Vertis brings ERJ 145-LR to West African charter market

Vertis chairman, Julian Burrell, (right) announced the news during a webinar yesterday.
The 49-seat regional jet is based in Malabo, capital of Equatorial Guinea. ”It is going to be is on the Ethiopian register with its AOC in the East African country.
Burrell said there had been increased demand for both cargo charters and for repatriation flights.
Asked about the return to operations in the medium term he said: “I think once demand starts to come back. Once the borders start to open and people are able to fly; and once this demand starts to increase, there's going to be a logistical challenge, certainly to return aircraft back into service. And all this will take a lot of time.
“So you've got pilots who potentially are out of check, they haven't flown for quite some time. They'll have to go and have simulator training, you've got aircraft that have been parked up for many weeks, some of them may have to go into maintenance. So it's going to take time to get them through maintenance, and then up and running again. So again, airlines are going to be reintroducing their services, slowly. There's going to be fewer routes available. And also potentially what's going to happen airlines are talking about spacing passengers between in the cabin. So a lot are saying that the middle seat of each row will be kept free. So overall, this will mean there'll be less capacity available per aircraft, that will fly around in the sky and I would have thought That that flying will potentially become more expensive because of this in the short to medium term.”