Everything about Gb Airways totally explained
GB Airways was a
UK airline based at
London Gatwick Airport. It operated scheduled services as a
British Airways franchise to 30 destinations in
Europe and
North Africa from
Gatwick and as well as
Heathrow and
Manchester. The company ceased operations on the
30 March 2008 following the purchase of the company by the
United Kingdom based airline
easyJet in
January 2008.
History
The airline was established in
1931 as an offshoot of
Gibraltarian
shipping company MH Bland, in
Gibraltar.
Gibraltar Airways, as it was then known, started operations later that year between 'the Rock' and
Tangier,
Morocco, using a
Saunders-Roe A21 Windhover flying boat.
During
World War II, the airline represented
Imperial Airways/
BOAC and in
1947 began its relationship with the newly created
British European Airways (BEA). BEA began flying between
London and Gibraltar, connecting with Gibraltar Airways' flights to Morocco. BEA took a 49% stake in the airline, which began trading as
GibAir, and the
London Heathrow to Gibraltar service was jointly operated by the two carriers. Although BEA
merged with BOAC to form
British Airways in
1974, the financial and operational relationship with GibAir continued. Meanwhile, GibAir continued to operate services from Gibraltar, primarily to Morocco, and also began charter flights to
Portugal and
France.
In
1989 the company moved to the United Kingdom in order to increase the scope for expansion. A base was established at London Gatwick Airport and the company became GB Airways Ltd on 3 January 1989. The
livery on the airline's fleet of
Boeing 737 aircraft at this time was mainly
white, with
red and
blue twin stripes down the centre of the
fuselage, sweeping down to form a 'chin strap' under the
nose cone. The twin stripe was repeated on the
tailfin, with a speeding red
arrow creating a
diamond-shaped centrepiece, which was repeated on the forward fuselage. A stylised version of this diamond
logo is still used by the company today.
The relationship with British Airways was firmly entrenched in
1995 when it became a full British Airways
franchise operator, with BA relinquishing its financial holding in the airline. The franchise agreement with British Airways continues until
2010 and under these terms GB Airways trades as British Airways, with all flights operated under BA flight codes (the range BA6800-6999 are allocated to GB Airways flights). All GB Airways aircraft were presented in full British Airways livery, appointed with the same interior and class product as the BA main fleet, and staff wore the BA uniform. GB Airways flights could be booked through British Airways and the airline participated in BA's Executive Club and BA Miles programme. GB Airways was an affiliate member of
Oneworld. However, GB Airways continued its own inflight magazines,
Med Life and "Elevate" (for GB Airways' own duty-free goods range) in addition to the regular BA publications. Additionally, servicing of GB Airways aircraft at Gatwick was carried out by
Virgin Atlantic Engineering.
Acquisition by easyJet
It was announced on
25 October 2007 that GB Airways was to be sold to
easyJet. The UK
Office of Fair Trading approved the acquisition on
18 January 2008. The deal was worth £103.5m and was used to expand easyJet operations at London Gatwick and start operations from
Manchester Airport. GB Airways continued to honour its
British Airways franchise agreement and continued to operate as GB Airways until 29 March 2008, after which all aircraft were transferred to EasyJet. Slots used by GB Airways at London Heathrow Airport were not included in the sale, these were sold to other airlines for an estimated £100 million.
Destinations
The airline's main operational base was at
London Gatwick. Some of its aircraft were also based at
London Heathrow and there was a small base at
Manchester. Flights from the latter operated as 'BA Connect' services, which operated a no-frills airline style "buy on board" service. The airline mainly served destinations in the
Mediterranean region and the
Spanish and
Portuguese islands, as well as a small number of destinations in inland continental
Europe. Thus its main market was
British people looking for a holiday in the sun.
- London Gatwick (Agadir, Ajaccio, Alicante, Arrecife, Bastia, Corfu, Dalaman, Fez, Faro, Funchal, Gibraltar, Heraklion, Hurghada, Ibiza, Innsbruck, Las Palmas, Mahon, Malaga, Malta, Marrakech, Montpellier, Mykonos, Nantes, Palma de Mallorca, Paphos, Rhodes, Sharm el-Shiekh, Tenerife-South, Tunis)
- London Heathrow (Casablanca, Faro, Malaga, Marrakech, Tangiers)
- Manchester (Heraklion, Innsbruck, Malaga, Malta, Paphos, Salzburg, Tenerife-South)
In addition to the above destinations the airline also operated several charter flights from
London Gatwick to destinations across Africa, Asia and Europe during Winter months.
Fleet
The GB Airways fleet consisted of the following aircraft (at March 2008):
9 Airbus A320-200 (further 1 on order)
6 Airbus A321-200 (further 4 on order)
These aircraft are now operated by EasyJet.
At February 2008, the GB Airways average fleet age was 4.7 years.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Gb Airways'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://gb_airways.totallyexplained.com">GB Airways Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
