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Air Southwest: On 28th July, Air Southwest operated its last flight the SZ467 to Glasgow from Plymouth having initially announced on 6th July the temporary transfer of all flights to Newquay until 29th August due to unavailability of the Plymouth Military radar service. It subsequently announced 14th July that not only would it not resume services from Plymouth as planned but that it would cease all operations at Plymouth and Newquay on a phased basis. From 14th September, four Newquay routes (Glasgow, Guernsey, Jersey and Manchester) will be terminated while services to Cork and Dublin as well as to Aberdeen, Bristol and Leeds Bradford will end on 30th September, which will be the last day of Air Southwest branded flights. Passengers who booked flights from Plymouth can still check in at the airfield, but will be taken to Newquay by complimentary ground transport. The Sutton Harbour Group, which owns Plymouth Airport, had already announced that it would close the airport in December, citing the economic downturn and "challenges for the UK regional aviation market". It has a 150-year lease agreement with Plymouth City Council for the airport, which it will retain following the closure of the airport, which is set to be approved by the Council. Air Southwest became a wholly owned subsidiary of Eastern Airways in December 2010 following its sale by the Sutton Harbour Group. Three of its De Havilland DHC-8-311’s, G-WOWA, G-WOWB and G-WOWE were registered to Air Kilroe Ltd trading as Eastern Airways on 4th July. Two of these aircraft (A/B) took part in a flypast of Plymouth Airport on 28th July to mark it’s closure, G-WOWD has already been disposed of to Skytrans Regional as VH-QQM and G-WOWC left Exeter on 10th July heading to Canada having been sold to Avmax Aviation Services and was re-registered C-GLWN on 19th July.

British Airways (BA): British Airways cabin crew are using the latest iPad model to bring a new dimension to customer service in the air. The iPads enable cabin crew to have prior awareness of customer preferences and a greater understanding of each customer’s previous travel arrangements and it lets crew quickly identify where each customer is seated, who they are travelling with, their Executive Club status and any special meal requests. It gives cabin crew a whole library of information at their fingertips including timetables, safety manuals and customer service updates. When all the passengers have boarded and just before the doors are shut, cabin crew are currently handed a long scroll of paper, listing up to 337 customers. With the new iPads cabin crew will simply refresh their screen when the doors have closed through wireless 3G networks and they will have a complete list of passengers on board. The iPad is currently being trialled with 100 cabin crew with the aim to roll it out to all senior crew members across the airline in the coming months. On 11th August, British Airways launched what it described as its biggest pilot recruitment drive in more than 10 years. More than 800 new pilots will be recruited by 2016 using three combined recruitment programmes. The first will be a new programme to help some 400 applicants to gain a place at an approved flight training school and train to become airline pilots for the first time. This ‘Future Pilot Programme’ will help those who have been prevented or deterred from starting a career as an airline pilot, due to the initial private training costs of around £100,000 (€114,345), which they have had to fund themselves. This programme helps students to secure funding to train as a pilot with successful candidates landing a job as a British Airways pilot.  Unlike its former ab-initio programmes of more than 10 years ago, BA admits it will put no money directly into student pilot training. However, Robin Glover, BA's head of pilot recruitment, said the airline will take "a small risk" by guaranteeing the finance to pay to train carefully selected students. Pilots will not be ‘bonded to the airline for a specific period’ and can move on if they receive a more lucrative offer once the cost of the training has been recovered by the airline on a non-profit basis. This programme is part of a wider pilot recruitment plan at British Airways. The airline is also taking on current commercial pilots and working with the UK Armed Forces to give military pilots a new career in commercial aviation, once their agreed service period has ended. Meanwhile, BA’s and Iberia parent company International Airlines Group (IAG) saw its premium traffic jump by more than a quarter in June compared to the same month last year, while its economy passenger numbers grew by an impressive 6.7%. Combined domestic traffic in both the UK and Spain saw a drop of more than 15% year on year. It also reported a second quarter profit of €190 million, compared with a loss of €71 million in the same period last year, due to the increase in demand for business travel, particularly between Heathrow and New York.

