• Brymon Airways

From modest beginnings as a light aircraft operator and Cessna dealership, Brymon Airways grew to become one of only two major regional airlines to sustain scheduled services from the West Country. Established as Brymon Aviation at Thruxton aerodrome in Hampshire in March 1969, the company gained its name from founders Bill Bryce and Chris Amon, both formerly involved in Grand Prix motor racing. Eight months after its foundation, the company took over the Fairoaks School of Flying and moved there from Thruxton to begin the process of revitalising the flying club by introducing modern Cessna types.

In September 1970 a BN Islander was acquired to conduct ad hoc passenger and light freight charters, some of which involved flying crayfish to Brittany from Land’s End’s St Just airport. Based on this experience, the Islander was switched to the southwest to commence third-level services between Newquay and the Isles of Scilly on 15 May 1972, followed by Newquay-Plymouth-Jersey at weekends a month later. Encouraged by the first season’s 2,500 passengers, a second Islander was obtained to operate flights from Plymouth and Exeter to St Mary’s and Plymouth to Guernsey in 1973. Later in the year, Brymon’s first international route was opened on 2 November 1973, between Plymouth and Morlaix in Brittany initially four times weekly. This venture proved equally popular and by the following summer frequency was increased to twice daily and annual passenger boardings rose to 9,000.

Seeking an aircraft of higher seating capacity, the 20-seater DHC-6 Twin Otter was eventually chosen, which not only satisfied heavier traffic demands, but with its short takeoff and landing [STOL] performance, could also handle the short grass runways at Plymouth and St Mary’s. Deliveries commenced in April 1974, allowing Brymon to expand its network over the next couple of years to take in Cherbourg and Brest. From the following November Islander G-AXXJ opened a twice-daily Plymouth-Cardiff run, while in June 1975 a service to Cork was commenced, initially utilising a Cessna 337 transferred from Southampton-based Southern Air Services, another Brymon subsidiary, which was then closed down.

In January 1977 the opportunity occurred to take over the Newquay-Heathrow route recently abandoned by British Midland, together with the HP Herald aircraft and its operating crews. Following on from this, a Newquay-Manchester Herald service was also launched. Then, in 1979, approaches from British Caledonian led to Brymon operating their Birmingham-Gatwick feeder route, previously flown by British Caledonian’s Piper Navajo Chieftains and linked to the rest of the network by a Plymouth-Gatwick Twin Otter service.

Traffic growth on this sector, later extended to include East Midlands, necessitated the employment of leased Shorts 330s from March 1985, releasing a Twin Otter to commence services from Bristol to Scilly from April. Another valuable spin-off was the listing of all Brymon flights and connections on British Caledonian’s reservations computer, helping to drive a significant rise in passenger uplift to 98,750 by the end of 1980. Looking towards replacement of the Herald on trunk routes, the STOL DHC Dash-7 was selected. Apart from more than doubling capacity, the new aircraft was also still able to operate into Plymouth’s short runways. Prior to delivery of the first machine in April 1981, Brymon was awarded a £10m contract from Chevron UK, which would fully commit the first two examples flying up to three daily round trips between Aberdeen and Unst in support of the Ninian Oil Field. This new business subsequently spawned a dedicated subsidiary, Brymon Offshore Air Charter, and added Aberdeen as a scheduled destination, by virtue of offering the otherwise empty aircraft rotation leg as a timetabled passenger service.

