportunity that has been largely wasted. Remember the plans for through trains, including sleepers, from for example northern parts of the UK to the southern parts of Europe.

Yea, I remember the rolling stock, ordered, delivered, stored at MOD Kineton for yonks and then sold to Via Rail (Canada) for peanuts without giving the through services a trial but then when I can get tickets for a return trip to Glasgow from Bristol and back for a total of £47.97p rail, to me, is NO competition.

Isn't Loganair propped up by Scottish Government subsidies due to their services coverage of the Scottish Islands.

Ditto ... I would add  positives for short (and I do mean short) haul by rail - and that's the time taken to get to the airport and go through procedures, and the relative infrequency compared to trains of most of the routes.   Sadly, rail often seems to be priced out of that market and the question has be be asked "why".

Two of us are flying from Bristol to Glasgow this afternoon and back on Friday afternoon for less than 100 pounds in little over an hour. Compare with the hassle getting to the station ...when Bristol City are playing Wolves in the 5th round of the cup at 1pm....and then the 6 hour journey north with at least one change. The return journey back on the Friday afternoon of half term hardly bears thinking about. And I haven't even mentioned the cost!.That I have just looked up 93.90 off peak single. So that's almost 4 times the cost of the plane. While the planes are low cost/ quick journey, they will always win out over rail with its high cost/ long journey. If one of those factors was to be reversed it would make the decision of plane over train very much more difficult. As things stand at the moment, its a no brainer... and I say that as a keen rail traveller......

Propped up - seems to suggest that they are keeping a bad business going, when what they are doing is giving them a contract to provide a necessary service. 

It is just the same as a local authority giving Stagecoach, Go-ahead, or FirstBus contracts to run subsidised local bus services - is anyone saying they are propping up those companies?  Is anyone suggesting that DB being propped up by subsidies given to run Northern Trains? 

I'm sorry but to suggest that journey times to Europe are, or even could be, competitive by rail is rubbish.

Flybmi had three flights a day from Bristol to Frankfurt, taking 1 hr 45 min.  I had two full days of meetings in Frankfurt with one night stay.  By rail, it would have taken around 7 hours each way, so taking four days and three nights stay.  Totally inefficient in comparison with air.

Similarly, I can get to Edinburgh and back in a day and have a full day of meetings.  The fact that it costs half the train fare to London is an added bonus.

I'm guessing time isn't as important to you as sitting down, scoffing a Pullman lunch, and enjoying a port whilst enjoying the scenery. Lucky you. That's nice if you can afford the time, but for most people it's an indulgence which they can't afford to do, or else their employer won't let them do.  

Sorry, but that's way too simplistic a view Broadgage.

Using Flybmi themselves as an example, they operated a number of routes from Bristol into European business destinations. Business travellers (if they need to travel and not conduct business virtually, which can be the case these days in some circumstances) need to minimise travel time, and that is just not possible if you need to get to somewhere in Europe, or the other end of the UK, on a day-return (or even overnight stop) basis. Flying is the only practical way.

Even if we had high-speed trains running from across the UK (London is the biggest but not the only place with a large business-travelling community) through the tunnel to cities all over Europe, it still wouldn't work, if you need to get there and back in a day.

Speaking personally, I use the train where I can - West Berks to Leeds on day-trips around 4 times a year, just about do-able as a day trip, but very expensive and West Berks to Liverpool in a few weeks, as examples, but I also need to get to the Channel Islands and Northern Ireland for days trips, and air is the only way to do it.

Incidentally, every time over the last year, those flights have been cheaper than the train to Leeds!
 

Whilst I respect the views of others, I do find the vehement support for air travel on a railway forum to be rather surprising.
Air travel uses a great deal of fossil fuel with consequent climate change impact. A high speed electric railway uses no oil fuel at the point of use, and an increasing proportion of the electricity is from renewable sources.

Air travel is indeed often cheaper than rail, regrettably in my view in view of the noise pollution, air pollution and space taken up by airports.
I do not believe that public money should be used to subsidise air transport, apart from very rare and exceptional cases such as air services to very remote islands.

I used to attend meetings on continental Europe quite regularly and would always prefer to travel by train.  However there were limits.  So I when I went to meetings in Paris, Brussels, Delft (change at Rotterdam), Cologne and Bonn. I found trains on these routes quite competitive on time given the amount of time you had to leave to get through check in and security at the airport. 

