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

Following recent restructuring, British Airways wholly owned regional subsidiary BA CitiExpress (BACE) “is on track to stop the bleeding,” but will need at least another year to meet profitability targets, company officials predict. The airline has made significant progress toward its goal of flying an all-jet fleet while it pursues its parent company’s “future shape and size” cost-cutting program, but negative market response to this year’s U.S./ UK invasion of Iraq and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) have forced CitiExpress into more drastic measures.
Manchester-based CitiExpress has evolved from the 2001 consolidation of BA subsidiaries British Regional Airlines (BRAL) and Brymon Airways, having formally opened last year to allow BA to coordinate its short-haul businesses more easily and to reduce fragmentation among partners. Today, the airline also includes the remnants of BA Regional (the group’s former business unit for non-London based services), as well as Manx Airways (a former BRAL sibling from the Airlines of Britain group).
The airline maintains its own air operator’s certificate (AOC) and flies the BA short-haul services not based at London Heathrow or Gatwick. Its 73-strong fleet serves almost 100 domestic and European routes from 26 points in the UK (principally Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh and Manchester) and Ireland, and a solitary Manchester-New York Boeing 767 service.
According to customer services general manager Bryan Field, CitiExpress has “delivered or is on track to deliver” originally targeted annual savings of £20 million ($32 million) by 2004, while employing the equivalent of 500 fewer people. The original strategy defined four main elements:

<ul>
<li>increase capacity (available seat-miles) and services on key business routes;</li>
<li>simplify the fleet and reduce the number of different aircraft types based at regional airports;</li>
<li>improve use of assets through better matching of aircraft size with local&nbsp;&nbsp; markets; and withdraw loss-making services.</li>
</ul>
Still losing money, however, the airline must go further: “The continuing depressed economic situation, coupled with the detrimental impact of ‘Gulf War II’ and SARS, has required that we repeat the [rationalization] process, and we are now in our third round of cost-cutting and productivity improvements,” Field told AIN. “The company has been restructured from top to bottom, significantly reducing overheads and driving through productivity improvements. We have removed the [BAe] Jetstream 41 fleet and will continue to reduce the turboprop fleet as [BAe] ATP and [Bombardier] Dash 8 leases expire. We have consolidated the number of crew bases and are working assets harder.”
CitiExpress has already relinquished a significant share of routes and aircraft. Along with the 29-seat Jetstream 41s, Humberside-based Eastern Airways has taken over several destinations, while former Brymon routes from London Gatwick to southwest England head to a new operator– Plymouth, UK-based Air Southwest, which plans to fly a pair of ex-CitiExpress Bombardier Q300s from Gatwick to Plymouth and Newquay starting October 26. BA has helped with the provision of flight crews during the initial route transfers in both cases.
Following rationalization, CitiExpress’ fleet now comprises ATPs, Dash 8s and Embraer ERJ-145s flown mainly on UK domestic routes and services to Ireland, and BAe 146/Avro RJ100s used largely on UK-Europe operations. The airline plans to withdraw the ATP equipment this year and all the Dash 8s by the end of next year.
The drive for efficiency has also seen consolidation of BA operations at specific UK regional airports, the number of crew reporting bases (where cabin and flight crew originate for flights) being reduced from 15 to 12 as the airline closed its Aberdeen, Belfast and Jersey bases. CitiExpress has subsequently withdrawn services at Cardiff, Leeds-Bradford and Southampton.
The job cuts–or “manpower equivalent savings”–will happen by next year, according to CitiExpress. Cabin crew will take the hardest hit, as their ranks fall by 233 people, while head office and support departments lose 170. Related reductions include flight operations (48), maintenance (52), and ground services (eight), to achieve an overall manpower cut of 20 percent compared with 2001’s structure.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

CitiExpress answers bell for next round of cuts 

Following recent restructuring, British Airways wholly owned regional subsidiary BA CitiExpress (BACE) “is on track to stop the bleeding,” but will need at

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