News: Flybe to start cheap flights to Nice
Flights > News > # 983 (26/09/2006)
Regional specialists Flybe will be continuing their move into the French market next summer, and have announced plans to start cheap flights to Nice from their Southampton hub.
Flybe’s chief commercial officer, Mike Rutter, said: “The announcement of a new base in Nice is one of our most important new schedule announcements to date.
“Flybe already boasts the highest number of low cost flights to France from the UK regions, and the new route to Nice shows us maintaining our commitment of low cost holiday choice for customers. The move into one of the centres of the French tourism marks an exciting point in Flybe’s history and shows our dedication to expand into other territories across Europe.”
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This move further consolidates Flybe's strong position in the market for flights to France from regional airports, but also sees them move firmly onto Easyjet territory. Nice was one of the early success stories for the big orange airline, who now offer four flights a day from London Gatwick to Nice. We're sure that travellers based on the south coast will appreciate the opportunity to avoid the chaos of going to Gatwick, but would expect to see this route needing to be increased to a daily frequency to achieve its full potential.
We've got no doubt that Flybe will be looking at their other airports to see where there are additional opportunities to open up flights to Nice. Will they take on BmiBaby, who currently offer daily flights to Nice from Birmingham, but scale back their frequencies during the quieter winter months? More likely would be the addition of flights to Nice from bases such as Norwich and Exeter, but we doubt that there would be enough demand to sustain more than two or three weekly flights from each of these airports.
After their domestic flights, which make up 80% of the airline's schedule, France is Flybe's most important market. Moving into Nice opens up the southeast corner of the country, so which other cities are they likely to be looking at next? Flybe's business model has kept most of their business away from London's congested airports, but outside the capital, they have tended to go for the major airports, where they are available, in addition to opening up routes into more rural French destinations like Bergerac and Angers.
Would the new low-cost terminal in Marseille, or the planned budget facility in Lyon appeal to Flybe? Ryanair have also opened up a number of routes into the fast-growing city of Nantes, which we would expect Flybe to be looking at closely.
