Nellie

Visited Laxey Promenade today and was amazed to see that Paul Carey had several pieces of heavy plant hard at work, digging out the hundreds of tons of stones that had built up against the sea wall, over many years. Instead of the beach being more or less level with the pavement, it is now around 6 feet lower. This has exposed the sea wall, steps and large swathes of sand, which have not been seen for years. It appears that the stones removed have been dumped at the northern end against the outside of the breakwater. I'm curious who has commissioned this work, presumably DoI or Garff Commissioners, and whether we might see something similar in Douglas, on Central Prom?

I hope it happens, and I hope that the clowns at the DfE aren't paying to make it happen. But, until Loganair, the Airport or the DfE make an announcement, and the flights go on sale, it is just a rumour......

That rumour has been around for a while, but it makes a lot of sense and I hope it happens. LCY has been poorly run by Loganair, with frequent cancellations, and few passengers. Those facts are probably closely connected. A better schedule to LHR should open up both better connectivity to BA, and better point to point options. But are slots available?

A quick back of envelope calculation suggests that easyJet have taken around 17000 seats to/ from IOM out of the system for January, alone. That's likely to help to get 2024 off to a poor start, as far as further traffic recovery is concerned.

Seriously??? Please show your workings out!

The whole air schedule is just collapsing into a huge mess. No Bristol or Belfast for most of Q1 2024. Many dates with no Gatwick, or Liverpool, across the same period. A dozen, or so, dates when EZY won't be here at all. As the rest of the aviation world slowly gets back towards 2019 numbers, we appear to be accelerating backwards at high speed. And, no one in Government will accept any responsibility for letting this happen, or for trying to reverse the trend. @Stu Peters I know you only oversee the operational aspect of the Airport, but is anyone actually trying to get a grip on this decimation of our connectivty, or is everyone just looking the other way?

Possibly, but my real point is that his eye was off the ball, as far as his day job was concerned. Clearly, if things were as bad as he seems to have thought, he should not have been allowed to do this TV thing.

Don't forget that while all this was going on he went off and made a TV series. He was calling himself an "Airport Director" to the TV audience and the boss of Heathrow, to whom he was giving advice!!! I'm not sure when the filming of this fits in the timeline. Late 2020, early 2021, maybe?

Yes, fair play to easyJet today, they ran their full programme of twelve flights, including the delayed MAN, which, as you say, they could easily have abandoned. Loganair ran only about 30% of their schedule, whilst Emerald didn't even try, even though the wind had reduced by the time they were due. 1-0 to easyJet in the good PR stakes, today.

That's a good spot! It's only taken them about six years to figure out what they needed to do. Also notable that it's only two weeks since Cobb said, on MR, that easyJet had no intention of changing that original timing, so he's obviously not in their loop!

I'm not sure I'd trust anyone in the CS to have enough impartiality, or objectivity, but there are definitely a few regular posters on here with enough understanding and ideas to have produced something similar.

Yes, sorry. Silly typo!

The Air Services Review, dated November 2021, has been published, at last https://www.iomdfenterprise.im/assets/PDFs/d39f8e4ea8/Air-Services-Review.pdf Nothing earth shattering, or particularly innovative, in it. Some recommendations, such as subsiding the reintroduction of LGW and LCY have happened in the intervening two years. The idea of a Government run/owned airline is pretty much dismissed on the grounds of cost, and risk, without actually giving any numbers. Lots of colourful graphs and tables.

Well, Brindley became Controller of Programming and Content in October 2016, so there's quite a close correlation there! https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-brindley-70306621/?originalSubdomain=uk

I agree that Cobb appeared too be referring only to the evening Gatwick flight, but I'm pretty sure that what he said is a load of hogwash. Why would that one flight be tied to UTC/GMT/Zulu when none of the others, for easyJet, or the airlines are? The aircraft that operates that service does not fly the same programme each day, or each week. A quick look at FR24 will show that over the last week it has come from Nice, Seville, Pula, Athens, Palma and Hamburg. The previous week, apart form Pula, on a Wednesday, nothing was the same. Tonight it is coming from Inverness. Sometimes it has a quick 30-40 minute turnaround, sometimes 2-3 hours. Other domestic flights from Gatwick, which depart at a similar time in the Summer, (19.00 to 19.30) to Jersey, Edinburgh, Belfast, Inverness etc. do not change by an hour, although some seem to be 10-20 minutes different. So to suggest that the aircraft is flying a consistent daily programme that is tied to UTC/GMT/Zulu is not supported by any evidence or facts.

