01 April 2011

Royal Airlines' C-GRYI

The April edition of "HNL RareBirds Classics" takes us to December 1998, and this Royal Airlines A310-304, C-GRYI (msn 432, l/n 379), seen above being pushed out of Gate 25.

This A310 was originally delivered to Emirates Airlines (EK/UAE) as A6-EKA in July 1987. It was sold back to Airbus as F-WGYW in May 1997. Two months later, it was leased to Royal (QN/ROY) as C-GYRI, and kept the same registration when Royal was acquired by Canada 3000 (2T/CMM) in January 2001. After the closure of Canada 3000 in November 2001, it was returned to Airbus, then leased to Euralair International Airlines (RN/ERL) as F-GRNS in May 2002. From July to December of the same year, it was sub-leased to Nas Air (P9/NCM) of Mali. In April to June 2003, it was sub-leased to Nigerian Global (NGI). After it was returned to Euralair, it was put in storage, and has since been scrapped.

If you look left of the A310's tail, is a Canada 3000 757-200 parked at Gate 26. In the 90s, there were a host of Canadian carriers serving HNL from the "Great White North" that includes: Skyservice, Air Transat, Royal Airlines, Canada 3000, Canadian Airlines, and Air Canada. Of those airlines, only Air Canada is the remaining survivor that regularly serves the Hawai‘i market.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Air Transat is still flying, has currently abandoned the Hawaii market though.

YYC Dispatcher

Blue Wave 707 said...

Mahalo for the correction! :-)

Overlooked that one ...

Anonymous said...

Don't forget Wardair.

Brian at SFO

Blue Wave 707 said...

Thanks Brian!

HNL808 said...

What about Westjet???

Blue Wave 707 said...

WestJet was not around serving HI back then.