Briefs

Only two weeks into the New Year, two regional aircraft have sustained fatal crashes. An Air Midwest Beechcraft 1900 crashed on takeoff at Charlotte, N.C., enroute to Greenville/Spartanburg, S.C. The aircraft carried 19 passengers and two crewmembers. There were no survivors. Cause of the accident is still...

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• Only two weeks into the New Year, two regional aircraft have sustained fatal crashes. An Air Midwest Beechcraft 1900 crashed on takeoff at Charlotte, N.C., enroute to Greenville/Spartanburg, S.C. The aircraft carried 19 passengers and two crewmembers. There were no survivors. Cause of the accident is still under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). A Turkish Airlines RJ100 crashed in heavy fog during an approach to Diyarbakir, the capital of the mainly Kurdish southeast. Out of 80 passengers, only five survived the crash.

 

• US Airways Express has begun regional jet service in Erie, Pa., operating one daily nonstop roundtrip flight to US Airways' Pittsburgh hub. The new service will be operated by US Airways Express carrier Mesa Airlines using 50-seat Embraer ERJ145 regional jets. US Airways Express currently operates nine nonstop roundtrip flights each business day between Erie and Pittsburgh with 37-seat and 50-seat Dash-8 turboprop aircraft, flown by both Allegheny and Piedmont Airlines. With the addition of the regional jet flights, US Airways Express will continue to operate nine daily nonstop flights on this route.

 

• British Airways has announced plans to scale down its domestic commuter operation, while at the same time introducing new regional services. CitiExpress, a BA carrier, plans to withdraw from 21 regional routes and will no longer fly from Cardiff and Leeds Bradford airports, but will start operating from London City next April with the launch of three new routes to Frankfurt, Glasgow and Paris Charles de Gaulle using AVRO RJ100 aircraft. British Airways is expected to announce the introduction of three new routes and extra capacity for its Manchester network. CitiExpress has also signed a tentative agreement to transfer its fleet of 12 29-seater Jetstream 41s and its associated engineering hangar at Glasgow to Eastern Airways as the first part of an accelerated strategy to move to an all-jet regional operation.

 

• EasyJet is expanding service throughout its system, including inauguration of a daily noontime flight between Inverness and Gatwick commencing Feb. 3. The operation will compete with BA CitiExpress three times daily services flown with an AVRO RJ. EasyJet continues with its daily flights to Luton. Biggest winner is the tiny, but modern, Inverness Airport that has also recently seen the introduction of a thrice daily Eastern Airways link into Manchester International. The airline will also add two new routes from Belfast to London Gatwick and Newcastle. The thrice-daily service to London Gatwick begins on Feb. 3, and will run alongside the existing routes to London Luton and London Stansted airports. A twice daily service to Newcastle-upon-Tyne starts on March 30, and will be the only low-cost service to Northeast England from Northern Ireland. On Jan. 8 EasyJet launched its new daily service between Liverpool John Lennon Airport and Alicante. This will increase to a twice-daily service on Sundays. As Alicante is the gateway to the Costa Blanca, there has been a strong response from holidaymakers, golfers and Spanish holiday homeowners from across the Northwest in particular, and it is estimated that around 100,000 passengers will fly between Liverpool and Alicante with EasyJet over the next year, EasyJet said.

 

• FlyBE will expand services from its two key UK bases at Birmingham and Southampton. This summer FlyBE will add Milan (Bergamo) and the Isle of Man, giving its network a total of 13 destinations. At Southampton, new routes will be launched to Belfast City, Dublin, Geneva, Jersey and Milan. Next winter Barcelona and Nice will join the network. FlyBE's Southampton services will initially support four aircraft, although it plans to expand to a 10-aircraft fleet and add further services to Brussels, Copenhagen, Lyons, Toulouse, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

 

• Great Plains Airlines will begin service in March to Austin, Texas, from Albuquerque, N.M., Colorado Springs, Colo., and Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Okla. Also in March, Great Plains will begin service between Austin and Washington Dulles International Airport with brief stops in Oklahoma City or Tulsa, without having to change planes. The airline has recently applied for slots that are coming open at Washington Reagan National Airport. The airline flies 32-passenger Fairchild Dornier 328JET regional jets. The airline plans to add four more 328JETs to its existing fleet by mid-February. Great Plains will lease the aircraft.