Having arrived in Heathrow, I now had a three hour wait until my bus to Southampton. While Heathrow is a monstruous airport, it’s relatively easy to find yourself there.

And from time to time, if you’re not in a rush there are some jewels you have to appreciate (that, naturally, beyond the traffic you won’t see anywhere else in the world).

Part one: Belfast-Heathrow with flybe
Part two: Southampton-Belfast with Aer Lingus Regional (you are here)
Part three: Derry-Stansted with Loganair

It was a smooth ride from London to Southampton, and after some ten minutes in a city bus, I was dropped in front of the airport.

Again the structure there is quite rustic, if you will, but more than enough for a regional airport.

By the way, and there’s something I didn’t know before writing the story up, Southampton Airport is still a far cry from its pre-COVID days — and that’s largely because of flybe.

On December 2019, Southampton was the airline’s third-largest airport, with 81,048 seats comprised within 1,080 departures. flybe hasn’t yet returned to the airport (they even canceled my flight!), so the airport, this month, is 81,712 seats, or practically one flybe, short of its capacity in the last December before the pandemic.

Southampton is now dominated by Loganair, Blue Islands and Aer Lingus, but there is still a long way to go until they are back in full form. The capacity data, by the way, was sourced from Cirium’s Diio Mi application.

Security checks were very quick and soon I was on the airside.

EI3605 SOU-BHD

Speaking of «quick», booking could not have been faster; Aer Lingus’ app works very fine, thank you very much. In less than five minutes I had the booking in hand — just as easy as buying anything else, as it should.

Back to the airport, the airside was just as humble as the check-in area. But for a regional airport, all’s forgiven. What matters more is that the airport is close to downtown and easy to navigate through.

Climbing up the stairs you have access to the local lounge and two cafés, one of which has a privileged view of the runway.

But all in all this is the terminal, so not much to do or see — though, either way, the TV downstairs, which showed South Korea vs. Portugal in the World Cup, or the planes upstairs, would definitely do for me.

If you haven’t yet heard of them, Eastern Airways are a regional airline which has always served a niche in Britain. Here, G-MAJB, a BAe Jetstream 41 is seen arriving from Humberside. It soon would depart to Manchester as T3806.

In front, G-IACZ, an ATR 72-600. It uses to fly to Manchester, so I guess the Jetstream was covering the ATR, either for maintenance reasons or because the flight was empty; either way, after arriving in Manchester, G-MAJB returned to Humberside, while the flight back to Southampton was cancelled.

My flight, on the other hand, was set to leave on time. The plane came from Belfast City, where Emerald Airlines bases their ATRs.

Boarding was cleared on time, and again we walked towards our aircraft.

Not this one, though; here, G-SAJE is seen being turned around to Edinburgh as LM325/326.

This, instead, was our plane for the last flight of the day: EI-GPO, named «St. Foillan»/»Faolán».

According to Planespotters.net, -GPO was originally delivered to flybe in March 2016 as G-FBXD, being immediately wet-leased to SAS. As flybe went bust in March 2020, the aircraft was immediately leased to Ireland’s Stobart Air… and then the pandemic hit.

With COVID, Stobart Air — which, prior to Emerald, flew under the «Aer Lingus Regional» brand — also went under and EI-GPO was left with no operator until March 2022, being on Emerald’s first batch of ATRs.

Boarding went very quickly and soon I was in my seat.

Seat pitch, as you can see, is on average for a regional plane.

What is not on average, though, was the safety card stored in my seat pocket… worry not: the other seats had «normal» safety cards.

By our side, a KLM E-Jet — they’re the only legacy airline to offer services between Southampton and continental Europe. By the way, British Airways has a weekly flight to Chambéry and another to Salzburg, but obviously they don’t connect anywhere else.

Boarding was finished at around 17h00 and immediately the crew proceeded with the safety instructions.

The flight seemed to be sold out (at least it said so in Aer Lingus’ app). Great to see so.

At 17h06, four minutes before schedule, we were pushed back.

Taxi to the runway didn’t take long and at 17h13 the flight deck applied full throttle in the pair of Pratt&Whitneys. As the Dash 8, the ATR is very quiet for a turboprop. Okay, it might be slower and smaller than an A320 or a 737, but it is a very pleasant plane to fly… nevermind the nostalgia of flying it across Brazil when I was a kid.

And the ATR flies very smoothly. By the way, that’s a very rare sight: an ATR with a clean window.

Pretty soon the two flight attendants started the service. I was so tired that I didn’t remember to take a photo of it; but you’re not missing much, as it consisted in soft drinks, tea and coffee only… which is adequate for a one-hour flight these days.

What striked me was how lovely the service of the Emerald Airlines’ crew was. Really brilliant, so friendly. Peter and his colleague were really in such a great mood («it’s Friday!», as they properly said) you could feel the great atmosphere onboard.

The cabin of the ATR, by the way, also looks quite comfortable.

Later on in the flight I managed to talk for some minutes to the lady flight attendant. She happened to come from flybe — as I guess many of her Belfast-based colleagues come from. She seemed quite happy with the new opportunity, and it showed. It was a true joy to fly with them!

Unfortunately, the flight was short; soon we were descending into Belfast City Airport.

At 18h35, five minutes before scheduled, EI-GPO made a smooth landing at George Best Airport’s 04 runway.

Again, taxi didn’t take long. In some five minutes we were parked in our position.

Before I left the aircraft and waved goodbye to the crew, I managed to snap a photo of the cabin, which looks to be standard for the ATR -600 series — at least the seats of the ones Azul operates are very similar to these.

This was the last flight of the day for EI-GPO and its crew.

Here, a British Airways A320 is seen by a departing easyJet A320.

The walk to Belfast City Airport’s terminal was short, as the structure there is quite limited.

In five minutes I was at the bus stop to downtown Belfast.

The bus cost GBP2.50 (quite overpriced for a city bus but that’s the UK for you) and the ride to the bus station was quite fast indeed. In 20 minutes I was waiting for my bus towards Derry.

I was very tired but there was another three hours to go before I finally got to bed!

Final remarks

I always say Ireland is so very fortunate to have two flag carriers, being a five-million people country: well, technically, Emerald Airlines makes for a third. And how lucky they are.

All in all it was a very good experience with Aer Lingus Regional. In fact if you don’t pay close attention you barely notice you are flying a different airline, which is good. Booking was very easy through the Aer Lingus app, the service was not delayed (despite being the aircraft’s last hop of the day) and, if the catering was simple, this didn’t matter, the flight being so short.

That’s not to mention the crew’s awesome service. It was their last of four flights that day, but it felt like the first. They definitely put a smile in everyone’s faces.

Again, beyond catering or anything else, what is more important in these three flights I’m writing about is the reliability; especially in this «corporate-focused» flights to a downtown airport, on-time performance is the key for a service to prevail. And Emerald Airlines delivered. How lucky is (Northern) Ireland!