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Atlantic Sun Airways Schedules 2009
Our new schedules will become operational on 1st June 2009 (See important note below). These schedules are the culmination of many hours of hard work and a collaborative effort on behalf of the whole management team. I am very grateful to Andreas, our President of Operations, for allowing me the opportunity to spend some 200-300 hours labouring over our schedules with a fresh perspective, one where I have concentrated my effort on balancing realism and fun to give our operations a new lease of life here at Atlantic Sun Airways and SEAGull. I wish to offer my personal thanks to Scott, Chief Engineer, for providing all of the aircraft data that I needed relating to our operations. Thanks also go to our Hub Managers, Shandon, Sarah, Sam and Jay for their valued input of ideas. My thanks also go to our management and staff team, and also our pilots for the flight suggestions in our forums and their support.
Before I announce some important changes, exciting new destinations and a few surprises I wish to let you know that this project, which has been a labour of love for me over the last few months, has taken a considerable amount of time to complete, both in pre-planning and in database completion. If, for example, your favourite airport is no longer in our schedules, or your favourite flight is now taking place in the dead of night, I would be grateful if you look at the bigger picture and embrace the new changes rather than oppose them. There is something for everyone in the new Schedules and, without further ado, here comes the part you have been waiting for…
NEW seasonal schedule operations will commence on 1st June 2009 with our summer timetable. Our flight schedules are now split into seasonal variations. This has been a mammoth task but has allowed us to now offer flights specifically adapted for seasonal demand. This brings the much anticipated return of Atlantic Sun Extreme, our service to key winter sport destinations as well as some exciting and exotic summer vacation resorts.
NEW extended aircraft operations to utilise, in ‘real’ terms, our airframes more effectively means that not only are there more connecting routes in the same airframe, but also that our airframes are kept busy, where possible, around the clock. Consequently there will be more night flights in our new schedules although, due to some airport and passenger metrics restrictions, there is still a slight daytime flight bias.
NEW increased number of Trans-Atlantic routes due to passenger demand including a means of traversing The Atlantic Ocean as a Cat B pilot.
NEW increased number of Cat C flights based out of our Singapore Hub, together with a network of connecting flights across all categories, this shall address the balance for our latest subsidiary addition.
NEW range of route options for our Cat B pilots to travel between our Schiphol and Singapore Hubs. The shortest route gives you the opportunity to fly 6 flights from Singapore before returning (based on our current 10 flight hub-to-hub rule). SEAGull now serves South East Asia and ‘Beyond’ with flights into The Middle-East and Turkey. It is even possible to fly Cat B from Newark to Singapore!
NEW extended network of ‘Non-hub Based Operations’ which see numerous airframes based in Sao Paulo, San Juan, Rome, Los Angeles, Chicago and Hong Kong. This allows greater flexibility in route networking and reduces traffic load at our main hubs.
NEW extended network of ‘Focus Cities’ allowing for a range of connecting flights in Atlanta, Athens, Phoenix, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Tokyo, Sydney, Seattle, Paris, Miami, Madrid, London, Dubai and Dallas.
NEW ‘Island Hopping’ services based in both The Mediterranean and The Caribbean utilising our San Juan Non-Hub Base and Athens Focus City.
NEW changes to all flight numbers (excluding training flights) mean that all outbound flights are even numbered and all inbound flights are odd numbered. This allowed me to keep better track of flights during planning and should (fingers crossed) see the end of those hidden dead-end flights in our schedules.
Here are some of our new exciting destinations though there are too many to list. Please note that some of these are season-specific and some previous destinations have been removed. In each case, for every single destination, I have based our route planning on actual passenger metrics and airline operation data from numerous sources, though I have kept a few ‘fun’ options in place too…
Eugene, OR; Mammoth, NV; Steamboat Springs, CO; Monterrey, Mexico; Acapulco, Mexico; Corpus Christi, TX; Wilmington, NC; Thunder Bay, Canada; Ottawa, Canada; Havana, Cuba; George Town, Grand Cayman; Hewanorra, St. Lucia; Cartagena, Colombia; Recife, Brazil; Manaus, Brazil; Inverness, United Kingdom; Biarritz, France; Girona, Spain; Bari, Italy; Tromso, Norway; Varna, Bulgaria; Khartoum, Sudan; Astana, Kazakhstan; Omsk, Russia; Ahmedabad, India; Chengdu, China; Okinawa, Japan and Mount Isa, Australia are just a few of the new additions.
You will find some exciting and challenging approaches too, not least for our Cat C pilots who can now try and grease their landings in the B-757-200 at Innsbruck!
All in all I have tried to balance realism and fun and one of my key aims was to reduce the number of airframes in our fleet. With many additions and amendments over the years many of our flights had become non-sequential meaning that airframe numbers had spiralled. By reducing our airframe numbers, and therefore operating costs, it has been inevitable that the actual number of flights has increased! With 5 major hubs spread around the world, cargo and budget subsidiaries, our fleet numbers were based on those of major real world airlines or a combination of them. For those interested our current fleet numbers are approximately:
58 x B-747-400; 54 x B-777-300; 64 x A-330-300; 58 x B-757-200; 74 x B-737-800; 26 x B-737-900ER; 77 x A-319-100; 19 x A-320; 42 x B-717-200; 31 x CRJ-900; 36 x ERJ-170; 32 x CRJ-200ER; 23 x ERJ-135; 24 x ATR-72-500; 28 x MD-11F; 26 x B-727-200F and 15 x ATR-72-200F aircraft. Although the numbers may still seem high this is a substantial reduction from our previous schedule.
I hope that you enjoy exploring the routes and destinations in our new schedules and their seasonal variations and I once again thank our senior management team for the wonderful opportunity of giving some pleasure back into our fantastic airline.
Explore! Enjoy! Fly!
Leanne
Important Notice
All flights from our current schedule MUST be filed no later than 06:00 UTC on 1st June 2009. The new Summer 2009 Schedules will commence operation when uploads complete shortly after that time. No flight reports from our current schedule will be accepted after that time.