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Air Wales
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Air Wales | ||
|---|---|---|
| IATA 6G |
ICAO AWW |
Callsign RED DRAGON |
| Founded | January 2000 | |
| Hubs | Cardiff International Airport | |
| Focus cities | Swansea Cork Plymouth |
|
| Fleet size | 5 x ATR 42-300 | |
| Destinations | 13 | |
| Headquarters | Cardiff, Wales | |
| Key people | Roy Thomas (Chairman) | |
Air Wales was an airline based in Cardiff, Wales. It operated scheduled regional services throughout the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, Belgium and France. On 23 April 2006, Air Wales ceased all operations.
Contents |
Air Wales was established in January 1997 with the assistance of property financier Roy Thomas and started operations in January 2000. Initially based at Pembrey Airport in west Wales and operating two aeroplanes, Air Wales expanded to employ over 120 personnel, including 45 flight deck staff, 20 engineers and 20 cabin crew. It revived the name of an airline from the 1970s which was eventually integrated into Air UK.
During 2004 Air Wales gave up all routes out of Swansea due to lack of interest and concentrated on routes out of Cardiff International Airport. During February 2006 Air Wales gave up all routes from Plymouth to focus on more popular routes and international routes.
On 23 April 2006 the airline ceased all scheduled services and will supposedly focus on charter and freight operations. However this is thought to be smokescreen as many staff have discovered that all the aircraft will be returned to their lessors, indicating that the airline will stop flying entirely. It is thought the airline entered into 11th hour talks with rival carriers to push through a merger to save the business, but the talks failed and a day later the airline announced its demise. Immediately two of the rival carriers AW had been talking to announced that they would serve all of the AW routes from Cardiff from the day after AW stopped flying. Later Newquay flights were taken over. Whether services from Exeter will resume is unknown.
Air Wales operated the following services (at February 2006), which had all ceased by the end of April 2006:
- Brussels, Aberdeen, ParisCDG (on behalf of bmibaby), Belfast City, Cork, Dublin, Jersey, Newcastle. Plans had been announced for services to Paris-Beauvais and Rennes but flights did not commence.
- Cardiff, Exeter
- Cork
Air Wales originally operated Dornier 228 aircraft. These were replaced by a fleet of ATR-42-300 aircraft:[1]
- G-WLSH (meaning Welsh) (exported to Germany Aug 2006)
- G-KNNY (named after a friend of the chairman) (exported to Venezuela Sep 2006)
- G-TAWE (River Tawe) (exported to Venezuela Aug 2006)
- G-SSEA (meaning Swansea) was still in fleet, November 2006[2]
- G-CDFF (meaning Cardiff) was still in fleet, November 2006[3]
In March 2006, Air Wales fleet average age was 13.4 years.