I suspect that very few of the 700 odd people who voted for her will actually see all the stuff she is currently spouting on Twitter, which is a huge shame. It might be an idea for MR or 3FM to get her on, and give her the chance to commit political suicide to a larger audience.

Bullshit. The morning flight from/to Gatwick, which only operates on selected days during the Winter, is at exactly the same time as it is in the Summer. If this crap that you and Cobb are peddling is true, then why isn't that an hour earlier? Then, there are several days when there are afternoon flights from/to Gatwick which are at totally different times to the Summer. It is simply a different schedule, for a different season and a different market. I'm with @John Wright on this. It is just some made up nonsense from the Airport management.

We know that ATC operate to GMT, UTC or Zulu time, or whatever they want to call it, all year round. But the man in the street operates to the time on his watch or phone. The earlier departure is simply a schedule change which happens every winter and is not connected to the annual BST/GMT switch. Do all other easyJet flights depart an hour earlier over the Winter? No. They largely operate to a completely different schedule. Gatwick is no different.

There are a lot of people who walk the promenade or beach regularly who would broadly agree with what you are suggesting. Many of them recall the time when there was a five or six foot drop from the promenade to the beach on Central Promenade. AFAIK, the DoI have never explained why this idea is not worthy of exploration, they just want to spend a fortune building bigger and bigger walls, until we reach the stage when we can't actually see the sea!

Indeed!! But Cobb actually said this on the Mannin Line, the other day! Do all the other flights move by an hour? Does the Liverpool 'patient transfer' flight go at 06.00? The man is clearly a half-wit if he believes what he is saying.

Yes, the overnight delay to Gatwick and the total cancellation of the London City rotation were due to the inability (or unwillingness) of the IOM Airport to offer a extension to their operating hours. Considering that they have been able to do this over fifty times across the Summer, it would appear that there was some issue at IOM Airport that did not arise on those fifty other occasions.

Agreed. They must share full responsibility for this decline on their watch. At the end of the day, Chris Sully doesn't really have any skin in the game. He's had a nice career before he came here; he'll do his five, or so, years then retire and leave, and what happens next isn't really his concern. Alex Brindley isn't very bright, and, on the face of it, hasn't got any sort of grip on programming. The schedule is very fragmented with presenters constantly on leave, holiday etc. and stand-ins appearing all over the schedule. To anyone who listens regularly, almost everyday is different. It's recognised in radio management that to build a consistent audience, you need stability in programming. Regular listeners like regular presenters. Also, Brindley needs to be told that he either presents, and gets freelance pay, like most other presenters, or he is a full-time Programme Controller, with challenging objectives, targets, and KPI's to deliver improvements in content and audience. The game is up Alex.

Tim Johnson comes across as a man who is totally out of his depth, at the DfE, and who is floundering already. Presumably Hooper is toeing the CoMin line, regardless of LV position. One of my local members, who is member of CoMIn, told me 'over the garden fence' that they planned to vote against the proposed changes. We will see.

Yes, I thought he did pretty well, and does perhaps have a better handle on many things than most of us thought. I was interested to see how he'd deal with questions about the evening Gatwick fiasco, but the caller who raised this had, in my view, totally the wrong angle, suggesting that the Airport should waive any 'fines' (as the caller referred to them) for late opening, and be prepared to stay open as late as easyJet require. That stupid suggestion was very easy for Mr Cobb to bat away. He did say that easyJet do pay any extension fees, at the published tariff, which is good news. I was disappointed that he felt that sprucing the place up was not a priority. He must be the only person on the Island who doesn't see that the place looks run down and neglected.

Where does anyone, apart from you, mention 'criminal damage'?