Regional airline Flybe has ceased trading and all its scheduled flights have been cancelled, the UK Civil Aviation Authority has announced.
“All Flybe flights have now been cancelled. Please do not go to the airport as flights will not be operating,” the authority said in a statement early on Saturday.
Apparently Exeter is – again – not a great hub to start from.
I was naturally unhappy when I was told I couldn’t travel to Perth. Though that was a covid ban by the WA government.
Wasn’t able to get my money back from the damned airline either.
Not sure why it has gone bust. Given ever-escalating train fares, you’d think there would be a market for cheap flights like Southampton to Manchester (four hours by train) or Aberdeen to Birmingham (seven hours by train).
Then again I can always find a parking space within 100yds of the terminal and there’s never any queues.
. . . can always find a parking space within 100yds of the terminal and there’s never any queues.
Especially now.
Andrew M,
I think it’s business travel. And I don’t mean the sales guy flying to see the client in Edinburgh every few months to catch up, but that there was a time when management consultants or software people would work on a site in Glasgow on a project and fly up to do it. I did it for a few months around the year 2000. Early morning flight on Monday, Heathrow to Glasgow. British Midland were getting £300/week. And I knew a team of people working in the Channel Islands doing it.
In general, this has also hit train fares. I see a client maybe once a quarter. I don’t need to be in Manchester. We’re all into a groove of managing projects with Jira, Devops etc.
And the leisure market doesn’t fly that much internally because you generally have 2 or more people, at which point, a car is cheaper. Plus, people generally want a car when they get there if it’s Scotland or Newquay. And for people who really want to fly for leisure, they don’t care so much about time. It’s frequent travel where people want it quicker. If you live in Plymouth and want to go for a weekend of Giant’s Causeway and Jameson, you just drive to Bristol Airport. It’s only another hour. Do you care much that it takes another hour on a long weekend (even then, there’s an Aer Lingus flight).
A quick scan of their WKPD page doesn’t suggest they used Cardiff Airport.
Personally, I blame Zoom.
As others have said, when a client is paying for expensive consultants, they generally want them on site where they can see where their money is being spunked away.
Post-COVID, this is happening less. Not just that people are less willing to travel (particularly unpaid travel), but clients have enough difficulty getting their own staff to work from the office, so things like Zoom meetings instead of co-located ones make some sense and savings if management can let go of their desire to micromanage everything.
If COVID-19 and the post-COVID business environment hadn’t killed FlyBe then it would have been the gradual move to outsourcing and working from home anyway.
People are tired of wasting their lives commuting hours a day for no real reason other than cheaper suburban housing or wage differentials.