I am really looking forward to the Premier West release, I hope by this weekend.  I started with some of my favorite destinations, Tucson, San Diego, Burbank, Long Beach, Ontario (CA), Santa Anna, Bakersfield just to name a few.  I really hope you guys like them as much as me, short flights are great in my opinion.  Looking forward to Portland too, one of my favorite places to fly, landing over the bridges, breathtaking in FSX.

Taxes being done tomorrow (real world gets in the way) but I hope to get more done on Premier West, gotta get the textures over to David (Director of Fleet Operations).

Thanks for your time!!

Premier West will feature just about every airport in the major markets in California, it will be tricky but it can be done.  Most of the airports other than SFO and LAX are able to turn a plane around in 30 minutes.  LAX and SFO just have to many delays due to congestion.  We will make it work for us though.  We will be featuring high frequency routes much like Great Lakes Express, I am shooting for 12 flight operations per day per aircraft (14 would be ideal).  Once we expand further north into Oregon, Seattle and Canada we will be looking more at 10 flight operations per day.

As mentioned earlier I have completed the design and paint for the Boeing 737-500 freeware and the WILCO / Feelthere model.  If you own it or bought it for GLE you will be pleased we have added it to Premier West.  I am also looking at the possibility of adding the 737-300 WICLO / Feelthere model as well as a freeware alternative.  At this point that is not looking good as I am sure that people would prefer the NG series from PMDG.  By the time PMDG releases the new NGX series 737’s we will be looking at connecting Premier West and Great Lakes Express.  For now though I think the only way we will be able to connect the two airlines may be through Dallas or Denver.  We will not be flying from Premier West hubs to Great Lakes Express hubs, to far and not in our business model.

I got an email from a pilot this morning asking me about regional flights with Premier West.  I responded to him simply saying that we have absolutely NO plans of adding any planes smaller than the 737-500 just as I have said GLE will not see any planes larger than the 737-500.  I have to stick with the original plan.  I also want to state that we will not offer ANY cargo flights any time in the near future nor will we bring back the Canadian Division Premier Airways had.  I think that everyone gets the feel of what we are doing with Great Lakes Express, I am working on that same principle with Premier West (with slightly bigger planes).  So I can put this topic to bed now, Great Lakes National Holding Inc will not be adding any international flights other than flights to Canada and maybe to Mexico, MAYBE MEXICO.  We will not be offering any Hawaii service other than our current charter operations.

OK, all of these no, no, no’s, why???  I want the pilots who are coming back to Premier West to understand that it will not be what they remember, I went a little crazy with Premier (grew to big) before and this will stay very manageable for me, which will make a better airline and experience for you, that I can promise.

I will update this blog once I get some more going with Premier West, thank you for your time.

Great Lakes Express will continue to offer the CRJ’s for those who love to fly them, they will be offered as part of the alternative fleet which currently includes the PMDG J4100 (alternative to the E120 and Dash 8 Q200) and soon the PMDG 737-60NG (alternative to the B737-500).  We are trying hard to give you as much variety as possible and I think we are doing a pretty darn good job at that.  Hope to see you all in the air a lot this month.

Blue Skies,

Paul

I am looking into painting up the PMDG 737-600 as another alternative to the Wilco 737-500 aircraft.  The Wilco models do not work under the 64bit operating systems and that is the direction the world is heading so we are going to be prepared.

I am also looking into the possibility of getting another 737-500 in the system yet this year, we have a fairly good route set up for it, Chicago Midway to Detroit to Buffalo to Boston to Washington DC.  There are more destinations we are working on but this will give you a nice opportunity to fly the 737-500 on flights right around 40 minutes.

I am putting further expansion of Hartford on hold for a bit even though I have the routes all set to go.  It seems the BDL hub is taking off a bit slower than I anticipated which happens.  While Cleveland and Milwaukee are doing well Hartford will need to pay for itself a bit before going further.  We put an “ad” up at flightsim.com to see if we could get some new pilots for Hartford and that ad is not really producing what I had hoped for “so far”.  We will wait and see what the weekend brings.

We are looking at an extraordinary month so far, we may actually hit 600 flights which is amazing considering I took the airline over two months ago with virtually no pilots other than myself, Zane and Chris.   I think the short flights and the smaller regional aircraft are a really big attraction and this is the reason for the growth.

I have a feeling that once I get the new colors on her and fly it, it will no longer be an ugly bird but one of my favorites.  I am a big fan of just about anything PMDG makes, although I could do without the 747-400 and MD-11 (I am a regional equipment guy).  I would like to get this thing done tonight but I have a feeling it will not.  Everything needs to be converted to DXT5 files and flipped upside down.  The templates are HUGE and my computer LOVES to flip large images (NOT).  Just the GLE texture has 27 layers and once I bring the 27 layers into PMDG’s 40 layers everything kinda goes to a slow CRAWL.  I know, my problem, not yours.

Obviously I will let you know how that goes.