A History Of 'Bus Stop' Routes From Teesside
By Chris Smith
January 2020
With the announcement that Eastern Airways are expanding to the tune of six routes, we take a look back at the history of so called ‘bus stop routes’ which have been the prevailing source of passenger traffic throughout our history. Several operators have tried the odd one or two regional connections to Teesside over the years, here we focus only on large scale operations.
1970s
The first example we are aware of is from a timetable simply marked “1973/4” and is not broken down into summer and winter like the timetables of today, but within Air Anglia are noted as putting us in the middle of a Norwich – Aberdeen route, and tagging us on to an Amsterdam – Norwich service “from April” – so could be either 1973 or 1974, or perhaps April is simply when the timetable began and the route could have been well established before then, either way we are quite sure Air Anglia represent the first example of large scale bus stop flying from Teesside. Whilst the Aberdeen has been taken over by at least three airlines it is technically in it's 47th continuous year, whilst Amsterdam has been inherited by KLM Cityhopper through mergers and is also enjoying it's 47th year. Both routes have long since been made direct services. Also showing as from April (which is why I suspect the timetable simply starts from then as I can’t imagine two operators would launch at the same time, but I could be wrong) is a significant Dan-Air operation, who under their “Link City” banner operate to Birmingham, Bournemouth, Cardiff, Manchester and Bristol via Manchester. They also operate to Amsterdam under their “Skyways” banner along with a handful of Mediterranean destinations.
1980s
Moving into the eighties, Dan-Air Skyways continued their Amsterdam service throughout although I’m not convinced the Link City routes were quite so enduring. Air Anglia however at the very start of the decade in January 1980 were merged with two other regional airlines to form “the third force” Air UK, who inherited the Aberdeen, Amsterdam and Norwich flights and would continue with all of them, as well as throwing in a Jersey flight and a short hop to Humberside for good measure. They would also operate our Amsterdam service via both Leeds/Bradford and Humberside in addition to the Norwich stop at one time or another. The eighties also produced a third such operator, this time a home-grown one – Casair Aviation Services. Casair had been set-up in 1965 by local businessman Jack Cassidy as an air taxi operator, but in 1982 decided to pursue scheduled flying and gained the necessary permission from the Civil Aviation Authority and launched a number of domestic routes including Guernsey, Isle of Man and London Gatwick. In September 1982, the carrier was merged into two other local airlines; Eastern Airways of Humberside (with the current Eastern Airways of today being a phoenix company of sorts), and Genair of Liverpool, keeping the latter’s name but moving to the Humberside facilities of Eastern. Less than one month after the merger, the new airline starts operating as a feeder airline for British Caledonian as British Caledonian Commuter Services – the first such operation of it’s kind, though today they are fairly common with the current Eastern Airways operating under the Flybe banner. Back to topic and unfortunately Genair collapsed due to financial difficulties in July 1984 and Humberside impounded their aircraft, but Teesside quite rightly considered the vital links with London and elsewhere to be more valuable than outstanding fees and charges, and offered to do whatever they could to keep Genair flying. This effort amounted to nothing but luckily, out of the ashes of Genair, investors gave Casair a second chance and the original Teesside airline restarted operations with links to Aberdeen, Glasgow and Humberside along with regular charter flights. Sadly, the resurrection of Casair only made it as far as 4th March 1988 and after failed attempts to find a buyer, the official receiver was called in with the loss of 25 jobs.
1990s
Enter the nineties and Dan-Air also succumbed to financial difficulties early into the decade, in late 1992 they were bought by British Airways for just £1. They’d axed their Amsterdam route just a few months earlier. Air UK dominated the decade from here with their strong and by now long running regional network from Teesside. In 1998, KLM purchased Air UK and rebranded as KLM UK, unfortunately it was outside of the remit of a Dutch airline to operate UK domestic routes so they withdrew from the Aberdeen, Humberside, Jersey and Norwich routes, keeping only Amsterdam. Another local airline, Gill Airways of Newcastle, picked up the Aberdeen. We first saw a Gill Airways service during the early nineties when they launched a Teesside-London Gatwick service, and after picking up Aberdeen they would go on to launch Belfast, Norwich and Manchester, although the latter may have been flown under their codes and call sign by another home-grown Teesside operator, Air CAM. One of their most successful routes from here was a Paris service flown under the Air France banner. I don’t have specific dates for the Gill Airways routes but they seem to have been a lot more sporadic than their predecessors at Teesside, with lot’s of chops and changes to their offering from here. They had a spell in administration but following a management buy-out they had returned to profitability, but unfortunately this wasn’t enough for Royal Bank of Scotland who pulled their financing in September 2001, having gotten cold feet in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks.
2000s
Eastern at various times during the naughties attempted expansion, offering short lived links to Bristol, Brussels and Southampton, but a combination of business class fares not appealing to a mass audience as well as the aircraft spending too much time on the ground during an era when you had to be airborne to be profitable meant that only Aberdeen has endured.
2010s
When Loganair moved in during late 2017; we were told by the airport management of the time to expect an “announcement per quarter for the next four quarters”, unfortunately this was not the case; their franchise arrangement with Flybe had ended on bad terms with Flybe going into partnership with Eastern Airways instead, and Loganair expanding head to head on Eastern’s core markets in response, with Eastern retaliating in kind elsewhere in Scotland. Clearly, this could never play out on a long term basis, so they pulled away from each others routes, which resulted in Loganair withdrawing from Teesside.
2020s
Now after Air Anglia and Dan-Air in the 70s, Air UK, Casair and Dan-Air in the 80s, Air UK and Gill Airways in the 90s, Eastern are stepping back into the breach after a 20 year gap filled only by the odd singular [regional connectivity] route here and there, hopefully with more success this time around. Scheduled services such as the bus-stop routes we have enjoyed for most of our history are more lucrative for airports than leisure flights and are therefore a good foundation from which to start building leisure services on top of. One of the reasons our decline during the late naughties stung so much is we didn’t have the cushion of scheduled services to soften the blow, not because there was a lack of appetite to go after such services but rather a lack of candidate airlines to operate them. The problem we will have to face going forward is no-one is manufacturing aircraft with less than 50 seats anymore, with current generation aircraft such as the Jetstream's and Saab's becoming long in the tooth and not all routes will be able to make the jump in capacity. Happily, Stobart Aviation seem to have their heads in the right place when it comes to these operations; “It’s getting the right plane to the right place at the right time and at the right level of frequency. The devil is really in the detail when it comes to regional connectivity”, this, connected to a balanced pricing strategy, and impactful marketing should ensure longevity. Regional routes require nurturing over a period of time, hopefully both Eastern and Stobart are well aware of this as previous similar services have been axed far too quickly before any growth can be measured.