British Midland International (BMI): BMI recorded a total operating loss of £105m or lost £38 per passenger for the first half of 2011. Commenting on the result it’s parent Lufthansa which itself made a slight profit of £2.6m in the same period said that "in the light of the ongoing difficulties in British Midland’s key markets, an improvement on last year’s operating result looks unlikely at present". To address the problem the airline has cut routes and is making changes to its winter schedule including the resumption of its early morning departure to London which involved an aircraft overnighting. This was dropped in summer 2010 schedule, when frequency was also reduced to four per day and its Dublin based cabin crew were made redundant. In order to facilitate this Lufthansa have moved their early morning Dublin-Frankfurt service to a 05:35 departure time allowing the 06:45 slot for the BMI service. How Lufthansa passengers will react to that remains to be seen but it will certainly facilitate an early arrival into Frankfurt! For the winter BMI will not be using the Embraer ERJ-145s on the route which will be operated mostly by A319s at the four per day frequency. BMI is also improving its service with the introduction of hot breakfast wraps on flights departing before 10:00 and hot wraps on flights departing between 12:00 - 13:30 and from 17:00 onwards. Flexible economy passengers will also receive a slab of Victoria sponge, lemon drizzle or carrot cake on UK, Ireland and Hanover flights departing between 10:00 – 12:00 and 13:30 - 17:00. Meanwhile a former cabin crew member based in Dublin Yvonne Scales (40) told an employment appeals tribunal that she should have received a better payment under Irish law as she was working for BMI in Ireland when she left the company. She had been working in Manchester when redundancies were announced there but moved to Dublin in 2009, where she worked with BMI for a trial period at half the number of hours she had been on in the UK. She subsequently took redundancy following a meeting with BMI management. This was processed through UK - rather than Irish – law which resulted in her receiving only half the amount. The airline said that there were no job losses in Ireland in 2009 and that her redundancy was on the basis of her Manchester position. Ms Scales said she believed BMI knew there would be redundancies in Dublin, which happened in January 2010 but the tribunal rejected her claim.

Cello Aviation: Cello Aviation the private UK charter company based at Birmingham Airport who’s Avro Business Jet G-RAJJ was used for the State visit of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to Ireland celebrated its first anniversary in July. During that period, Cello has grown to 22 staff and has already generated a loyal client base. The company are also planning on increasing their fleet, with the addition of another aircraft later in 2011 and this will generate another 10 to 15 local jobs, both directly with Cello, and indirectly with caterers, brokers, and other services to the airline. The aircraft paid two visits to Dublin during August being noted on the 8th and 15th.

