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Flybe launches routes from London City

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Flybe has announced a five year deal with London City Airport to launch a raft of new services.

This is a rather strange strategic turn from the airline, which last May sold all of its landing slots at Gatwick to easyJet for £20 million.  This was, however, driven by a need to raise some cash rather than a strategic move to abandon London.

Flybe London City

The new routes will start operation from October 2014.  Flybe will be serving:

Belfast (x 3 daily)

Dublin (x 4 daily)

Edinburgh (x 4 daily)

Exeter (x 3 daily)

Inverness (x2 daily)

There will also be weekend leisure flights to France and Spain in order to maximise the use of the aircraft.  All flights can be booked via the flybe website here.

Exeter, Inverness and Belfast are not currently served from the airport.  Cityjet flies to Dublin and British Airways flies to Edinburgh, with the latter likely to prove the most competitive route.

Perhaps the Flybe credit card, to which I gave a bit of pasting last week, will become more popular?!

Comments (17)

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  • Anon says:

    Do you which what type of aircraft?

    Assume that it will be jets rather than the pic of the Turbo Prop?

  • Maximus says:

    Flybe will deploy five Q400s on the above routes I have read

  • Maximus says:

    Which are turboprop aircraft.

    At last a service from my locality to the centre of London. I am VERY pleased. Just hope the fares are not extortionate.

  • Zoe says:

    Flybe has cancelled leisure routes from my local airport (Southampton), leaving us with a choice of Ryanair from Bournemouth or the added time and expense of Heathrow or Gatwick. Husband refuses Ryanair at any cost so next Easter’s break looks like Heathrow to Madrid and an extra 3 hours drive in Spain 🙁

    • pauldb says:

      I’m in Bournemouth and find T5 so easily accessible that I will chose BA over Ryanair, especially since we have an infant and luggage.
      I’m trying to work out though where in Spain Flybe would have flown you but now BA can’t get you closer than 3hrs from?

      • Zoe says:

        We did Flybe from Southampton to Alicante for a Sun / Sun week over this Easter. Booked last June cost about £100 each. Now looking for the same week next year Gatwick to Alicante on BA is about £230 each, Heathrow to Madrid about £110. We are looking at 5 of us going, my kids are late teens so can do more convoluted if needed.
        The Flybe flight did involve leaving home at 5am but we were in Costa at Southampton Airport within the hour and having lunch in Javea in the sun that afternoon.

  • Rich. S says:

    I too am a bit irritated that they gave Gatwick.
    Exeter is a historic Brymon route from back in the day…. Can’t see that working, perhaps it is just slot sitting until the agreed subsidised London -NQY service starts?
    As a regular on the former Flybe Inverness run from Gatwick, the extra hassle of getting to city and flying on the Dash 8 is not worth it, neither can I see them being the airline of choice to Edinburgh and Dublin when the competition are operating jets.
    The BA ERJ SR is particularly spacious, with a 34″ pitch, important for those of us that have long legs and broad shoulders!
    I understand that the ERJs that Flybe have are not the right model /performance to operate from city, so these routes are prop. Plane with no chance of that changing any time soon.

    .

    • startupflyer says:

      Actually I can see the Dublin route being used quite a bit, I have used to use Cityjet quite a lot, but they can be very expensive for an average service (and Flying Blue is rightly called Flying Poo).

      On visits to Dublin you do hear a lot of “I’d fly Cityjet but… ” comments, competition will be good. And the competition will be great on the Edinburgh route.

      • Rich. S says:

        If it brings down the cost of LCY EDI with BA then great
        What I struggle with is reminding myself that Flybe still are partly owned by. BA are they not?

    • CV says:

      BA recently added new flights onto their EDI-LCY route, using their brand new Embraer’s. That coupled with EDI having a very large amount of BA Golds, who get access to a very nice new lounge and I think Flymaybe will have a tough time of it.

      Little Red on the EDI – LHR route, in my experience, has been very quiet with them offering double the amount of luggage allowance and status matches on the flight to try and better compete. The Little Red service is actually good, Flybe has always felt like a low cost carrier, which charges full fare.

      • Rich. S says:

        The tight seating on the EI operated Virgin little red flights has put me off.
        Brand Sun must be losing a fortune on this.

        • CV says:

          I didn’t notice the tight seating, but thats because i usually have a spare seat beside me!

          Apparently the Virgin deal was for 2 yrs, so i wouldn’t be surprised if it is dropped after that. Its worth bearing that in mind if anyone is planning to use their points on this route! Just in case.

          • Alan says:

            Hmm good point – keen to try a VS Upper Class redemption (probably using points to upgrade from economy) so need to do that whilst they still have the domestic connecting flights available!

  • Rob says:

    Good point – need to see how good availability is.

  • Mikeact says:

    If these are code shared with AF, then they may help those stuck with Flying Blue.

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