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

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.

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.

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.