The bulk of the jets that fly out of City - aircraft in the range of 70-120 seats or so and smaller than are of interest to Boeing - are made by Embraer, which is a Brazilian company. Propeller driven aircraft that you see there tend to be made either by ATR (a joint venture between Aerospatiale of France and Alenia of Italy) or by Bombadier of Canada, as you say. The most important such aircraft is the Bombadier Dash 8, which used to be known as the DHC Dash 8, with DHC standing for “de Havilland Canada”. Bombadier’s aircraft division is the descendent of the Canadian subsidiaries of two venerable British aircraft manufacturers, the other being Vickers. A lot of the more useful assets of these companies ended up with the Canadian divisions when nationalisation of the British parent companies looked inevitable some decades ago.

Bombadier does make small jets and I believe that several airlines intend to fly the forthcoming Bombadier CS100 from City when it is available.

I like London City airport. I remember flying in there on a propeller (ok, turboprop) driven Dornier, looking around nervously for the Spitfires that had to be about to descend on us.

It’s easily the nicest London airport to go in and out of. If you are flying short haul and someone other than you is paying for it, it’s perfect. If you are paying yourself, the difference in fares is usually enough to make you fly from somewhere else.

(Of course, this is the point).

It used to be possible to get reasonably priced flights there at weekends: Are the airlines obliged to use the slots every day, even at a business airport on days when there are no business travellers?

The airlines aren’t obliged to, but they will presumably do so if they think they can make a profit. In a lot of cases they have bought small jets *specifically* for use at City Airport and don’t use them on other routes, so they might as well fly them and earn some revenue rather than leave them sitting on the ground somewhere.

Even on weekdays, flights out of City aren’t *that* expensive. Most flights are run by subsidiaries or affiliates of British Airways or Air France/KLM (with a small number of flights from other similar airlines such as Lufthansa/Swiss and Alitalia). They charge about the same as they do for flights from Heathrow or Gatwick to the same destinations. This is a big enough far difference to ensure that price conscious travellers go elsewhere. (I’ve only even used the airport twice, and only once when I was paying myself).

This is largely about capacity, though. City is a pleasant experience partly because of the lack of crowds, but the main constraint on the number of passengers is actually capacity. Larger aircraft cannot take-off from the short runway, and the number of slots is small due to the lack of a taxiway at the airport. (Planes have to taxi on the runway). It’s possible to make the same airport a pleasant experience for business travellers and still carry a large number of leisure travellers (and indeed to make the experience pleasant for them, too - see Singapore Changi)

As the business travellers aren’t there on the weekend, lowering the fares and flying whoever likes the idea of flying there at the weekend still makes sense, up to that still rather constrained capacity. I suspect that the people who fly from City on business quite like the idea of flying from there for leisure, too. In addition, they have frequent flier miles and still probably aren’t paying themselves, but providing leisure flights for them on the weekends probably makes them happy, which is important. The list of leisure destinations from City supports this - you have flights to Spanish beaches, but also to tony ski resorts and places in Tuscany.

Actually, the flight from City to Florence is a bit of a classic. Florence airport is another tiny city-centre airport which is very constrained with respect to aircraft type, just like City. Most people flying to Florence use Pisa airport. That flight gives you the same tiny airport experience at both ends.