I try Flybe from Heathrow to Edinburgh – a good Avios-earning BA alternative?

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• phatbear says:

  6 Nov6 November 05:40

  Also worth a mention that Flybe now fly’s to Glasgow from Southend, for anyone who needs to get north of the border, and they use an Embraer erj-195r, for anyone who prefers a jet to a prop.

• Paul Chisholm says:

  6 Nov6 November 06:02

  If you are flying to Aberdeen and it is raining, you will get wet with both BA and Flybe!

  • Oh! Matron! says:

    6 Nov6 November 08:42

    “At Edinburgh, I again found myself without a gate. It had started to rain by this point and I had to cross the tarmac without cover.”

    Written by a true Londoner… Bless 🙂

    • Save EC Rewards says:

      6 Nov6 November 09:59

      I think Rob is from Yorkshire originally!

    • TripRep says:

      6 Nov6 November 10:04

      IMHO That’s a fair comparison to BA @ LHR where you normally have a jetway.

      Yep, Rob is originally from near Doncaster/Rotherham/Sheffield area, like myself.

• Lumma says:

  6 Nov6 November 06:05

  Enjoyed my flight on a flybe dash 8 from City Airport to Amsterdam (great flight for a window seat if it’s taking off in the right direction), but it would have to be significantly cheaper than the train for me personally to consider it due to it taking almost as long when you add on the travelling time the airports and clearing security.

  I remember seeing a few people struggling to get full sized carry on luggage into the overhead lockers on the dash 8 as well.

• JamesB says:

  6 Nov6 November 06:37

  I think that the aircraft being used tends to confirm your speculation on the reasoning behind Flybe operating these flights. It seems odd that they are not operating them with E190s given landing fees at LHR and the fact that other airlines have no difficulty filling a320s on the routes. However, it also seems odd that they might think they can do better deploying the slots elsewhere in Europe where they would face more competition from other carriers for premium passengers. At least with their current routes they have political and business passengers with only BA to compete with into Heathrow unless the problem is that BA has that market largely tied up in corporate deals. Presumably though they can lease or ‘sell’ the Heathrow slots after three yeas? If so, that would explain everything.

  • the real harry1 says:

    6 Nov6 November 07:26

    if Flybe last the three years and can switch to European routes using their slots, can they switch terminals?

    I wonder why Virgin didn’t think it was worthwhile persevering – were they really losing such huge amounts of money or was it that ‘selling’ the slots would have been difficult/ and they don’t have a European strategy?

    • Rob says:

      6 Nov6 November 08:40

      Virgin only did it for long-haul feed, but the need to get passengers from T2 to T3 meant it wasn’t hugely beneficial.

      • Oh! Matron! says:

        6 Nov6 November 08:44

        The demise of Little red was much bigger than you imagine.

        I used it primarily to see the parents in Manchester and loved that, just a few days before the flight, I could book it for around £100.

        Try doing that with BA…

        • Rob says:

          6 Nov6 November 08:52

          Of course, the reason it was a £100 is that the flight was empty!

          Towards the end they were status matching BA pax who flew it to drum up custom. I got a Virgin Gold card for flying a one way to Manchester for £50. Quite a few other readers did the same.

        • Alan says:

          6 Nov6 November 22:06

          Yep, that was my first time at VS Gold, then got it again earlier this year – thanks to BA Gold once more 😛

      • ChrisDev says:

        6 Nov6 November 10:57

        ..and that’s exactly what I did. Earned Virgin Gold by switching all my US bound flights over to Virgin when I flew from EDI with them. The bus from T2 to T3 wasn’t such a big deal since they had dedicated transfer buses at the gate waiting.

      • Stu N says:

        6 Nov6 November 20:27

        Wasn’t it the old T1 Domestic bit they used – the long cold corrugated tunnel of doom?

• TripRep says:

  6 Nov6 November 07:16

  Nice to see this covered, I would consider it if needing a fight at short notice and cash prices were high.
  Also another consideration is how easy is it to connect from a FlyBE flight at T2, if your long haui is with any covered here it maybe worth it.
  https://www.heathrow-airport-guide.co.uk/terminal-2.html
  .

  • Alan says:

    6 Nov6 November 08:06

    If on a cash ticket you can codeshare with Flybe to both Singapore Airlines and Virgin Atlantic. Sadly not an option on redemptions, which is a pain for me on the way back in Jan (just having to do a long connection and go from T2 to T5) and was frustrating when flying to Boston, as Virgin Red used to let you book redemptions with free connections. Virgin’s service was far superior, quite a shame it went.

    For me the Flybe one is handy if BA redemptions full, but not so much otherwise.

    • TripRep says:

      6 Nov6 November 08:43

      Alan, thanks for that, Its a real shame they can’t do the same PNR mixing a VS award with a cash FlyBE ticket, would be an attractive option for INV-MAN-MCO in UC to avoid APD

      • Alan says:

        6 Nov6 November 22:04

        Absolutely – plus would be nice just for check-through luggage too! Due to lack of SIN-FRA availability I was contemplating going back MEL-SIN-LHR-FRA-EDI but would have broken the max segment rules (given O/B of EDI-FRA-SIN-AKL) so just stopped at LHR instead and have booked RFS LHR-EDI. Thought they might not let me do it as effectively double open-jaw (EDI-AKL, MEL-LHR), agent seemed to managed to get it through their manager though 😀

• John says:

  6 Nov6 November 07:24

  BA doesn’t always use jetbridges at EDI, I got soaked on my last trip there

  • Andrew says:

    6 Nov6 November 08:27

    It’s very regular on the BA domestics to EDI to exit from the front and back of the plane

  • RussellH says:

    6 Nov6 November 13:58

    I have never understood why anyone would choose to fly between Edinburgh / Glagow and London rather than take a train – unless, perhaps, they wanted to travel from Western Hounslow to Newbridge or Paisley. Even with lounge access (which I do not normally have) avoiding an airport is always something worth paying for, IMHO.

