The directors and management at Eastern Airways paid tribute to its staff and those from its industry partners after being awarded European Regions Airline Association’s (ERA) prestigious Gold Airline of the Year Award.

The UK regional carrier was last night named Europe’s number one regional airline 2006/7 ahead of 65 other airline members at an awards ceremony in Barcelona in association with the ERA’s annual General Assembly with 500 airlines’ delegates and international press.

The independent airline, which has 38 scheduled flights a week from Inverness Airport, continues to launch and develop niche routes in a heavily competed UK market. It currently operates over 800 flights a week across 26 routes and gained the most recognised airline award for this sector of industry after two consecutive years of silver awards in 2003/4 and 2004/5.

“It’s a tremendous honour to win the gold,” said Richard Lake, Eastern Airways’ chief executive officer. “This award is dedicated to each and every one of our 420 staff throughout the UK regions for their commitment, enthusiasm and professionalism. It also recognises our industry partners and, together with our own team, we offer convenient, frequent, punctual flights, enabling business travellers to save time and ultimately reduce their total cost of travel.”

The aim of the Airline of the Year Award is to recognise the best overall achievement in the previous 12 months by an ERA member airline based on a wide range of criteria, including commercial and marketing strategy, finance, environment, operational efficiency and performance, product, customer service and industry representation.

The judging panel consisted of leading European aviation journalists who commended the airline for:

·         Successfully implementing a business strategy concentrating on underserved markets and on a particular aircraft type

·         Its management successfully proving with courage, creativity and persistence that an independent high quality airline can survive in an environment dominated by powerful competitors

·         Its commitment on the technical side, operations and marketing, which was noted for being outstanding  

Bryan Huxford, Eastern Airways’ chairman, said: “While this is tremendous for everyone involved, the challenge now is to retain this high level of achievement over the coming years.” 

This year, Eastern Airways has launched eight new routes and is revolutionising regional pilot training for an airline of its size, by investing in its own state-of-the-art Jetstream 41 simulator located at its headquarters at Humberside Airport.

Eastern Airways also rolled out a programme to refresh its corporate identity, moving away from its previous more traditional red and white livery to become predominantly rich blue with white. The “feathers” logo of red and white is prominent on the blue tailfin. This move helps reflect the airline’s success across the current network from 17 UK airports, as well as Brussels.

“We’re a provider of high calibre services for business and leisure travellers. The new identity reflects the corporate and professional image of the airline and takes the business forward into a new era,” said Richard Lake.

Eastern Airways, which celebrates its ninth anniversary this year, has locally based pilots and cabin crew supporting its flights from Inverness Airport.

For flight information and booking of the airline's services from Inverness to Birmingham, Leeds Bradford and Manchester visit its www.easternairways.com website.