easyJet opening its 11th UK base in Newcastle

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• Can says:

  23 May23 May 04:17

  As a vegan I applaud the decision of having veg meals as default.

  • IanT says:

    23 May23 May 06:08

    As a meat eater (although much reduced), I too applaud this innovation.

    It’s reflective of Indian society of course.

    Good luck to them.

    • Dev says:

      23 May23 May 06:32

      Jet Airways used to do the sale. Default was AVML and you had to opt-out of it.

      It worked with their target demographic otherwise “special” meals could our-number the regular meals 2 to 1 / 3 to 1 on some flights to India.

    • inman says:

      23 May23 May 08:18

      Indian society largely being vegetarian is a pure misconception. India is the second largest beef exporter in the world and the fourth largest consumer of beef.

      • IanT says:

        23 May23 May 08:33

        It’s about 30% vegetarian, isn’t it?

      • abc says:

        23 May23 May 08:43

        Just because they also have beef doesn’t mean they can’t be largely vegetarian. There are almost 30 million Christians in India – still it’s not a misconception that India is largely Hindi.

      • Can says:

        23 May23 May 14:10

        It is not largely veg, but it has the largest religious veg community, including few veg-towns where meat (and sometimes other animal-origin food) is banned.

        Brazil exports more meat than India. Relative to its population, India’s exports can only be viewed as “average”. Australia exports similar amount with that population.

      • Dev says:

        23 May23 May 15:13

        But have you seen the specific demographics from within India and the Indian diaspora thag travel back and forth between Uk and India, many of them are vegetarians. I guess it was just easier to go down a deal with the caterers to mass produce veggie meals than to do it the other way round.

        India as whole has large amounts of meat eaters but my guess is that with Mumbai, they will be targeting the large Gujarati diaspora in the UK who are predominantly vegetarian.

  • abc says:

    23 May23 May 08:40

    I agree ,though, given the demographics of the Indian population, this decision was presumably taken for pure business reasons as it’s the only realistic way to be able to work with only one default meal.

  • Yorkie Aid says:

    23 May23 May 19:15

    When I visited India in 1994 we took multiple internal flights and the policy was exactly the same, you had to pre-order a non-veg meal. We didn’t of course as vegetarians and it was brilliant.

  • HampshireHog says:

    23 May23 May 22:41

    It’s quite dangerous to your health to eat meat in India in my experience so probably a wise move

• TJones says:

  23 May23 May 04:27

  The premium cabin fares to Mumbai seem reasonable at around £870 for a round-trip from Manchester, booking with the airline. It’s a little more expensive from Amsterdam.

  The fare includes 12 kg cabin bag allowance, 46 kg check-in bag allowance, cancellation up to 24 hours for INR 12000 (about £100), change up to 24 hours INR 10000.

  Slight savings are available from OTAs.

• NigelHamilton says:

  23 May23 May 07:00

  I had thought it was going to be Manchester – New Delhi? Presumably Mumbai has replaced it?

  • inman says:

    23 May23 May 08:12

    This is because of Pakistan air space closure.

    • MGW says:

      24 May24 May 12:07

      Surely they would not change their target market quite so radically but come in over Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and then down over Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh (avoiding both Pakistan and Kashmir of course). Slightly higher fuel consumption and costs of course but at least still aiming at the market they will have so carefully analysed and targeted.

• Lumma says:

  23 May23 May 09:02

  Easyjet expanding at Newcastle. I wonder if we’ll see the usual interesting routes launched, followed by them not filling the planes, then switching them to extra flights to the bucket and spade Spanish resorts?

  • Richie says:

    23 May23 May 09:27

    They’ll probably just offer alternative flight timing departures to their competitors to popular destinations. i.e. Today there are no morning departures to AYT, BJV and DLM, so there’s an opportunity for their 3 aircraft.

• Panda Mick says:

  23 May23 May 09:28

  Question: I understand wet lease (virgin red, for example) and dry lease. But Damp? Does this mean there’s a moist lease? wringing wet lease? It’s that rain that gets you wet lease?

  • Rhys says:

    23 May23 May 09:36

    I know, it’s not a standard term I don’t think…

    • Richie says:

      23 May23 May 09:44

      UK CAA has https://www.caa.co.uk/commercial-industry/aircraft/leasing/wet-and-damp-leasing/

    • daveinitalia says:

      23 May23 May 09:50

      You don’t think it’s not a standard term? So it is a standard term! 😁

    • Nick says:

      23 May23 May 12:41

      @Rhys it absolutely is a standard industry term. There’s wet, dry and damp, the latter being an aircraft with pilots but no cabin crew. Some airlines don’t allow this (BA for example) but many do.

      • Rhys says:

        23 May23 May 14:14

        Good to know. Was the first time I had heard of ‘damp’!

• JD says:

  23 May23 May 09:47

  Great news on Easyjet coming back to Newcastle. Looking forward to more flight options this year and next. Welcome back!

• daveinitalia says:

  23 May23 May 09:58

  Off topic: the photo of Newcastle Airport used here is out of date. However, it matches the branding that’s still on the Newcastle Airport website.
  The sign on the front of the airport was replaced with a less colourful branding that just says ‘Newcastle International’ the ‘Your Airport’ slogan has gone from the sign.

  Does anyone have any idea why, it changed last year? I expected the airport must have been changing it’s logo but it appears not.

  There’s been some crazy naming suggestions in the past. A few years ago a Sunderland councillor wanted to rename it Newcastle Sunderland International (as Sunderland council has the largest share of the airport of all the local authorities) https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/sunderland-council-newcastle-airport-name-20895602

  Then I seem to recall in the early 2000s some organisation wanted to rename it NewcastleGateshead Airport – due to the city of culture bid where Newcastle and Gateshead promoted themselves as a single entity.

  • Oviplokos1 says:

    23 May23 May 16:19

    Just call it Newcastle London airport, because why not

• Rich says:

  23 May23 May 12:50

  I had a vague memory of somebody once suggesting naming it after Bobby Robson, so I Googled it.

  It tells me that “Newcastle International Airport is named in honor of the famous football manager, Sir Bobby Robson”.

  AI is ruining everything!

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