News: Bmibaby launch Birmingham to Aberdeen flights
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Flights > News > # 961 (18/09/2006)
BmiBaby are launching new flights from Birmingham International airport to Aberdeen this autumn.
The service starts on October 29 with twice-daily flights during the week and one flight on Saturday and Sundays. The new Aberdeen route brings the total number of destinations served by Bmibaby from Birmingham to 13 including Amsterdam, Alicante, Belfast (International), Bordeaux, Cork, Edinburgh, Geneva, Knock, Malaga, Nice, Palma and Prague.
Bmibaby’s managing director, Crawford Rix, said: “The new route provides quick, easy and affordable access to the beautiful northeast of Scotland by significantly cutting the traditional time consuming options of road or rail travel that business and leisure travellers to the region currently endure.”
Regional specialists FlyBe and British Airways subsidiary BA Connect also offer flights from Birmingham to Aberdeen.
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Comment:
There's been plenty of speculation lately about Bmibaby being interested in launching more flights to Scotland from Birmingham, but the most obvious move following on from last year's launch of flights to Edinburgh would be to offer flights to Scotland's largest city Glasgow, which BmiBaby already serve from Nottingham East Midlands and Cardiff.
However, the airline industry is never about doing the obvious thing, and with Flybe having announced plans for Birmingham to Aberdeen flights to start in March next year, BmiBaby are trying to steal their thunder, emphasising the usage of much larger aircraft on this route than Flybe. Ironically, this could actually be their biggest disadvantage. There is no doubt that some passengers feel that the Q400 turboprops used by Flybe on many of their UK domestic routes are inferior to jet aircraft, but Flybe have already said that they intend to use their impressive new Embraer 195 jets on the Birmingham to Aberdeen route. And who said bigger was better anyway?
With the prospects of three airlines now offering flights from Birmingham to Aberdeen, we expect to see one of them give way, and considering that this route has a high proportion of business users, then the use of a larger aircraft, which takes longer to load and unload, will make it much harder for BmiBaby to make this route work.
From a leisure travel point of view, route competition is often good for keeping prices down, but if you are looking to explore the stunning scenery of northern Scotland, we would recommend flying to Inverness instead because it is closer to the main attractions this wonderful part of the world has to offer.
Having made a trip up the northern Scotland over the recent bank holiday weekend, I'm certainly glad to see that next year presents the opportunities for so much choice of flights to Aberdeen, but I'd really like to see some competition for Eastern Airways on the Inverness route.
