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News: Flybe adds Isle of Man to Heathrow, Hyatt Place Hayes closing, SUN-AIR / BA gets City slots

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News in brief:

Flybe to launch Heathrow flights to the Isle of Man

Flybe continues to add to its Winter schedule.

We covered the first nine new Flybe Winter routes here and the new Birmingham to Geneva service here.

The airline has now added two new routes from the Isle of Man:

  • London Heathrow to Isle of Man – one flight per day on weekdays (starts 31th October)
  • Belfast City to Isle of Man – six flights per week exc Sat (starts 30th October)

Tickets are now on sale on the Flybe website here.

You can read our review of Flybe’s inaugural flight here.

Flybe seat closeup

Hyatt Place West London Hayes hotel to close

The cheap but generally unloved Hyatt Place hotel in Hayes is to close at the end of October.

The building will no longer operate as a hotel, and may well be converted into office space or demolished. It operated as the Heathrow Gate Hotel before becoming a Hyatt in 2016.

As you can see below, it was never a beauty. It was also not really close to Heathrow, which must have hit business as more low cost hotels opened nearer the airport.

Anyone with a booking here is being moved to the Hyatt Place London Heathrow Airport, which we reviewed here. This is a substantially better hotel in a substantially better location.

Hyatt Place West London Hayes to close

SUN-AIR gets 34 weekly London City slots for its BA franchise

As spotted by @SeanM1997 on Twitter, SUN-AIR of Scandinavia – which is a British Airways franchise airline – has acquired new slots at London City Airport. The seller was Aer Lingus.

There are enough slots to operate 34 weekly flights.

SUN-AIR went into total hibernation during the pandemic, and has just restarted its first route between its home base of Billund in Denmark (home of LEGOLAND) and London City.

Whatever European routes it decides to add at London City are certain to be operated under the British Airways franchise agreement, which would mean they would be available for earning and redeeming Avios.

SUN-AIR uses smaller aircraft than BA CityFlyer – the fleet comprises 13 x Dornier 328 jets with just 32 seats – which means that they usually fly on secondary routes.

Comments (19)

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

  • Concerto says:

    I am glad SUN-AIR somehow survived. They are one of the really nice airlines, in terms of service.

    • Ant says:

      Totally agree – surely one of the Avios bargains too – 4750 avios each way for full service in economy from City (drinks round, then meal, then another drinks round and ice cream! All in 1.5 hours!)

  • Maciek says:

    That HP will turn into service apartment block according to the source close-ish to it. Pity, it was a good way of earning cheap nights for status.

  • Bluekjp says:

    The aircraft are extremely noisy inside the cabin. I couldn’t hear a word of the safety demo in row 1 during taxi so, I wouldn’t overly praise the experience. Bring your own noise-cancelling headphones.
    However, good luck to them and I will be happy to try out new routes on any services they offer.

  • Richie says:

    It’ll be interesting to see what routes SUN-AIR decide to operate, particularly at the weekend for leisure passengers. I’d like to see Hamburg back.

  • Peter says:

    Fingers crossed for HAM! But LON-HAM still has far fewer flights than pre-pandemic.

    • Richie says:

      BACF operated the smaller E170 aircraft from LCY-HAM before they ended the route. SUN-AIR use aircraft smaller than the E170, so fingers crossed there’s enough demand.

      • Peter says:

        I think it used to be operated by SUN air initially, then switched to cityflyer and then got suspended before the pandemic

  • Billy says:

    Flybe clearly going for a fight with Loganair.

    Launching flights from IOM to LHR in the winter. Protecting slots at LHR?

    • Michael C says:

      Just priced both up for a Mon-Weds trip in Dec.
      Loganair GBP 300 with 15kg (lowest option)
      Flybe GBP280 only 7kg carry-on or GBP 315 with 15kg, so much of a muchness.
      Back to BHX (GBP 240 with 15kg) for us!

  • ADS says:

    It looks like Aer Lingus were just sitting on those LCY slots without using them ?

    EI don’t currently run any LCY-Dublin flights (although BA have 7 flights a day) and the 3 daily LCY-Belfast flights (actually operated by BA) continue into November.

  • IslandDweller says:

    ADS. EI don’t operate any aircraft type that is certified to operate into LCY. They used to provide a service into LCY with leased aircraft but those options seem to have almost vanished as so many smaller operators didn’t survide the pandemic

    • ADS says:

      Oh yeah, I hadn’t twigged that Aer Lingus couldn’t even fly into LCY these days – so they definitely were just sitting on their LCY slots !

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