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

New UK domestic regional airline Varsity Express plans single weekday flights between Oxford (60 miles northwest of London) and Edinburgh, Scotland, starting March 1. For the first 10 days, the flights will offer all seats for £49 (about $85) one way. Thereafter, fares will range from £49 to a walk-up “business-class” price of £149 (about $250). 
Beginning April 5 Varsity plans a second daily flight on the route, via Newcastle on the northeast English coast. The initial northbound breakfast-time departures will return in the late afternoon, while the second service operates in the middle of the day, increasing utilization of the single leased BAe Jetstream 31.
Director Martin Halstead told AIN that Varsity’s business plan assumes a 42-percent load factor, equivalent to eight passengers per flight, 65 percent of which he expects to be business-class. Halstead acknowledged that Oxford-Edinburgh route is a “relatively small” niche market of about 4,000 passengers per year in each direction.
The quoted fares suggest Varsity believes it can break even at about £900 for each 90-minute flight. Halstead said that Varsity expects to provide ad hoc charters, but that it hasn’t set a “real time frame” in which to make money. “We expect to get a clear idea [of market realities] after three to four months,” he said, adding that Varsity might launch other unspecified routes at that time. Backed by British and Spanish real-estate and entertainment-industry interests, Varsity has “enough money to operate for 18 months without passengers, but we will not do that,” said Halstead. 
UK-based Jetstream 31 capacity provider Linksair will operate the flights for Varsity under a wet-lease arrangement covering aircraft, crew, maintenance and insurance for which Varsity expects to provide half of the required captains and first officers. Four years ago, at the age of 19, Halstead established Alpha One Airways, initially an Oxford-Cambridge shuttle and subsequently an Isle of Man-Edinburgh service, but each ceased operation after a short time.

UK start-up opens with Oxford-Edinburgh service

New UK domestic regional airline Varsity Express plans single weekday flights between Oxford (60 miles northwest of London) and Edinburgh, Scotland, starti

2024 Corporate Aviation Leadership Summit

AIN Products

SUBSCRIPTIONS

RESOURCES

ABOUT AIN