Emerald Airlines.... new kid in town!

To which I would add that (a) on short routes there can be little enough difference in elapsed time as the cruising portion of the flight is not sufficient for the jet's speed advantage to have much impact, and (b) turboprops generally can operate off shorter runways than jets, Donegal being a good example.

Where are the 2 ATR's they currently have at the moment?

16,014,913  EUR ex VAT covering three years.

While the tender has a minimum requirement of a 30 seat aircraft, there was a small fraction of the tender evlalution score reserved for the number of seats provided above the minimum required plus points for passenger growth/marketing proposals but 80% of the evaluation score was still on the bid price vs other tenderers. The idea is this encourages the operator to still keep the bid low to secure the contract and take the risk of being able to make additonal income on extra seats supplied.

There are constraints on straight up profitting on a route monopoly though - the tender requires 80% of seats to be sold for €80 or less. This incentivises the opertor to provide a bigger aircraft to allow more seats to be sold at a premium above the POS obligation but the onus is on the operator to find that market. If they're successful, the region gets an extra benefit at no additional cost to the taxpayer. While Stobart were using the smaller ATR, they were growing the passenger numbers year on year before covid so Emerald must reckon it can continue that in what is hopefully a post-covid contract duration.

Source: https://irl.eu-supply.com/ctm/Supplier/PublicPurchase/196290/0/0?returnUrl=transactions.asp&b=

Yeah, you're right. The contract is for 3 years with a year extension option and the headline figure is for four years:

"Tenderers are required to provide an annual price for each year of the contract (3 years plus 1 year). The Tender Price to be used in the formula below is the aggregate price over the 4-year period."

A former STK aircraft, not much going to be needed done to that to get it ready to go!

They are advertising for crews in Belfast, are these for EI routes ? 3 airplanes so far, what is the final expected fleet number ?

Yep the ATR on some routes would use about 1700kgs of fuel for a sector,Mate of mine flies the 737 and they could use about 2000kgs of fuel if departing from RWY 10 with the long taxi and possible delays.

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It looks like it, all going well the first flight is scheduled to be EI3401 CFN-DUB at 07:55 on 26 February.

EI-GPO the latest ATR to leave the paintshop.

My bad added an extra 0 at the end,

Emerald expanded into Belfast City today with its initial daily flight to Birmingham taking off, further expansion of services commences this weekend from both Belfast and Dublin with another ramp up in frequencies in early May.

There's now 6 aircraft registered to the airline;

EI-GPN - In service

EI-GPP - In service

EI-GPO - Training (Dublin)

EI-GZV - Stored (Exeter)

EI-GZY - Stored (Franczazal)

EI-FSL - Stored (Franczazal)

It appears to be coming together quite nicely, the first real test is the expansion this weekend so hopefully the remaining aircraft will be entering service imminently ready for busy weeks ahead.

Eagle eyes on Emerald ready to pounce for any misdemeanours in the early days. Good thing no other airlines experience delays or tech aircraft....

I was stuck in Edinburgh due to that delayed and subsequently cancelled flight last Monday. The plane couldn’t land due to fog so had to divert to Glasgow. An absolute disaster to be honest, it was not handled well by Swiss port at all.

As soon as I read the word 'Swissport' I thought to myself that this will not end well for anyone but most especially the passenger.