"More new routes"
Northern Ireland Leisure Travel News- May 2004 (Issue 159)
Belfast
City Airport's biggest carrier has plans for a number of new routes - including
"two or three" direct European services. This was revealed by flybe
Marketing and Sales Director Mike Rutter on a visit to Belfast recently to
meet key local travel agents.
Routes to Teeside, Manchester and possibly Norwich or Cambridge are at the
planning stage; but it is likely to be next year before the company's plans
for its first European routes direct from Belfast come to fruition.
Limitations on the company's fleet is a restricting factor as is the ban on
night-time flying at Belfast City Airport; but the flybe chief admitted that
the recent announcement of Spanish sun routes to be operated by easyJet from
Belfast International Airport would affect his company's plans for new Spanish
services from the Province.
However, he said that easyJet's Belfast International to Paris service, due
to start in the summer, would not affect flybe's thinking on a Paris route
from Belfast City. "It would be two different markets from different
airports. Our service would be more geared to the business traveller,"
he told Northern Ireland Travel News.
He
said he expected to be able to announce an increase in the number of the airline's
domestic connections from Belfast to the UK Mainland in the weeks ahead. Flybe
has been achieving phenomenal growth in the past couple of years, and is now
Europe's third largest low cost airline.
The airline carried 2.1 million passengers in 2002, but expects to double
this figure this year by carrying more than 4 million by the end of 2004.
Almost incredibly, the airline, which operates all its Northern Ireland routes
from Belfast City, aims to be carrying 7 million passengers by the end of
2005 - mkaing it one of the real success stories of air travel post September
11 era.
H e said that the airline's three new routes from Belfast, to Edinburgh, Glasgow
and Exeter would add another 200,000 passengers a year, while the total carryings
on all the airline's Northern Ireland routes was up more than 30 per cent.
He said the airline had successfully taken on easyJet - along with Ryanair
reckoned to be the pioneers of no-frills low cost travel - on the Belfast-Newcastle
service and now had 40 percent of the market.
Mike Rutter pledged to work with the Northern Ireland Travel Trade and impressed
travel agents with his straight answers to his straight from the shoulder
replies to their sometimes critical questioning.
Other members of the high profile flybe team at the Belfast meeting were Stephen
Hobday, Head of Sales, Andrea Hayes, General Manager, Market Development and
Barry Jackson, Market Manager Ireland.
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