    (I did fly EDI-LHR – not connecting to something else – once, probably over 20 years ago. It was a bank holiday w/e and rail fares were sky high, but I was able to get a totally free, one-way ticket with Air Miles, as they were called then. We were all served an afternoon tea with clotted cream on that flight, 🙂 but the plane landed at LHR on the edge of Staines, with a loooong bus journey to T1, and then another looong walk to the underground. 🙁

    • Will says:

      6 Nov6 November 14:26

      If you want to travel during the week, the train is ridiculously expensive.
      The times don’t work particularly well either – if you need to get to either city for a 10 am meeting, then the train doesn’t really work.

      • RussellH says:

        6 Nov6 November 16:31

        If I had to be in a meeting at 1000, and the travel time was more than about 100 minutes, I would stay the night before. Fighting through an airport at 0630, no way!

        • Alan says:

          6 Nov6 November 22:13

          Sadly not all corporate travel policies are as enlightened!

    • Genghis says:

      6 Nov6 November 16:41

      I’ve never taken the train between London and Edinburgh, always flown. For quite a while I was up at 5.20, taxi at 5.45 to then get the 7am flight from LCY, arriving into our Edinburgh office around 8.50. No way would I have sat on the train.

      • ambient says:

        6 Nov6 November 19:26

        I guess RusselH’s company travel policy is more generous than the usual I experience! 10am meeting in Edinburgh? …. 4am alarm call for you sir!

      • the real harry1 says:

        6 Nov6 November 20:38

        when I had to do motivational/ distribution stuff in the States, I would often time the meetings for Monday/ Tuesday so that I could fly over on Friday/ Saturday and get a weekend in and get over any jet lag, see a bit of the USA

        NY, (Ann Arbor), Houston, Dallas, Miami, Detroit, San Fran, LA etc – the strategy was to distribute in the metropolitan centres so I saw some great cities on a weekend

        had a very reasonable boss who always signed it off, probably saw it as quid pro quo

      • RussellH says:

        7 Nov7 November 22:11

        Certainly, my travel policy was determined by me – I was self-employed until I sold up at the end of 2013. And while I created and sold holiday packages, I seldom had to do business travel.
        Couple of trips to London a year (from the Lake District) for WTM and at least one other (much smaller) trade show. At least two trips a year to Germany / Austria; flights from Manchester or rail travel from London provided. I was able to do several very pleasant long distance rail trips – Leipzig to the Lake District in a day, Vienna to the Lake District in two days, with an overnight in Frick, about 30 mins before Basel, though that did require a train at around 0820 from Frick.
        For myself, I would much rather spend 4 hours on a train than 80 mins on a plane, but it is airports that I really hate, unless it is somewhere like Bologna in the early 90s, on our first ever Air Miles redemption. Plane taxied almost to the (only) door of the terminal; while we waited (not long) for our luggage we saw the one immigration officer come out of his office still doing up his tie and adjusting his uniform.

    • Michael Jennings says:

      6 Nov6 November 17:53

      I can leave my flat in Bermondsey 60 minutes before the departure time at LCY and make the flight easily. Then I have a nice little tram ride into Edinburgh. It’s much faster than the train. Other airports and other starting points in London will be different.

    • Andrew says:

      6 Nov6 November 19:14

      It’s all very well suggesting the train, but unless you are within walking distance of Kings X or Euston and Edinburgh or Glasgow – it just isn’t practical.

      For me, it’s actually quicker to drive from Edinburgh or Glasgow to Oxford than taking the train.

      I do wish that an airline would resume the London-Oxford to Edi services – it was very civilised.

    • Alan says:

      6 Nov6 November 22:12

      Train is often very pricey, also if leaving after work or trying to get down for a morning meeting (without doing sleeper) then timings on the plane still tend to work better.

      • Genghis says:

        7 Nov7 November 06:24

        Has anyone done the Caledonian sleeper? Thinking of taking it to Fort William next year…

        • Alan says:

          7 Nov7 November 09:23

          Done it a couple of times, last about 6y ago. Novel experience, main issue I found was it got me into London too early in they morning! New rolling stock was also due, might be worth checking when it was due to arrive.

      • RussellH says:

        7 Nov7 November 22:20

        It is many years since I took a sleeper between London and Scotland. First couple of times I took it direct from London to home in Dunblane, but once I realised just how early the arrival in Dunblane was I switched to London-Edinburgh and took the connection home. I was still an employee in those days, but had no difficulty getting in to work for 9 in the morning.

        • Alan says:

          7 Nov7 November 22:24

          I’ve done it a couple of times in to London but found it arrived far too early & I hadn’t had enough sleep – esp when they woke us up with breakfast only to say we were delayed a couple of hours, would have much preferred to have longer asleep!

• Alan says:

  6 Nov6 November 07:28

  Flown from Southampton to Manchester and guernsey more times than I’d care to remember! Although it’s now an even worse ATR to guernsey.

• Tracey says:

  6 Nov6 November 07:53

  I have screen shot the flybe boarding passes in the past, rather than download from their s-l-o-w app.
  The earning rate for Avios is so small, I recall earning just 144 avios on a domestic middle priced flight.
  Downside for me is the vibration and noise of a propeller plane.

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