Airliners.net

Are there any airlines wet or dry leasing aircraft during long turnaround times at outstations? There are some loooong layovers in many places sometimes lasting 12+ hours.

There were some examples, but the other way around: operator on a wetlease with long layover and in between they scheduled their own flights.

lhrsfosyd91 wrote:

Are there any airlines wet or dry leasing aircraft during long turnaround times at outstations? There are some loooong layovers in many places sometimes lasting 12+ hours.

Not in a position to do a search for the references at the moment, but I believe Ethiopian and South African Airways (maybe others) did precisely this during the football final in Madrid. Their planes layover for most of the day at various European stations and I believe they brought them to Liverpool for charter workings.

I know it's not regular, just a data point.

Many years ago around early 90's I remember Qantas tried a few regular spainish charter's fon behalf of UK tour operator's. Dont think it last too long.

Ethiopian Airlines has a standing agreement with one or more tour/charter operators in Europe where it uses its aircraft for such leases. ET has aircraft on the ground during the day at 6+ European airports that are being chartered to sun destinations.

ET has/will have aircraft on the ground during the day at LHR, MAN, MAD, DUB, FRA, CDG, DME, OSL, GVA, MXP, MRS. This is not daily for some of these cities but creates such charter opportunities.

Not a lease, but remember when UPS threw seats into a few of its 727s and flew charters for Vacation Express during weekend downtime?

MO11 wrote:

Not a lease, but remember when UPS threw seats into a few of its 727s and flew charters for Vacation Express during weekend downtime?

They had some pictures and fact sheets up in our operations center in Louisville when I was there a few weeks ago. A pretty cool use of aircraft. Wouldn’t work now unfortunately

Not during a layover, but during maintenance - HA sent it’s 767 to AKL via SYD. NZ was doing the maintenance, so the aircraft would be handed to NZ in SYD, NZ crew would operate it as a scheduled commercial NZ flight back to AKL.

I may be way off, but didn't Braniff lease a Concorde for sub sonic domestic flights in between international BA flights?

As mentioned above, the Qantas 744 LHR-ATH (or IST?) a few years ago- I think it was in relation to P&O Cruises.
Other past examples: Icelandair BOS-Caribbean for someone and finally, LAM Mozambique leased their DC-10/767 to TACV to operate their LIS-SAL flights.
There was also the famous Air NZ DC-10 LAX interchange with BA in the 70's to operate LAX-LHR.

I recall that a few years ago, Monarch were flying an A330 up to MAN for MX and the same day an A321 was going down to BHX.

Result they set up an Enthusiasts tour and made a few £.

MO11 wrote:

Not a lease, but remember when UPS threw seats into a few of its 727s and flew charters for Vacation Express during weekend downtime?

Some of these were quick change frames. However, that didn't really make money, and since then, UPS has ordered mostly purpose-built freighters. Also, I'm not sure of any newer generation planes certified to do quick change duty (I do wonder if a carrier might invest in an A321 or B738 quick change that could do charters and freight duty).

A few years ago, when Virgin Australia flew to AUH but only a couple of days per week, they would wet lease their aircraft to Etihad and operate to KUL.

Just remembered another one. Air Nauru used to operate a few charter flights between Australia and New zealand for kiwi internationnal airlines (NZ) on the days its 737 was sat idle.

During this summer season, ET flew a couple of times from FRA to PRG in order to operate PRG-HER-PRG flights for QS (Smartwings).

BlueberryWheats wrote:

I may be way off, but didn't Braniff lease a Concorde for sub sonic domestic flights in between international BA flights?

Yes. Both BA and AF. The flight operated LHR-IAD-DFW-IAD-LHR or CDG-IAD-DFW-IAD-CDG, depending on the day of the week. it was an interchange flight; at IAD, the aircraft registration changed from BA/AF to BN for the IAD-DFW-IAD legs. Braniff was the only U.S. airline to operate the Concorde, albeit subsonically, from about 1977 to about 1980.

smi0006 wrote:

Not during a layover, but during maintenance - HA sent it’s 767 to AKL via SYD. NZ was doing the maintenance, so the aircraft would be handed to NZ in SYD, NZ crew would operate it as a scheduled commercial NZ flight back to AKL.

I find that hard to believe. NZ would not be permitted to operate N registered aircraft, and their pilots and cabin crew would have needed FAA certification.

I don't know who the crew were, but yes this did happen during the NZ maintenance contract- the HA 763's were cycled to operate as an NZ flight SYD-AKL-SYD.