Eastern bidding for Air Southwest?

[Humberside]

The owner of Air Southwest, the regional airline operating out of Bristol Airport, has confirmed it will make a “signifiicant loss” on its sale.

Plymouth-based Sutton Harbour Holdings put the troubled airline on the market in May following spiralling losses on cancelled flights caused by snow, the knock-on effects of the Icelandic ash cloud and the cost of launching new routes.

Sutton Harbour chairman Michael Knight told shareholders at the group’s AGM that talks are continuing with a number of potential buyers, believed to include Eastern Airways, the regional airline based in Humberside which operates flights between Bristol and Aberdeen.

www.bristol247.com/2010/07/16/significant-loss-expected-on-sale-of-air-southwest/

[Humberside]

Deal to be announced shortly?

Negotiations on a deal to sell off Air Southwest have reached an advanced stage with the airline's parent company facing increasing financial pressure to sell.

Sutton Harbour Holdings has been in talks with suitor Eastern Airways since it announced that it was putting its loss-making Plymouth airline on the market in late May.

A Sutton Harbour spokesman for the company said that discussions had now reached "a crucial stage".

An aviation industry source said a deal was likely to be completed within the next two to three weeks, with the prospect of its operations being scaled back in order to make the business viable.

Three regional airlines are understood to have considered making an offer for Air Southwest — Humberside-based Eastern Airways, Exeter-based Flybe and Guernsey-based Blue Islands.

Of those, only Eastern remains in the frame.

www.thisiscornwall.co.uk/news/Deadline-looms-airline-sale/article-2601815-detail/article.html

To be honest I'm not sure what there is for T3 to gain with Air Southwest. Air Southwest are not a niche business carrier like T3 - they are more of a 'general' regional airline. Newquay is unlikely to be able to sustain the T3 business model, but without NQY, some of the Plymouth routes would probably be unviable both in terms of loads and possibly the PLH runway length. Add in PLH-GCI/JER not being typical T3 routes and there is not very much left

[pug]

Hadnt Eastern shown a big interest in the dash-8 some years ago as a future replacement of the J41?

I know that such a shake up is unlikely now that they have the infrastructure in place and the training centre at HUY, but could they perhaps be interested in using some of the fleet on other routes and perhaps upping the frequency on WoWs current routes with lower capacity?

[richardtaylor]

I recall T3 had a DHC8-300 on demo to them a couple of years ago.

[clk]

I see that the deal is confirmed as of this morning.

[Humberside]

Air Southwest will remain as a separate brand which I suppose will allow for it to be less business focused

Good luck to Eastern with this. It's not going to be easy considering Air Southwest's losses but I guess back office functions can be combined giving some relatively quick savings. And if Eastern can develop the interline connections at LGW/MAN more could help create some useful extra income

[Humberside]

The integration process beigins with T3 codesharing on WOW domestic services
airlineroute.net/2010/10/11/t3sz-codeshare/

[pug]

Interestingly (and I know by no means linked) WOW had been in talks with HUY with regards to starting services a couple of years ago. I think Mike Aeulad knows more about this than me. Perhaps the aircraft and lower cost structure could be applied to one or two key routes from HUY? Long shot by a country mile i know.

[Humberside]

The deal has now been officially completed
www.businesscornwall.co.uk/news-categories/press-releases/air-southwest-sale-completed-123