Mr A and I decided to take a short bucket list trip to Cornwall, to see the Eden Project.  Eastern Airways has recently been awarded the Public Service Obligation Flights contract to operate from London Gatwick (“LGW”) to Newquay (“NQY”) on Cornwall’s North coast, which means the fights are subsidised by the Government in order to serve isolated communities. Maybe that’s how the return fare ended up being much cheaper than the train (at £300 for 2 pax it was half the first class rail fare), which sustainability-wise should never happen!  Our flight, on 28th March, was on Eastern’s first day of operating from the re-opened South Terminal at LGW, after a 2 year pandemic hibernation.   But the terminal wasn’t very busy, so check-in was simple and smooth.  I hadn’t bothered to pay for seats on this all economy flight, and it turned out that most of the 22 pax were required to sit nearer to the rear of the aircraft, for centre of gravity reasons.  Thus we ended up with back row seats, but wasn’t going to mean we boarded and disembarked last, because that’s all done from the rear door.

Flight T3 452 was scheduled to depart at 08:55, and land in Newquay at 10:10.  With time to spare we went to The No. 1 Lounge, courtesy of my Priority Pass membership.  This lounge is not a favourite of mine, despite it having fabulous views of the airport. I just find the F&B offering rather poor, and the clientele a little cheap.  The photo shows my stale pain au chocolate and croissant and a ‘vending machine’ coffee. 1/10

The flight was running late, but no reason was given, so we only boarded the four year old ATR-72, registered G-IACY, at 09:10, but with so few pax the doors were closed at 09:13 and we pushed back at 09:25. So that was half an hour late.  The cabin seating is configured 2-2, which is ideal when travelling as a couple, and the leg room was much better than anticipated, though this was because the person in front didn’t recline their seat.

We took off at 09:44 from runway 08R. There was only ‘buy on board’ catering; I had a vodka and tomato juice for £6.  After what seemed a very short time we began our descent towards NQY, where we landed at 10:42 on runway 30. NQY is a very small airport on we were on stand two minutes later (34 minutes late, and still no reason given).

Our return to LGW on 31st March was flight T3 457, scheduled to leave NQY at 17:00 and get to LGW at 18:10.  We got to the airport at 15:00 but we had to wait until 15:30 for check in to open.  Mr A noticed a desk with a Priority Pass sign, so I went over and discovered there was a Priority Pass lounge airside, after security, which was a nice bonus. They gave me a code for the secure entrance, because the lounge is unmanned.

The lounge was really small, with only one other person using it at the time.  It had a small snack and drinks offering, and wifi, so we found it a pleasant and comfortable place to wait for our flight to be called.  At the boarding gate we saw that there were maybe twice as many pax on this flight than on the flight down to NQY.  The aircraft operating was the same as on the way down, ATR72 registered G-IACY, and everything ran smoothly and to time. But at LGW there was a frustratingly long wait for our bags to appear, which was an LGW fault, not an Eastern one.

Overall Eastern Airways gave us two comfortable flights at a very reasonable price.  The (propellor) ATR72 is a good aircraft for operating short sectors, and because of the short flight times the lack of free onboard services was not an issue.  Eastern proved to us that small regional airlines are usually much more friendly and relaxed than mainline carriers, as an example, there was no problem with us moving to the back row again, to avoid an uncontrolled child in front of us.  8/10