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Why your tax money is funding 11 obscure new UK flights (but five will earn Avios!)

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Back in the Autumn statement, the Government announced a £7m plan to fund 11 new regional air routes that will start during 2016

The Regional Air Connectivity Fund – which, you would think, is the sort of thing which would have been scrapped rather than created during a period of spending cuts – is blowing investing taxpayers money in 11 new air routes.

In my experience, airlines are not short of a willingness to give new routes a try using their own money.  After all, as long as they have the aircraft, the fixed costs involved in starting a route are not huge.

These are the 11 routes which you will be financing for the first three years of their life:

Dundee to Amsterdam (Flybe) 

Derry to Dublin (Citywings)

Carlisle to Belfast (Stobart Air)

Carlisle to Dublin (Stobart Air)

Carlisle to Southend (Stobart Air)

Norwich to Exeter (Flybe)

Norwich to Newcastle (Linksair)

Oxford to Edinburgh (Linksair)

Southampton to Lyon (Flybe, rationale being ….?!)

Southampton to Munich (Flybe, ditto)

Newquay to Leeds-Bradford (Flybe)

Oxford to Edinburgh, two incredibly poor cities, will obviously benefit hugely from this subsidised connection.  In terms of pure genius, however, Carlisle to Southend must be the winner:

Who is flying the route?  Stobart Air

Who owns Southend Airport?  Stobart Air

Who owns Carlisle Airport?  Stobart Air

Triples all round, as Private Eye would say. You can further details on the gov.uk website.

The vague relevance of this to HfP is, of course, that you will be able to earn and spend Avios points on Southampton to Lyon, Southampton to Munich, Norwich to Exeter, Dundee to Amsterdam and Newquay to Leeds-Bradford due to the tie-up between Avios and Flybe.

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Category

British Airways and Avios

Comments (83)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • BlueThroughCrimp says:
    29 Jan29 January 03:47

    As a good person of Dundee, I’ll still use probably use Glasgow or Edinburgh.

    The fares for the existing FlyBe service are a lot higher than the comparable Central Belt service.

    I would also be wary of using FlyBe from such a small base with no back up crew, having had a flight cancelled on the now defunct Dundee to Belfast route.
    Abysmally bad contingency plans in place, and EU261 was a mystery to them, (seemingly the strewardess was in a bump in her car so they didn’t pay out in the end).

    The only plus of flying from there would be to give two fingers to King of the security fiasco Gordon Dewar at EDI, who was complaining about the taxpayer subsidy, while overlooking the vast fortune spent on the trams to his airport, by the, err taxpayer.

    • Alan says:
      30 Jan30 January 08:40

      As a regular on the Southampton to Manchester route I concur on the lack of back up.

      I have booked countless 5pm returns and they are often cancelled. Often the 8pm in full and it’s a night over or a hire car and drive home. Often been tempted to book a fully flex ticket on the later flight to guarantee a seat and then cancel if the 5pm goes.

      Also having flown out of Edinburgh last week they wouldn’t let my wife through fast track with me as she is bronze so I went with her as it looked pretty clear. Took nearly half an hour as my bag got checked (I had fudge!). Amazing the amount of people who have no idea about liquid rules.

  • Hingeless says:
    29 Jan29 January 03:48

    Newquay to Leeds-Bradford (Flybe)

    perfect, i’ll be using that one – i might be the only passenger though

    • Alice says:
      29 Jan29 January 06:54

      I’d use Leeds Bradford to Newquay if the schedule allows for a weekend in Newquay. It probably doesn’t make much sense if it’s a midweek service.

  • John says:
    29 Jan29 January 03:57

    Dublin to City of Derry has been tried repeatedly but never seems to work out. During its BA/Loganair days I flew one sector as the
    only paying passenger in the cabin.

    Stobart doesn’t really need government help. Under its Aer Lingus regional branding, it’ll be expanding its feeder services to Dublin as IAG’s transatlantic expansion gathers pace.

  • Alan says:
    29 Jan29 January 04:46

    If the prices are OK the DND-AMS route could be of interest for starting ex-EU trips although I’d be wary of booking too far in advance in case the route got pulled.

  • Danksy says:
    29 Jan29 January 05:27

    I admire the ambition, but the execution seems flawed!

  • James67 says:
    29 Jan29 January 06:02

    You missed the whole point of the Dundee flight Rob … its sole purpose is to enable Liz and her hubby to more easily take advantage of low tax, low cost exEU bargains.

    • Liz says:
      29 Jan29 January 07:14

      Fantastic! I shall have a wee look !

      • Liz says:
        29 Jan29 January 07:22

        They’ll not be flying today – it’s blowing a gale force 9 out there!

        • CV3V says:
          29 Jan29 January 07:58

          Which means there wont be any fog (for a change)!

          • Alan says:
            29 Jan29 January 08:05

            Fog? Not in Dundee, it’s the sunniest city in Scotland 😀

          • Liz says:
            29 Jan29 January 08:20

            It’s called ‘har’ here – not fog!

          • Alan says:
            29 Jan29 January 08:44

            Or even haar 😀 I actually find Edinburgh gets it more than Dundee, it genuinely is pretty sunny (not necessarily warm, but sunny!)

          • Erico1875 says:
            29 Jan29 January 09:18

            SunnyD 🙂

          • Liz says:
            29 Jan29 January 09:31

            Despite the battering wind and rain the sun is also out at the moment along with a double rainbow!

          • CV3V says:
            29 Jan29 January 08:41

            Liz, growing up just a few miles south of Dundee, allows me to correct your spelling, its ‘haar’ (I translated to fog for the soft southerners) 😉

          • Liz says:
            29 Jan29 January 08:56

            I stand corrected – I’m from Ayr on the west coast originally – my husband is from Dundee – I hadn’t heard of the word before moving here – that’s my excuse anyway!

  • Tr@veller says:
    29 Jan29 January 06:17

    Twice in the space of three weeks I have flown from DND and not made it to my intended destination of STN. Only yesterday (28/1) we were 50 minutes into the flight and were informed by the captain we were returning to DND. From previous, we would have been starting the descent into STN in 10 minutes or so…. Dreadful contingency planning, and needless to say, the replacement aircraft, didn’t arrive and flight was cancelled completely.

    • Alan says:
      29 Jan29 January 06:28

      Wow that is pretty atrocious. Never had that many problems with the old LCY service – only issue I had once was when the weather was absolutely dreadful in DND, they made one attempt at landing then diverted to EDI, which seemed eminently sensible given how bad things were. Coach was waiting for us not long after getting off (although annoyingly had to then pick car up at DND before coming back to EDI a couple of days later!)

    • Lady London says:
      29 Jan29 January 10:08

      Are you doing EU261 on that? They won’t be able to say the stewardess had a bump in her car if they actually took off then.

  • Ross Parker says:
    29 Jan29 January 07:26

    Three years in Oxford and I never knew they had an airport.

    • chris says:
      29 Jan29 January 07:35

      Thats because its a /London/ airport. Drove past it at the weekend; the fence looks like a hedge. Plane spotters; assuming there are flights, must love it.

      • Aeronaut says:
        30 Jan30 January 08:09

        A self-titled London airport. For what it’s worth, it isn’t part of the “LON” London airports group code as defined by the IATA (Southend joined said group a few years back).

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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