On one occasion I timed the journey to Bonn (change at Brussels and Cologne) against a colleague who was travelling from Reading.  He beat me to the hotel by 15 minutes. Now if I had not had to change at Brussels I would have beat him by 15 minutes!

On longer journeys such as Lisbon, Berlin and Vienna I flew.

I have to say I find it frustrating that rail is not competitive on time or cost on the journeys to Glasgow or Edinburgh!

You'd love it in Business class, the food is excellent, far better than the Pullman, and available on more than 3 or 4 trips per day!  ;)

Yes, I would enjoy the food in business class, however for environmental reasons I prefer not to fly in any class, and have not flown for many years.

In the late '90s I started working working in Poland and spent several years there. I'd come back to UK to visit family and friends a couple of times a year and had three options for this: long-distance coaches were cheap but not massively comfortable and took about 28 hours, flying was expensive but quick (usually cheapest via Schiphol – this was before RyanAir etc discovered Eastern Europe), and rail – well, the train not only cost more than flying but took longer than the bus. I dare say it would have been more comfortable, but even so... Why? I think* it was because instead of being one fare it was several, albeit all appearing on one ticket; first a train from Warsaw or Krakow to Berlin, then another to Brussels, maybe changing at Cologne as well, before the Eurostar (or a ferry).

Nowadays you can fly direct from Bristol to somewhere far more convenient than Warsaw for not much more than the coach fare. The coach retains its fans due to the effectively unlimited luggage allowance. 

*This is just my uninformed impression. It might be some completely different reason.

Broadgage, I'm on a rail forum because I love trains and they are the form of public transport I use most, by far.

I love aeroplanes as well (I've held a Pilots Licence in the past, and been an RAF Reserve) and my point is that for some journeys, and timings, only air travel works.

Today's modern passenger aircraft are very fuel efficient (the accountants wouldn't have it otherwise) and eco-friendly even compared to those of only a few decades ago.

As Thatcham Crossing says, some air routes clearly beat the competition from railways, just like some journeys are clearly better by rail than air.  An improved rail network, both quicker and cheaper than now, is likely to tip the balance in favour of rail over time, but there will always be some routes where rail will struggle.

We're a public transport forum ... all be it one with a strong rail background, rather than a rail (specifically) enthusiast's club / society.  And as such, we expect and are pleased to see support for effective public transport for the journeys people need of want to make, whatever the best means of making that journey is.

---

Personally, I use the bus, and the train, and I drive.  I will take a boat / ferry and occasionally I will fly medium and long haul. I walk somewhat, but I no longer use a bicycle - I would be a danger to myself and others on the road due to a lack of balance, and walking tires me quickly. Public Transport gives my the ability to relax, read, work, sleep, eat as I travel rather that it being wasted (and tiring) time behind the wheel of a car.  For some destinations, it's a relief and a cost saving to use public transport rather than having to find somewhere to park / store the car, but for others the lack of local transport at final destination is a pain. Sometimes with heavy or awkward things to take, or a journey that has to be at a time there is no convenient public transport, I'll drive even along a supposedly well served public transport corridor.  On occasions, my decision in (any) direction is influenced by cost, and bythe need for flexibility for an unknown return journey time. I would expect that many members might identify with most of this philosophy

Whether you like it or not, the demise of FlyBMI is a big deal for those of us in the west country (myself included) who use their flights for work, particularly if the Bristol routes aren't picked up by another airline.

It means that I can live in the west of England whilst working for a company with an HQ and other offices in Belgium. It also means that my colleagues can manage patches that includes the UK but also a chunk of the continent.

Sure, we can use GWR and the Eurostar, but it takes much longer, means that we have to be away from our families much longer etc. Now you might think that's a bunch of over-privileged people moaning (and you'd have a point). But it's the sort of thing that sooner or later leads manager to say "sod-it" and focus investment and jobs away from more awkward to get to places.     

I also use trains wherever and whenever they are suitable with my travel plans. But for some journeys taking the plane is more convenient.
Recently I had a discussion about the choice of car, plane or train to get from Reading to Lübeck in northern Germany as I have in-laws living there. The choice depends on how long we are planning to stay there - long trips we take the car, for a few days we fly. The number of train changes on this journey make it unattractive - carting luggage around in Brussels, Cologne and Hamburg is hard work and the times needed for the changes is about as long as the flight time!

