Originally Posted by
LimitingFactor
Press release here:
https://www.cornwall.gov.uk/council-...t-with-skybus/
"Daily flights between Newquay and London are set to resume later this month after a short-term contract was agreed between Cornwall Council and the Cornish Skybus airline.
The service had been cancelled following the collapse of the previous operator, Eastern Airways, last week.
The route is operated under a Public Service Obligation, which sees Cornwall Council and the Department for Transport provide financial support if required to ensure the service is maintained.
Skybus will act as the interim provider providing daily flights between Cornwall Airport Newquay and London Gatwick from Sunday, November 23, increasing to twice-daily services from mid-February. "
Although to add more details, looking at the booking website (
https://www.skybus.co.uk), it appears that they are actually being run by Blue Islands under contract.
I'm sure I speak for many Cornwall residents in saying "WT (in a very real sense) AF?" - first reaction was to think we were about to be spending 2 hours+ on a Twin Otter as part of Cornwall Council's ever-more imaginative search for unexpected solutions.
To be fair, it's a punchy comeback to the haters who thought there were only two or three remaining independent airlines in the UK who could operate a regional route... there's always someone you haven't thought of.
As far as I can see from the new Skybus website for the route, it will use a mixture of the 3x daily LGW slot pairs, so there's a funny mixture of morning / middle of day / evening rotations, with aircraft based out of NQY. Unclear whether it's just spending long periods of time on the ground or if Skybus/Blue Islands can operate any Channel Islands etc routes in the gap.
The website looks suspiciously like the old Eastern Airways website too (particularly if you try to book for April when 3x daily flights are shown as "cancelled") so not sure if some assets have been bought out of administration by Skybus to get this going.