Aviation International News senior correspondent Ian Goold has been involved in aerospace since 1964 and in aviation media for more than 40 years. He enjoyed a 20-year career at Flight International magazine, where he was latterly air-transport editor before turning freelance in 1993. A winner of the European Regions Airline Association Hank McGonagle award for excellence in aerospace journalism and a Royal Aeronautical Society Aerospace Journalist of the Year global&nbsp;award, he has edited or contributed to aerospace and aviation magazines, special publications, and websites in Africa, Asia/Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and North and South America. Ian entered aerospace as an apprentice at the British Aircraft Corporation at Brooklands (Weybridge), where he worked on production and final assembly lines of the Vickers Super VC10, and BAC One-Eleven , and manufacture of Concorde major sub-assemblies. He subsequently graduated from the BAC Design Training School to work in the airframe structures drawing office (including design of international future projects, such as the Panavia Tornado multi-role combat aircraft) before joining Flight International in 1973. Apart from years of reading aircraft magazines and books, his first direct contact with aviation media had come during the early 1970s when he was involved at Brooklands with the Weybridge Man-powered Aircraft Group, which designed and built the tenth aircraft to fly under purely human power. As an aviation journalist, he has worked at more than&nbsp; 50 of the major biennial&nbsp;global and regional international aerospace industry shows at Le Bourget, Farnborough, Singapore, and Dubai (having missed attending only one "Farnborough" since 1960), plus innumerable NBAA, HAI, (U.S.) AOPA, and EBACE Conventions and ERA Assemblies. His favourite aircraft is the Hawker Hunter, of which – as a schoolboy – he heard hundreds make their first flights from Dunsfold, where also on September 24, 2013, he saw the penultimate landing of the VC10 (happily involving an example of which he had witnessed the maiden takeoff in 1970) a day before the last example made the design's final flight (unless, of course....).

Senior correspondent

Ian Goold

Having dropped regional operations rather than continue losing money into the winter season, Netherlands-based Denim Air group plans to offer enhanced wet-lease services and may add regional jets, according to airline CEO Matthijs Boertien. Poor profitability and increased competition in key German, Italian and Swiss markets saw subsidiary Denim Airways cease scheduled flights in September. Its five Fokker 50 twin turboprops have now joined Denim Air’s fleet of nine similar machines and five de Havilland Dash 8-300s used to provide wet-lease services.

Boertien reports “a strong resurgence of interest” in 50-seat turboprops for contract work. The group recently moved to offset reduced demand during the European winter by sending Fokker 50s to West Africa’s Air Mauritania and Air Senegal during that region’s high season.

The five Dash 8s fly for Spanish regional Air Nostrum, some of whose own examples may join Denim Air in 2007. [Iberia franchisee Air Nostrum owned Denim Air from 1999 to 2002–Ed.] Current or recent Denim Air customers in Europe include Aer Arran, Air Exel, EuroManx, KLM CityHopper and Loganair.

Now, the group has developed an ACMI (aircraft, crew maintenance and insurance) Plus program that offers start-up regional airlines full operational support, including marketing, sales, distribution and interlining services. 

Denim Air is also evaluating larger regional jets, such as the Embraer 170 and 190 and the Fokker 70 and 100, and hopes to decide by the second quarter of next year. Owned by Rekkof chairman Jaap Rosen Jacobson, group parent company Panta Holding acquired Denim Air in July and also owns Belgian regional VLM Airlines under separate management arrangements.

Jacobson said Denim would require up to 10 RJs over about six years as turboprops come due for replacement.

Denim air drops regional service, expands lease ops

Having dropped regional operations rather than continue losing money into the winter season, Netherlands-based Denim Air group plans to offer enhanced wet-

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