Having moved base from Newquay to Plymouth in 1973, Brymon took over the running of the city’s Roborough airport from Airwork two years later and began up-grading the runways to hard-surfaces. In 1980 a 125-year lease on the airport was obtained from Plymouth City Council and marked the beginning of major improvements to the airfield lighting, terminal building, hangars and control tower. Specifically tailored to STOL operations, Britain’s first 7.5-degree ILS PAPI approach aid coupled with DME was commissioned in June 1987. Brymon had similarly assumed responsibility for operating the civil terminal at Newquay’s RAF St Mawgan in January 1977. Another airport in the development of which the airline played a major role was the London City STOLport, with a Brymon Dash-7 being the first to land at the temporarily cleared site at Heron’s Wharf on 27 June 1982, as part of the feasibility study. When the new airport officially opened on 26 October 1987 Brymon commenced services to Paris in conjunction with Air France. This new network was progressively expanded to take in Lille, Strasbourg and briefly, Amsterdam. Later, Brussels was also flown in conjunction with Sabena, but all joint operations ceased in March 1993 and Brymon withdrew from London City completely.

The airline’s ownership changed hands in 1983, when deHavilland Canada took a 75% holding in exchange for financing the burden of new equipment purchases. In 1986 British Airways acquired a 40% stake via its holding company, TPL (The Plimsoll Line), and two years later, Maersk Air of Denmark took a 40% holding in TPL which in turn, bought out Birmingham Executive Airways in December 1988. This convoluted situation gave rise to a brief 10-month consolidation of the two airlines under the title Brymon European in October 1992, leading to BEA’s BAC 1-11s becoming the first jets to wear Brymon colours. With the dissolution of the loss-making TPL, Brymon reverted to its original title in August 1993, now as a wholly-owned British Airways subsidiary, though retaining its own management board.

At this time, the operation of Plymouth and Newquay airports was de-merged and these were subsequently operated by a private management company on behalf of the local council. Earlier, in 1990, Brymon became the UK launch operator for the Dash 8-100, ordering four aircraft with which to develop a new hub at Bristol where the first services were opened to Glasgow, Edinburgh, Plymouth and Paris. From late 1993 onwards all aircraft adopted British Airways colours, except the two Dash 7s retained for oil-industry work until the loss of that contract to British World in March 2000. Having formally become a British Airways Express operator in January 1995; when British Airways unveiled its new livery on 10 June 1997, it was the Brymon Dash 8, G-BRYT, that became the first aircraft to carry the new colours.

Operations from Southampton were commenced in 1994 to Paris and Newcastle, while three years later services to and from Plymouth and Newquay were switched to Gatwick owing to slot constraints at Heathrow. A major re-equipment programme was commenced in 1996 to replace the existing fleet with Dash 8-300 series aircraft and Brymon celebrated its 25^{th< sup> anniversary in 1998 with a further £60m order for the 8Q-300 ‘Quiet’ model, incorporating the revolutionary NVS (Noise and Vibration Supression) system. Deliveries were completed in 1999, bringing the fleet up to no less than seventeen Dash 8s. By this stage Brymon was carrying in excess of half a million passengers annually and in the quest for further expansion, seven new Embraer ERJ-145 regional jets worth $420m were ordered, with the first aircraft arriving at Bristol on 27 February 2000. Initially these were used on routes from Bristol to Paris, Frankfurt and Munich and also on services from Birmingham on behalf of BA Regional. Bristol then became the main focus of Brymon activity, to where its in-house engineering facility was moved from Plymouth.}

Flights to Dublin and Cork from Plymouth, Bristol and Newcastle were commenced in January 2001 under a code-share agreement with Aer Lingus. While the airline’s services were predominantly tailored towards business traffic, during quieter weekend periods aircraft utilisation was extended by flying holiday charters such as Bristol-Verona on behalf of Crystal Holidays. On the surface, indistinguishable from British Airways apart from a discreet logo on the aircraft nose, from its new Weston-super-Mare headquarters Brymon nevertheless maintained its strong links with the West Country, as exemplified by the provision of in-flight meals with a regional flavour like Cornish cream tea and Somerset cider casserole. The Brymon name finally disappeared at the end of March 2002, when it was absorbed into BA CitiExpress, but its historical connection to the southwest continued, following the takeover of the Plymouth-based CitiExpress operation by Air South West mid-way through 2003. In February 2006 British Airways Citiexpress was renamed BA Connect which was subsequently sold to Flybe in 2007.