I have just returned from sharm el sheikh, was supposed to be flying air atlanta, had euk flight numbers for both outbound and return flights, ended up flying excel both ways, When we got to manchester to check in they had changed to flight numbers to xla without informing anybody! this did cause some confusion amongst the passengers, luckily i knew they were all part of the same group and that the excel flight was ours,but there was a lot of people in the check in que that had been quite confused!

Again same story on return,but got even more hectic as it turns out that the flight had been over booked, by about 180 seats! so excel has sent two planes for us,so we ended up on the extra flight that was due to depart 15 minutes later,again nobody told us any information and we were left to figure it out ourselves! So about twenty people on our flight which was the extra flight tried to board the original flight!! really gave me confidence in the people at the gate in sharm airport who had allowed them to get to the plane for the wrong flight!

have worked on a few air atlanta 747 classics an must say they where two of the worst aircraft ive ever seen second only to evergreen intl an possibly eva air.
theyve also been doing summer flights out of cardiff for travelcity to florida using 747-200 an lately-300. these aircraft have made emergency landings at least 3 times due to engine problems and brake fires (both on one occaision) in conclusion avoid like the plague but if u do fly with them give me a wave as u fly over llantwit major dont worry bout me not seeing you cos ull only be about 200ft off the ground at that point. and its not just because they are using 747s because the BA aircraft have no problems climbing away or any fully loaded diverted 747s.

Hi pacman ... please try to avoid use of phone text style abbreviations, as your posts are likely to be removed as per our T&Cs and Rules of Posting.

Many thanks
David

sorry has been amended now

In December of last year I ended in a very confusing situation I have read multilple comments about. I booked a flight to Sharm through INVALID URL which I knew from previous experience was Excel Airways website. When I got my tickets the flight was served by a company called Air Atlanta. To add to my confusion the return flight was served by Air Malta. My flight experience was okay, but I was quite confused with the whole process.

It all starts with a company called Avion Group which owns Air Atlanta Icelandic. Air Atlanta Icelandic provide plane and crew leasing services to third parties (e.g. BA needs a plane and crew for a flight to Malaga). However although there is the following statement of their site:
"Air Atlanta Icelandic leases its aircraft to other airlines and tour operators. Therefore, Air Atlanta Icelandic is not a scheduled airline and does not sell any tickets on flights that it operates." in some cases Air Atlanta will provide flight and cabin support to Excel Airways (INVALID URL Travel City Direct (INVALID URL because both of these companies are owned by the Avion Group. Intrestingly enough when you book flights or holidays through http://www.xl.com the website of Excel Airways, you can book flights or holidays with other airline partners such as Air Malta.

I have read many reviews about this family of operators - Excel Airways, Travel City Direct, Air Atlanta) and from my personal experience they lack consistency in their service and delivery record - some flights are good some are bad! Lets hope the Scandinavians who apparently own the purse strings realise the importance of consistent service.

The Avion Group own Air Atlanta Icelandic, Air Atlanta Europe, Excel Airways and Travel City. Air Atlanta Europe is a British subsidiary set up by them a few years back, so they could have a British registered airline. They then purchased Excel Airways. Part of that includes Excel Aviation. These are a huge charter flight Broker, they broker nearly all of Excel's flying, and the "Freedom Flights" programme. These have slowly been integrated, so now XL.com actually sells seats not only on Excel, but also tickets for Freedom Flights. The common factor is Excel Aviation who broker the flights.

Air Atlanta Europe is being merged into Excel Airways, so by May there will only be Excel Airways. Apparently a lot is being done to improve their service and image. This includes changing in maintenance contractors and fleet renewal. We will have to wait and see but it should get better.

have worked on a few air atlanta 747 classics an must say they where two of the worst aircraft ive ever seen second only to evergreen intl an possibly eva air.
theyve also been doing summer flights out of cardiff for travelcity to florida using 747-200 an lately-300. these aircraft have made emergency landings at least 3 times due to engine problems and brake fires (both on one occaision) in conclusion avoid like the plague but if u do fly with them give me a wave as u fly over llantwit major dont worry bout me not seeing you cos ull only be about 200ft off the ground at that point. and its not just because they are using 747s because the BA aircraft have no problems climbing away or any fully loaded diverted 747s

I don't doubt your knowledge or experience, and we all know Air Atlanta and Excel have had an awful summer, but your post just seems sensationalist!