easyJet: easyJet will operate extra flights from Belfast to Amsterdam and Geneva this autumn. There will be six more flights each week from Belfast International to the Dutch capital and two additional services to the Swiss city. Six A319s are currently based at the airport and from 2nd April 2012 it will operate twice daily to London Southend Airport and once on Saturday. The new flights are part of a plan to establish a base at Southend with three A319s and over 150 employees. EasyJet expects around 800,000 passengers to fly in the first year and on 26th July announced seven routes (Amsterdam, Alicante, Barcelona, Faro, Ibiza, Malaga and Mallorca) in addition to Belfast, which will support 70 flights per week. A further two European destinations have yet to be announced. To celebrate the announcement, Sally Gunnell, a local Essex girl and Olympic champion, joined local pupils from Eastwood School, at London Southend Airport. The pupils then joined Sally onboard G-EZDU which flew in from Luton for the occasion where they asked her questions about her sporting achievements. easyJet continues to make progress in implementing the strategy outlined last November. Which has resulted in it raising its full-year pre-tax profit guidance to £200 - £230 million (€228.7 - €263 million), at current fuel and exchange rates as it reported strong growth in third-quarter revenue which grew 23% to £935 million (€1.07 billion). Passenger numbers grew by 17.3% to 14.4 million in the quarter and the number of seats flown rose by 17.1%. easyJet chief executive Carolyn McCall spoke of the airline's ambition to become ‘Europe's preferred short-haul airline’ over the next 10 years by increasing the volume of business travel with its higher yields. Currently some 18% of the airline's passengers are travelling on business and easyJet is keen to differentiate itself from its competitors such as Ryanair, much like Aer Lingus has attempted to do. While easyJet reached a satisfactory pay deal for 2011 with its UK pilots in the quarter and has now started constructive dialogue with BALPA to secure improved flexibility and competitiveness in return for addressing pilot concerns around the current rostering arrangements, all is not well with its largest shareholder, Stelios Haji-Ioannou. He wants to force a shareholder vote over the airline's plans to buy new aircraft from Airbus, resuming a long-running dispute with the company he founded. In January, easyJet confirmed an order with Airbus for 15 A320 aircraft with options on a further 33. In an 11-page letter sent to Chairman Michael Rake, Haji-Ioannou, said the board should have sought shareholder approval for the order and investors should vote on the deal before any further payments are made to Airbus. easyJet said the latest order, although treated as a new transaction for regulatory purposes, was still part of the 2002 Airbus contract it signed. The aircraft will not be delivered until the latter part of 2013 at the earliest, with the majority of deliveries being in 2014 and 2015, primarily to replace existing aircraft that will be retiring from the fleet at that time. The airline added it intends to hold the size of its fleet at a maximum of 204 aircraft in winter 2011 and winter 2012.

Flybe: On 26th July, Flybe announced a new year-round Dash 8-400 route from Manchester to Ireland West Airport Knock with first flights starting on 30th October. The new routes will operate four times a week (Monday/Wednesday/Friday/Sunday) arriving into Knock at 11:30 and departing out again at 11:55 on weekdays. At the weekend a later service (12:25/12:50) will operate. Flybe has also flown 7.7% more passengers and has seen its revenues improve 8.3% over the past three months, despite higher fuel prices and the tough economic conditions. It flew two million passengers in the three months to June, while average ticket income also rose by 3.4% to £62.27 (€71.20), with total revenues up to £160.4 million (€183.4 million). Ancillary revenues rose sharply to £27.5 million (€31.5 million), with the amount paid by passengers for additional baggage and other services on average up by 8% to £13.89 (€15.88). Chief executive Jim French described the current trading as "encouraging" and confirmed that Flybe had sold three DHC8-400s at a “modest profit” to Rand Merchant Bank of Johannesburg, South Africa ('RMB'), for onward lease to South African Express. Negotiations are being finalised for a further four. Two aircraft have already been delivered. G-JECS which was painted at Dublin (6th-15th July), left Exeter on delivery 3rd August as ZS-YBP and G-JECT which was painted at Shannon (28th July-4th August) as ZS-YBR. Two more, G-JECU and G-FLBG are being painted at Shannon (arrived 12th August) and Dublin (due 22nd – 27th August) respectively. The remaining three are scheduled to be painted at Dublin as follows; G-FLBH from 5th – 9th September, G-FLBJ from 19th -23rd September and G-FLBF from 3rd – 7th October. Flybe, Europe’s largest regional airline and the UK’s Number One Domestic airline, has today announced the strengthening of its Board and, with immediate effect, the re-organisation of its day-to-day divisional operating structure into three new operating units – Flybe UK; Flybe Europe and Flybe Aviation Support. The move has been made to support the ongoing delivery of European expansion and continuing growth in the UK market. Andrew Strong, formerly Chief Operating Officer, becomes the Managing Director of Flybe UK while Mike Rutter, formerly Chief Commercial Officer, has been promoted as Managing Director of Flybe Europe that comprises the company’s European airline businesses, including the recently announced joint acquisition of Finncomm Airlines, any future acquisitions and general organic development. Managing Director of the new Flybe Aviation Support division is John Palmer who is currently Director of Airline Operations. The new division comprises the airline’s Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul, and the Flybe Training Academy.