News: Flybe axes flights to Spain from Norwich
Flights > News > # 1377 (23/07/2007)
Flybe has axed flights from Norwich to Alicante and Malaga this winter, blaming the airport’s controversial terminal tax for poor sales.
The no-frills airline said the £3 airport development fee, which was introduced in April to help fund an £18 million expansion project, had had a "profound effect on ticket sales".
Flybe’s communications chief, Niall Duffy, said the airline had no plans to withdraw other destinations, but had no choice but to axe Alicante and Malaga because they had become "economically beyond the pale".
"Alicante and Malaga were the ones that became the most under threat and the straw that broke the camel's back was the extra levy," he said.
The boss of Norwich airport tells a very different story though. Richard Jenner, the airport's managing director, claimed the real reason for withdrawing the flights had nothing to do with the airport tax, and more to do with competition elsewhere.
He said: “From our point of view we met Flybe in the middle of June and they said to us they couldn't really compete with the competition out of Stansted as far as sunshine flights to Spain were concerned.
“They haven't been able to get bums on seats which is why they've pulled out. They've never mentioned to us it's because of the £3 tax - they are being rather economical with the truth.”
Flybe will continue to operate three flights a week from Norwich to Alicante until the route is scrapped on October 26, whilst the twice weekly service between Norwich and Malaga will stop on October 25.
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We are vehemently against airport development fees being passed onto passengers – if an airport can’t fund expansion itself, then it clearly doesn’t have a viable business model to grow.
However, the £3 fee which has been levied by Norwich airport is one of the lowest of its type - Newquay airport is charging its passengers £5 per flight, whereas Knock in Ireland charges €10 (£6.70). Passengers are becoming increasingly cost conscious, but we would be very surprised if the £3 fee on its own would be enough to swing people towards using Stansted airport instead Norwich. For starters, any saving would rapidly disappear on the cost of getting to Stansted, not to mention the fact that Norwich airport is considerably more compact and easy to use. Granted, Stansted offers a much wider variety of cheap flights to Spain, but it had been doing so long before Norwich airport imposed any extra fees, and of course before Flybe even set up camp in Norwich.
Flybe's grumblings don't really add up when they are adding more flights from the aforementioned Newquay, and when they have a previous track record of cancelling flights to Spain, as they have already done at Birmingham. The simple reality for us is that Flybe do not seem to like competition. Ryanair's decision to start operating cheap flights to Palma and Alicante from Stansted has to be a far more significant factor in Flybe's Spanish flights being axed than these airport handling charges - especially as they have not chosen to cancel any other flights from Norwich.