Over the summer, British Airways flew two 747s across the Atlantic on 3 engines! This is as well as other engine troubles on their 747 fleet through the summer. Does this make BA a very unsafe airline? Should we "avoid like the plague". No. I would get on a BA 747 tomorrow. I would also get on an Air Atlanta plane tomorrow.

All airlines and aircraft have their problems. Air Atlanta operate a fairly old fleet of aircraft, which will be more maintenance heavy and need more attention. It does not make them unsafe though.

Well said bagand96 !!

I operate on air atlanta aircraft, and believe me if these aircraft were not safe I would be the first to say something.

sensaionalising the problems of any company ( and we have had more than our fair share this year) dose not ere from the fact that modern aircraft have built in redundancy's and are "Over engineered" with the minimum safety requirements that it is still safer to fly with the worse of them than try and cross the road in any busy town and certainly safer than driving

wizard

sorry if u read my above post an saw it as a sensationalist view but that is how i feel about the airline. ive worked on 2 of thier aircraft (747-200) and found them to be in far worse condition than the vast majority of comparable aircraft i have experiance with (including mk dc-8s). also you have a fair point as to the ba aircraft operating with 3 engines but try to remember the scale of ba's operations when compared to air atlanta. if you wish to make that comparison you will find that BA'S flight to incident rate is far more desirable than air atlantas.
furthermore to this Cardiff intnl airport is currently reviewing the airline operations from there "due to issues with safety"

furthermore to this Cardiff intnl airport is currently reviewing the airline operations from there "due to issues with safety"

Whats issues are these?

theyve exprssed concerns over the aircrafts ability to stop safely in the event of an RTO due to the very late rotation of the fully laden aircraft plus doubts of the aircraft performance on climbout if an engine fails.

pacman182,

You want to see the PIA 747-300's leaving Manchester if there are concern over EUK / TCD at Cardiff Int! This is a concern for most heavy aircraft types at many airports, I wouldn't say it is specific to a particular airline / operator. I've seen PIA 743's litterally clearing the end of MAN's runways by a couple of hundred feet, if that. In any event, there would be no way a rejected take off could be performed late in to the take off roll. They are fully committed to take off regardless of if they had a problem. The 747 should be able to climb out with 3 engines at MTOW, its a design feature. I'm no aircraft engineer but I know they have the ability, it was part of the design of the aircraft.

Have a look at this photo. I don't know if you are familliar with EGCC or not, but this aircraft is rotating within a few hundred feet of the end of 06R, in relatively low temperatures as well. You want to see them on a hot summers day! This is the same aircraft on the same day taken from the end of the runway, there's no room for error.

Darren

Flew with this lot from Manchester to Crete a few years back, we had a 17 hour delay at Heraklion coming back because somthing had fallen off the 747 on it's way in, ouch never again.

Sliema2

all of that came about because of a few incidents last year including a 3 engined climbout where the crew expressed its concern at the lack off power with the 3 engines and requested an emergency landing into shannon (longer runway than cardiff) as they where severely struggling for hieght.
point apprechiated with the PIA 747-300 at manchester but the runway there is considerably longer and Travel city regularly operate with 450+ onboard and approaching its MTOW. another factor in this is that the aircraft at cardiff reported brake fires on numerous occaisions (much to the annoyance of the fire department) during normal landings, therefore any RTO or emergency landing scenario would be very interesting.

pacman182

There was never an emergency landing at shannon, the only ever landing made at shannon was when the crew did not want to take on a full load of fuel and passengers and decided to go to shannon as there was a longer runway to take off from there. I should know as a few freinds were on that flight.

I flew with Air Atlanta last year to the US and when we went this year from cardiff the aircraft didn't struggle for height or had its breaks catch on fire. If a fully loaded british airways 747-400 can stop there sure as hell an Air Atlanta 747-300 could stop there with no problems at all. I haven't seen any incident reports for an emergency landing at cardiff for one of these aircraft before but if you have any i would like to see them.

Aside from TCD, Very rarely are there any fully loaded 747 landings at Cardiff, fully loaded 777's yes on diverts. BA's 747's usually only come in for maintenance.
TCD has suffered numerous delays as a result of technical problems, however this has been sorted and discovered on the ground, i dont know of any actual emergency landings or problems on take-off.
Though they do say a 2hr delay is an 'on-time' departure for TCD!