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Post by serko on Aug 28, 2012 19:16:33 GMT
OLT are looking at starting daily flights Southend to Dresden and a 3 times weekly service to Saarbrucken.
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Post by Daniel on Aug 28, 2012 20:41:16 GMT
Link here: oltexpress.partners.de/de/rozklad_lotow/londonInterestingly when I translated it into English it said LTN instead of SEN (probably because it has an earlier version of the page), indicating that they originally planned to fly to Luton.
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Post by expressflight on Aug 30, 2012 15:41:46 GMT
Saarbrucken-Southend now appearing on the OLT Express Germany website with fares commencing at 98 Euros return apparently. Service shown as commencing 1st October 2012 operating Tu, Th & Sa with F100 equipment.
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Post by devonian on Sept 4, 2012 17:37:06 GMT
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Post by expressflight on Sept 5, 2012 12:24:41 GMT
DRS-SEN is now bookable on the OLT Express Germany website with timings etc. as previously indicated. They tell me that they will soon have an English website, but currently the booking process is in German.
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Post by serko on Sept 5, 2012 12:51:05 GMT
hopefully the airport will confirm it soon as well.
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Post by Humberside on Sept 22, 2012 16:06:46 GMT
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Post by aurigny72 on Oct 6, 2012 13:20:35 GMT
I just read on PPRuNe and i quote....OLT is rumoured to pull capacity from the DRS-SEN route for the winter season.... If this is true then im not really surprised ,with the proposed starting date only a few weeks away and still no confirmation of this service from Southend Airport.
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Post by expressflight on Oct 6, 2012 16:12:50 GMT
I wouldn't be surprised to see frequencies reduced as we get into the winter period.
The DRS-SEN route is just one of a number that OLT Express Germany are launching in the next month or so and this has been done with little time for proper marketing mainly in order to sustain utilisation of the seven Contact Air F100s that have been added to the fleet by acquisition.
With a German language only website, not only will they find it difficult to attract UK travellers, but also those from the other European countries to which they are launching services. I'm very surprised at this because those behind the purchase of OLT from the previous bankrupt owners are extremely experienced within the European airline industry.
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Post by tagron on Oct 6, 2012 21:44:11 GMT
Looking at the OLT Express timetable I note that the schedules change on Jan 1st so that the SEN-DRS elapsed time in both directions is significantly increased. Does this mean they will be using the Saab 2000 ? The website shows F100 for all flights, but how else can the different timings be explained ? These timings are not a recent change, they have been on the timetable from the time it was first published.
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Post by tagron on Oct 7, 2012 19:52:37 GMT
On further inspection of the OLT Express website, I see that DRS-VIE is now shown as operated by SB20 up to Jan 1st when it changes to F100 with appropriate adjustment to the sector times.
This seems to support my view that DRS-SEN will be operated by SB20 from Jan 1st even though the website shows the F100 throughout
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Post by devonian on Oct 7, 2012 21:26:44 GMT
The Saab 2000 has a more realistic passenger load than the F100 on the SEN-DRS route in the winter. Maybe it can establish a successful link which will grow to F100 capacity in the future.
Then again the story so far doesn't fill me with confidence that OLT Express know how to promote a route....
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Post by tagron on Oct 10, 2012 19:00:54 GMT
OLT Express have just published a new timetable showing major reductions for the winter on their proposed new international routes.
There seem to be a couple of errors in the published timetable but my interpretation is that DRS-SEN will only operate from mid-October to early November, then another period over Xmas/New Year, then resume in late March.
This pattern is repeated with their other new international routes: DRS-BUD, FMO-CDG and FMO-MXP. Only VIE services appear unaffected.
The Saab 2000 now features quite widely in their schedules, which were originally published as entirely F100. The Sunday SEN rotation is shown as Saab 2000, but the anomaly regarding sector times remains.
They are also advertising SCN-SEN again, starting March 18.
I wonder if SEN management were aware of this possibility, and could this have been a (another ?) reason why they have been in no hurry to give publicity to the new routes. The reduction could give OLT breathing space to better organise their representation in the non German speaking countries.
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Post by tagron on Oct 11, 2012 16:13:11 GMT
Looking at it again and trying to make some sense out of it, it now seems to me they are saying that the midweek flights will continue from October 15 through to January 6, that is assuming that "06.11" for OL353/354 is a misprint for 06.01. It is the weekend services that will follow the more restrictive pattern I described above. If this is correct then there will still be a gap in all DRS-SEN services from Jan 6 to Mar 24.
The start of DRS-HAM flights has been delayed to Jan 7, so it looks like they will redeploy the aircraft used for SEN onto the HAM service.
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Post by tagron on Oct 15, 2012 9:42:59 GMT
Purely a speculation, but as I understand it aircraft from OLT Express Poland were using SEN for maintenance related purposes only a short time before the company folded. This means there may well be unpaid bills in existence.
OLT Express Germany presumably had no such debts at SEN, and under their new ownership one would have thought they would be ringfenced from the liabilities of the failed Polish company. But I wonder if creditors would view the situation in the same way.
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