Flybe returns to profit, drops Bournemouth
Flybe returned to profit in the first six months of this year when it made £22.9 million, compared with a loss in the same period last year of £3.3 million.
Its financial results for the six months to the end of September were announced just hours after Flybe confirmed that it is pulling out of Bournemouth Airport next March, only a year after resuming flights from Dorset.
The airline, which has also recently redeployed or offloaded 14 Embraer 195 jets, delivering long-term savings of £40 million, said it was now ‘positioned well for future profitable growth’.
Chief executive officer Saad Hammad said: "Our turnaround is on course with a very encouraging performance in the first half. We have returned to profit by delivering significant revenue growth through capacity investment and improved commercial execution, while reducing unit cost."
Referring to the rejigging of its E195s fleet, he added:
"We are also pleased to have resolved all our key legacy issues with the completion of Project Blackbird. The benefits from this will start to come through next financial year.
"Competitive pressures are expected to grow in the second half with industry-wide benefit from lower fuel costs and growth in seat capacity. Against this backdrop, we are remaining disciplined in cost control and our capacity growth plans. Our focus will be on building service frequency on our established routes to maximise our appeal to time-sensitive business travellers.
"While there are still a number of challenges ahead, Flybe enters the winter season with solid momentum."
Flybe announced yesterday it is to pull out of Bournemouth just six months after restarting flights from the Dorset airport.
Services from Bournemouth to Amsterdam, Dublin, Glasgow, Jersey and Paris are to be axed from March 2016.
Flybe only resumed flights from Bournemouth Airport in March this year, but it has since decided to serve southern England only from Southampton.
"This will enable more frequency and more choice to our customers through consolidating our South Coast operation into one airport," chief commercial officer Paul Simmons told the BBC.
Simmons said the main focus for Flybe in creating next summer’s schedule was to offer new routes and increased frequency on established business routes.
Its summer schedule, on sale from today, consists of 143 routes, 17 of which are new, and extra frequencies on 20 key established routes.
Eight of the new routes are from Doncaster Sheffield Airport.
The airline has added 220 extra weekly flights on its most popular routes serving the four primary Scottish airports, Belfast City, Birmingham, London City, Manchester and Southampton as well as European hub airports such as Amsterdam, Dublin and in Germany.
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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