Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Corder.

It's Tuesday the 28th of October.

It should be Travel Desk Tuesday and I had planned a discussion about airport lounges.

But that was not to be because very sadly, during Monday, it became clear that Eastern Airways was shutting down.

You may well not know this airline.

It's always been a fairly small UK regional airline.

It's been around for 28 years, but its focus was generally on the kind of East Coast,

so from Aberdeen down to Teesside and also to Humberside, where there's lots of activity in the oil industry.

It also flew from Aberdeen to Wick.

That's a so-called PSO Public Service Obligation flight where the government, Scottish government in this case, will pay an airline to fly a route if they regard it as being essential for connectivity.

I sadly never flew the route. It took about half an hour in the air

and saved a five-hour drive. It may well be that somebody will pick that up, presumably Loganair,

because they are Scotland's airline after all, and the Scottish government will continue to subsidise it.

Having said that, well, I don't think we are going to see anybody rushing on to a route like

Aberdeen to Teesside. One route where there will definitely be some action is on the so-called

public service obligation route from Newkey in

Cornwall to Gatwick where Cornwall Council is very keen that there should be a link to a big

international airport and well Eastern Airways had the contract to do that.

There will be a gap for, I'm guessing, just probably a few days and someone else will move in,

as various people who could do it.

But one interesting option is that Skybus, which runs services to and from the Isles of Silly, could actually

take over. It would need to charter in, I think, some capacity from a different airline actually

...