Monarch eyes new routes for next year
Monarch Airlines is looking to launch at least one new route next year and will add flights to existing destinations from more UK bases.
Chief commercial officer Adrian Tighe said the airline was considering several options ‘depending on what happens with Sharm el-Sheikh’.
He said the airline would restart flights to the Red Sea resort within two weeks of getting the go-ahead from the British Government, but he admitted that the longer flights remain suspended, the longer it will take to rebuild consumer confidence in the destination.
"We probably won’t fly our full schedule to Sharm straight away," said Tighe. "Our customers will have gone elsewhere initially, so we will need to re-build business."
He said customers who had already booked to travel to Sharm, before the Government suspended flights, had switched to several other destinations including the Canary Isands, Hurghada and to Tel Aviv and Eilat, two new routes being launched by Monarch on December 3.
Tighe said flights to the resort of Eilat, which Monarch is offering as an alternative winter beach destination to Sharm, were especially busy over Christmas.
Some customers who had planned to travel to Sharm this winter had decided on a ski trip instead, added Tighe, but many had postponed their trips until flights to the Red Sea resort resume.
Tighe revealed that he is in weekly contact with the Department for Transport, but said he’d been given no inkling of when the airline would be allowed to re-start flights to Sharm.
"It will take the British and the Egyptian governments to work together to ensure passenger safety," he said, "but when the government here says it’s safe to operate to Sharm, we will be ready within two weeks to fly there again."
He said the airine would initially offer a reduced scheduled ‘depending on consumer demand’. It had originally planned to offer 14 to 17 flights a week to Sharm this winter.
"We know we will have to market Sharm quite hard," added Tighe. "It was already a competitive market and it will stay a competitive market."
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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