In this context I looked up data concerning the relative fuel efficiency of the car and an aeroplane.

Figures for aircraft and airline fuel consumption are publicly available. Ryanair is a low-cost airline serving mainly European destinations; it seats 189 people in its Boeing 737-800s. Using typical values for sector lengths, fuel consumption and seat occupancy it can be seen that the fuel consumption is marginally greater than 3 litres/100 km/seat - based on typical sector consumption of something over 5 tonnes and a typical sector being something over an hour. This figure will obviously vary depending on sector lengths, cruising altitude, load, winds and air temperature but will remain close to 3 litres/100 km/seat - it will be neither 1.5 litres/100 km/seat nor 6 litres/100 km/seat.

These are 'ball-park' figures but are not a million miles from the consumption of my car; 50 mpg on the run to Lübeck (without racing...!) is equivalent to 5.6 litres/100 km, say 6 litres/100 km - and with two people in the car the specific consumptions of a Boeing 737-800 and my diesel Golf are about the same.

Unless you walk or swim - all travel is polluting.

How much would your flight cost if there was fuel duty at the same rate as ground-used fuels, I wonder? 

It used to be said that one jumbo jet crossing the Atlantic used as much fuel as all the competitors and spectators in the, then 5 day, RAC Rally.

As may be. Jumbos are on the way out, with Airbus announcing the end of production of the A380. Although Boeing 747s are still being made, albeit in much smaller numbers, airlines are beginning to replace them with twin engined wide-bodies aircraft with much better fuel consumption, such as the 787 Dreamliner and A350 XWB. The last Delta Airlines 747, then 47 years old, retired in 2017. BA still has 30 or so, but won't be buying new ones.

Aircraft engine technology has come in in leaps and bounds, often through what look like simple changes to a fairly simple design. High bypass engines cut fuel consumption, which was much less of an issue in the 1970s, dramatically, and the search goes on. The A320 NEO (my chariot twice recently) uses 20% less fuel than its immediate predecessor, and a third less than early models. It follows that less fuel means less pollution.

A rule of thumb seems to be double pollution for plane vs train. What isn't easy to find is whether this is comparing a brand new IET against a 30 year old 737, or a 787 against a HST, or what. It makes the comparisons less meaningful. As for upping duty on aviation fuel, airlines spend a great deal of effort on fuel strategies. Were the UK to up the ante, and if the numbers added up, aircraft would simply uplift more wherever its cheaper, or start routing long-haul from elsewhere. To a degree, they do this already.

Don't ground based transport use sero duty fuel (red diesel) although I did see a First Group single decker filling up with fuel at a Morrisons Supermarket Filling Station recently and when I asked was told its a regular event as their local depot has no re-fuelling facility.

I think red diesel is only for non-road vehicles: construction equipment, agricultural machinery and similar. Legally at least. And boats of course. Buses are not supposed to use it but to can reclaim VAT (red diesel being duty free in addition to VAT-free). I think.

Correct. With very few exceptions, road vehicles cannot use it. Tractors cannot use it on a road unless travelling between different parts of a farm not otherwise accessible, cutting hedges or verges by a public road, or gritting. On pleasure boats, it can only be used for heating or generating electricity, not propulsion. Recovery of duty is a full-time job for big bus companies.

Yes.  Some years ago an acquaintance of mine had his Audi confiscated by HMRC because they did a spot check and found red diesel in the tank.  (He had a few acres and a small tractor to tow the mower).  He had to pay to recover his car and pay a penalty related to the amount of red they thought he'd used.   

Not only that, he got caught at the assessment point at the western end of the M50 (Ross-on-Wye) and had to make his own way home. At least 2 buses and 2 trains and about four hours of travel for a journey which is an hour by car. 

I've learnt something new today. I knew that airlines were mothballing and replacing their 747s. I had no idea they were still being built.

By the way, good to see the BOAC brand back on one 747. I am now waiting to see a BEA  A319 at some point this year to celebrate BA's 100 year anniversary.

I can assure you that there is no 747 airframe flying that is 47 years old.

BA have some of the oldest, hardest-worked (but well looked-after) 747-400's around, but the oldest currently still flying in their fleet are around 24-25 years (and the youngest around 20), and all will be retired well before they get to 30.

Lufthansa also has some of the oldest, together with some of the youngest 747's, as they are one of very few airlines globally to have ordered the current 747-8 for passenger use (90% of this model so far built are freighters).

