Question On History Of London City Airport Pls

[Aharon]

Shalom and greetings all my pals

Do not know which subforum of Classic British Flight Sim I should be posting on questions on history of British aviation so I will try this subforum.

Regarding history of London City airport, did E145s ever fly via regular airline flights into this airport?

Thanks for any answers,

Regards,

Aharon

[Aharon]

Any help please?

[DaveB]

Hi Aharon..

The easy answer (for me) is I honestly don't know. ERJ's have never entered my sphere of interest nor to any great degree has LCY. Unfortunately, the one chap who'd have snapped an answer back is no longer with us.
ATB
DaveB

[Motormouse]

As I worked on them for 10 years, I can answer . The BA Cityexpress fleet ( later transferred to Flybe ) of ERJ 145 weren't certified for London City operations. iirc only the later build numbers we had in fleet, 5 aeroplanes, had the necessary boxes with software upgrades installed for the steep approach, but costs of of retrofitting rest of fleet and training crew on city operations was considered prohibitive. And don't forget the flight manuals would have to be changed as well.

The ERJ 135 was City capable from the start and Lufthansa Cityline did use them there, and BMI occasionally too.

Hope this helps.

Ttfn

Pete

[Aharon]

Thanks, Dave

Thanks, Pete for interesting facts. I fail to comprehend difference between E135 and E145 for London City Airport. I guess that E135 was much smaller than E145!!

Regards,

Aharon

[TobyV]

Looking at the data for both aircraft in the Wikipedia article (assuming it's accurate), both variants appear to have the same wing and engines, but being that the 135 is shorter and lighter, I would assume it has a higher thrust to weight ratio and a lower wing loading. This would probably mean in the former case, it's a bit more sprightly off the ground and in the latter case, it may have a slightly lower approach speed, both of which things would probably help operating from a short runway requiring a steeper climb-out and approach.

[Aharon]

Toby,

Agreed!!!

Regards,

Aharon

[Motormouse]

Toby just about covered it. The main issue was certification, the 135 was test flown on a 5 degree approach as part of its certification testing, the 145, which came first was not as the required avionics boxes were not initially available from the vendor at test flying time.

With most aeroplanes these days, it's not a case of just putting in any vendors box, the avionics system is a complete integrated system provided by one vendor as part of cost/ risk sharing on the whole project.

Ttfn

Pete