The back-from-the-dead UK regional airline Flybe has been touted to be coming back this year. But, as yet, there are no firm launch dates, no route announcements, and no executives willing to be interviewed.
Nevertheless, things are starting to take shape, with records from ch-aviation showing the second Dash 8 arriving with the airline just recently. An aircraft was registered with the new Flybe in April last year, although that one seems to no longer be within the fleet. Confusingly, there are now two Dash 8s registered to Flybe, but that initial aircraft – G-CLXC – is not one of them.
Planes for the new airline
The aircraft that are under the Flybe name right now are registered G-JECX and G-JECY, suggesting a naming convention that we’re likely to see followed through with future deliveries. In fact, their registrations haven’t changed since they were first delivered to the old Flybe in 2007.
Both airplanes have been stored since the spring of 2020, shortly after the original Flybe collapsed. G-JECX was delivered from Maastricht to Exeter (EXT) on November 5th last year, spending two weeks at the sizeable MRO facility in the UK’s Westcountry. It was flown to Birmingham at the end of that month.
G-JECY arrived in Exeter from Maastricht on January 7th. It is still there, and marked as ‘maintenance’ on ch-aviation, but could make the trip to Birmingham soon. Both aircraft are ex-original Flybe and are 15 years old. They are being leased by Nordic Aviation Capital (NAC); Flybe intends to take a total of 12 aircraft from this lessor.
Interestingly, a third Dash 8 is tipped by planespotters.com to be joining the fleet soon. G-JECP is also a 15-year-old ex-original-Flybe plane, although this one has been stored at Weeze Airport in Germany since it closed. It, too, is a NAC plane and is set to be delivered in the coming weeks.
Testing the waters
While planes number two and three are yet to be operated by the new airline, Flybe 2.0 has been flexing the wings of its first arrival with some regularity. Data from FlightRadar24.com shows that G-JECX has been operated on more than 50 flights since its arrival last November.
In February alone, the Dash 8 has visited Newquay, Exeter, Liverpool, Cardiff and Newcastle, all key destinations for the old Flybe and likely to be top first choices for Flybe 2.0. Just this morning, the aircraft took off from its home at Birmingham, headed to Cardiff, and is due to fly back again just after lunch.
It’s likely these are crew training flights ahead of the airline’s relaunch, suggesting there could be news on its first services pretty soon. However, despite things progressing at pace, some prospective pilots have raised issues regarding the airline’s confidentiality policies.
As reported in CityAM recently, new recruits claim to have been made to sign non-disclosure agreements about working conditions. The pilots say that the rules are much tighter than would normally be expected. There are also concerns that pilot salaries are much lower than the market rate.
Are you looking forward to Flybe coming back?