This thread is being drifted by a strong tangental crosswind!

To get back a little on course/topic, I was intrigued by -




Surely aircraft fuel consumption is exponentially greater on take-off? Do the figures above represent cruising consumption or do they take into account take-off as well?

And to get back totally on topic - did I hear correctly that FlyBMI had an average passenger load of 18 per flight? In which case presumably each passenger's carbon footprint would have been enormous!

That came from Simon Calder, and I think was a crude calculation based upon the no. of pax they carried in a year, divided by the no. of flights operated.

Even given that their aircraft (Embraer 135 and 145 Regional Jets) only have a seating capacity of around 35-45, it indicates a none too stellar business performance.

747s are still being built, but....................the last passenger aircraft was delivered to Korean Air Lines in July 2017. Boeing are still producing a small number of "specials" for the military and very rich people. There is also a limited number of freight only aircraft still to be delivered.

The ones that Donald will get fall into that category (provided he still doesn't think they're too costly!)
- actually the base airframes already exist, and (ironically) were built for Russian airline Transaero that
went out of business a few years ago.

Among the very rich, you could include the Qatari Royal Family, who have the attached beauty based in it's own hanger at Bournemouth Airport.

Six were delivered last year, down from a peak of 92 in 1970, and 70 in 1990. The order book still has a couple of dozen to be made. It's still Boeing's biggest civilian aircraft, and not everyone likes Airbus. BA have 37, I have since found, all to be retired in the next 5 years.


No, it retired in 2017.

Age alone doesn't weary an aircraft. Take-offs and landings do, so an aircraft on short-haul duties will age faster than the same model flying longer sectors. 747s aren't often used on shorter journeys, but it does happen in some parts, where a route is popular and runway slots precious. As with trains, refurbs can extend life, but the maintenance regime keeps them safe in the air. The two aircraft I flew when training were around 35 years old when I started, but basically serviced every 50 hours and dismantled and reassembled annually.


Until 2011, the Donald's personal plane was a 1968 Boeing 727. The current one is a B757 built in 1991. It has the obligatory gold taps, apparently as a sign of class.


Not half! A lot of fuel is expended on carrying the fuel as well. Sometimes, long haul aircraft will start from the terminal a few hundred pounds over weight, knowing they will have burned plenty by the time they are halfway down the runway. The biggest burn is definitely the take-off and climb.

The biggest skill of a commercial pilot is saving fuel. These days, that's for money primarily, whereas it used to be for range. The pilot will calculate the thrust required to get the plane to take-off speed using a little over three-quarters of the runway - some aircraft do that for him. Then, he will climb at the most efficient rate to cruising altitude, where the jet engine is highly efficient, before calculating an approach as close to a steady glide as air traffic will let him. Fuel is calculated to destination, plus enough for an alternate and circling. Light aircraft, by contrast, always take off on full power, and there is a maxim that you only have too much fuel if you are on fire.


I heard that too. It was clearly not sustainable, in the same way that half-full trains running at every peak period wouldn't be. Not that that seems to be a problem!

Listening to the Beeb Radio 4 financial report it seems Flybe are in a financial mire with a consortium including Virgin having made an offer of 1p per share for the business. The report also stated that Stobart had previously made an offer for the business and that a new prospective owner for the business was now offering 4 1/2p per share.

Not a good sign for the air travel business what with pollution with the Beeb also reporting that greenhouse gases emitted from homes has gone up and the UK are likely not to meet future committed levels and that homeowners will have to take measures to reduce the levels emitted over the next few years from their homes.

The original consortium is Eddie Stobart, Virgin Atlantic, and a US hedge fund. Stobart Group are already into aviation, owning Carlisle Lake District Airport and London Southend Airport, and Virgin Atlantic clearly have experience. The rival bid is from Mesa, an Arizona small airline, backed by a different US hedge fund. FlyBe's board is known to favour the former, thinking it is more likely to guarantee the future of the airline, even though the price is a lot lower. Some view the Mesa bid as a Trojan horse to asset strip FlyBe, with valuable landing slots as the prize. FlyBe's board have said that without a buyer, they will wind up the company.

