Air Atlantique

[TSR2]

I'm sure its come up before, folk asking what had happened to Air Atlantique (Atlantic Airlines) of Coventry. Some may already know, but for those that don't, they merged with West Air Sweden in 2008 to for West Atlantic. With the closure of Coventry in December '09 they moved their UK opperation to Birmingham. They have also a number of ATP freighters now too, having sold one of their Electras to Comair in Canada.

[Garry Russell]

One of the ATP's is in West Atlantic livery I think it's G-BTPE.one of those at least. ....the other ATP's are still Atlantic in the original intact livery.

The painted machine has been since the merger.....maybe for publicity but there seems no hurry to change the others

[Tomliner]

Thanks for that info Ben/Garry.I sometimes find myself wondering what washappening to them. EricT

[Harry Basset]

Was that merger a reason why the DC-3 flights were stopped? I seem to remember on here it was stated that if asked the authorities would have looked favourably at allowing the passenger flights to continue.

[TSR2]

No, Air Atlantique Group had several component parts. The Classic Flight was split off several years before as a separate entity.

[markw]

The Classic Flight stopped the DC3 flights because new rules came in mandating full evacuation equipment for all aircraft greater than 29 seats (I think that was the number) which would have meant adapting the aircraft to have aisle lighting and evacuation slides. At least that's what I recall them putting up on their website at the time because if I recall they had tried unsuccessfully to lobby for an exemption for historic aircraft (and again I stand to be corrected but I think with the support of the British authorities)

So the Dragon Rapide continues to fly because it has a smaller number of seats but the 32 seat DC3 falls into the Regulated category.

[DaveB]

Yup.. the will wasn't there at AA. Certain parts of the company were hemorrhaging money (not helped by the desire of the owner to keep buying aircraft) and my take on the situation was that the new rules were used as a good excuse to cease 'Classic' operations. I may be wrong but that's how I remember it.

An easy option would have been to remove the offending seats in the DC3 or is that too easy

ATB

DaveB

[Garry Russell]

It's 'TPH painted....well I knew it was one of the 'TP batch

Didn't have time to check before

http://planepictures.net/netshow.php?id=910067

[Tomliner]

I thought that the limiting number of seats was 19,in which case it may not have been profitable to operate the DC3.Of course I may be wrong-it has been known! EricT

[markw]

Yup.. the will wasn't there at AA. Certain parts of the company were hemorrhaging money (not helped by the desire of the owner to keep buying aircraft) and my take on the situation was that the new rules were used as a good excuse to cease 'Classic' operations. I may be wrong but that's how I remember it.

An easy option would have been to remove the offending seats in the DC3 or is that too easy

ATB

DaveB

They do still fly the Dragon Rapides which I would have thought were fairly expensive to keep going although being one man operated, perhaps not.

Don't know why, but I've also got a thought in the back of my fuzzy brain that the rule applied to aircraft that were certified to carry 29 or more, regardless of whether they actually had 29 seats or not, but I may be wrong and it may have been like you say a convenient excuse to lay up the DC3 fleet. (Edit, Eric you may be right, 19 sounds more like it being similar to the "Jetstream" and "Metro" sized aircraft, which would explain why the DC3 was laid up)