Well, they were fabulous werent they? Cheap and not very cheerful with those lovely Tristars and aincient 732s with the lovely peach on the tail.

Seeing their aircraft always made me smile. I once flew on a Peach L1011 from MAN_RHO and it was quite uneventful but so exciting and a welcome change from the likes of BY and MON.

I wasnt suprised to hear of the incident on G-SBEB 737-200, where the cabin lost pressurisation due to a fault on that old banger.

The charter scene in the UK is a lot less colourful now Peach is no more!

I agree. Never flew Peach but those L-1011's at the LGW Satellite looked pretty smart! Nice choice of name too, kind of refreshing.

G-SBEB is now C-UWJ with Westjet, so you can't keep a good guy down.

I still have a Peach L1011 model, but unfortuneately G-IOII and G-IOIT were not so lucky.

Gosh, G-SBEB is still soldgiering on, who would have thought it! It was one of the oldest 732s operating in Europe at the time.

Heard once, not sure if it was true or not, that Peach was decided as the name beacause it is an anagram of CHEAP! Goldcrest the seat brokers had something to do with it I think, I think Caledonian may have been conncted? Sabre operated the 732 and Air Atlanta operated at least one of the Tristars for a while. Although cabin crew were employed by Peach (perhaps thats the Caledonian link?).

Another one of the small charter airlines thats come and gone over the years.

[Edited 2005-03-09 14:18:48]

Its so hard for an airline like Peach to survive amongst all the big boys with their vertically intergrated tour operating arms. To be fair though, Peach suffered bad delays and service wasnt the best.

Im still in shock that the 732 (GSBEB) is now operating with Westjet. After the incident with Peach Air, there was a lot in the press about the age of the aircraft and how it was one of the oldest in Europe!

http://www.airliners.net/search/phot...cnsearch=20807&distinct_entry=true

We shouldn't fall into the 'old is bad' trap - just because a plane isn't only a few years old, it doesn't mean that it is a problem - back in the mid-late 90s when Peach Air operated, the aircraft (G-SBEB) was around 22-24 years old. There are plenty of similarly aged or older aircraft in service around Europe now, and there were plenty of others then.

The Peach Air 737s had spent most their operational lives with Britannia, so been flown and maintained by one of Europe's largest and most experienced 737-200 operators.

As far as the airline's demise, this wasn't due to failure - if I remember correctly they simply amalgamated the operations into Caledonian - this was because they were part of a vertically integrated tour operation.

Tell it to the poor passengers who were on board the Peach Air 737-200 when it blew! According to reports, G-SBEB had flown with the fault undetected for years before the incident!

I like the older jets and the 732 was a super little jet with excellent field performance and I loved the L1011s too. Trouble is these aircraft went tech and caused many delays for Peach Air.

Diesel is correct Peach ended up becoming part of Caledonian. Goldcrest, who at the time were a big seat broker in the industry were part of the Inspirations group. When Thomas Cook bought the Inspirations group Goldcrest was shut down, as Thomas Cook (or jmc) have their own seat brokers. Therefore Peach weren't really needed, were merged into Caledonian and the rest is history.

Tech delays with the L1011s also haunted Caledonian in its latter years. I remember reading in TTG that Caledonians image had been affected by the unreliability of its Tristar fleet.

Much of the problem with the Caledonian Tristars was recognised as maintenance issues - BA were their contracted company and iirc were not considered to have done a good job...

As far as having flown for years with the fault undetected, this isn't absolutely true - though there is no doubt that the aircraft had had an airframe problem (cracking) for a number of years which then resulted in the depressurisation - this link will provide all the detail http://www.aaib.dft.gov.uk/cms_resources/dft_avsafety_pdf_501410.pdf

Again... it's not a problem with being 'old' - the reason for the incident was maintenance.

One last point - even six and a half years ago, the aircraft had flown over 86000 hours - I wonder how many now?

Assuming 3,000 Hrs per annum would put it at about 104,000 Hours.

What is the limit on the B737.