Over to the shareholders, then. Stobart already have a toe in the door, via William Tinkler (12.2% holding). He is on a number of Stobart's boards, and was previously MD of WA Holdings, former owners of Carlisle Airport. The biggest shareholder is Hosking Partners LLP (18.8%) who so far as I can tell are an American investment company. They are similar to Hargreaves Landsdown, who hold 9.55% as a company and 6.39% as asset managers. Those are the biggest shareholders, with UBS, HSBC Global Asset Management, Wellcome Trust being the only others to hold more than 2%. So no shortage of financial expertise there, then!

So: clear to land, or ready for departure? Time alone will tell, but FlyBe say it is business as usual for now, and are still taking bookings to October. The Fly BMI business caused confusion in places beyond the Coffee Shop, which I hope doesn't cause problems. If I do book a flight, though, I shall use a credit card.

I have bought two flights from FlyBe in May. I did use a credit card!

Should be fine. We hope!

The current Flybe board and those of recent years should really be hanging there heads in shame for mainly burying their heads in the sand and tinkering (with a few exceptions) rather than properly addressing the viability of this business over the last few years.

To do so would have been painful for the workforce, but not as bad as what may be coming now, as one has to think there will be more aggressive rationalisation of the operation to transform it into to the self-standing, profitable business that it needs to be (for the sake of many of the passengers and airports it serves around the UK).

I was flying with them again yesterday, and it was very much "ops normal" with pretty-much full aircraft on both sectors. Also the usual professional service from the airline's crews, who don't deserve to have been put in their current position.

FLYBE takeover just announced: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46834827

New topic required..... :P

Started - at http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=21093.0

These figures include take-off consumption. A 737-800 burns roughly 2,400kg per hour in the cruise, so short-haul routes have a higher consumption per sector than long-haul routes for the same aircraft type.

However as TonyK wrote in post 37, consumption is very carefully controlled by the flight ops department and the flight crew. Maximum, or the required, take-off power is used only for two or three minutes or so after which the engines are throttled back for the climb. Generally it takes about 20-25 minutes to reach cruise altitude of 30 to 35,000ft after which the power level is reduced again. To avoid the passengers having ear problems on decent the rate is usually less than about 2,000ft per minute - corresponding to a cabin altitude change rate of around 400 ft/min (for a cruise cabin altitude of 8,000ft). This means that the engines are returned to flight idle for the 20 minutes or so of the descent until the landing pattern is joined. Of course air traffic control may dictate a less than optimum approach so consumption will be higher than the best case would suggest.

I see another European budget airline, Wow Air, with flights into London and Edinburgh has stopped flying 'leaving thousands stranded'.

https://www.itv.com/news/2019-03-28/thousands-stranded-as-wow-air-stops-flying/

WOW have been on life-support for a while. They expanded very (too) quickly in recent years, with an operation based upon using Keflavik as a low-cost hub for flights into Europe to the east, and USA and Canada to the west.

They were then subject to a take-over bid by the more established Icelandic "full-service" airline Icelandair (who operate in a similar way), but they announced they were pulling-out at the weekend (as I think WOW lost some other investors).

As this was happening, aircraft were starting to be grounded (one in Montreal, that I am aware of, maybe others) as the lessors started to take control.

There is something of a right-sizing going on in the commercial airline industry at the moment, off the back of too much expansion and resulting over-capacity in some markets (low-cost transatlantic being one).

I flew with Wow last October, from Montreal to Keflavik. It was a nice tidy A320 NEO, and was an unremarkable flight. We took off and landed to schedule, with no drama en route. I don't recall empty seats on board. I have also flown with Icelandair, which is a more polished operation than the budget airline. I flew to Vancouver and home from Seattle, both changing at Keflavik, motivated by the low fare. It proved very enjoyable, not least because we stopped in Iceland for 4 days without any extra fare. Newly refurbed Boeing 767 between Heathrow and Keflavik, 757s on the other legs.
It is a shame to see Wow go, but I found it hard to understand how a country of 350,000 people could sustain two international airlines. They do punch above their weight in many ways, though, as the England football team found at the Euro competition.

Discussion regarding FlyBe going into administration now split from this topic.

http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=22994.0

https://www.flybe.com/en
On 28 January 2023, the High Court appointed David Pike and Mike Pink as Joint Administrators of Flybe Limited (“Flybe”).

Flybe has now ceased trading and all flights from and to the UK operated by Flybe have been cancelled and will not be rescheduled.

If you are a passenger affected by this event, please read the advice below.