The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
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relevant to passengers and need to be thought through carefully.
REGIONAL CONNECTIVITY
The loss of Flybe, which operates about 40 per cent of domestic flights, would be a blow for several regional airports and the people who live near them – especially Birmingham, Exeter, Cardiff, Manchester, Southampton and Belfast, as well as Guernsey and Jersey. All of these airports enjoy a decent network of routes to other UK cities and to the Continent, and they have done well over the past 10 to 15 years, as no-frills airlines have expanded and focused on cheaper bases.
But this week’s events have emphasised how dependent they are on the success of just one of those airlines, and also reminded us how slow (and expensive) many UK rail links are. For example, a flight between Exeter or Cardiff and Edinburgh takes less than an hour. But the fastest train journeys are seven and six-and-a-half hours respectively.
Services to France would also be hit badly. Flybe serves 13 French airports from Southampton and a dozen from Birmingham. Without Flybe, some of these routes might be taken over by
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other operators, such as easyJet and Ryanair, but it seems certain that many would be axed. Most are on the high-speed continental network, so Eurostar’s links via Paris provide an alternative option. But, as with regional routes in the UK, journey times would be far longer.
LESS CHOICE, LESS COMPETITION, HIGHER FARES
Airlines have been going down like a house of cards over the past couple of years. The collapse of Monarch Airlines and Air Berlin in late 2017 was followed a few months ago by the demise of Thomas Cook, Flybmi and Wow Air. If Flybe had gone under, that would have meant that half a dozen major airlines had failed in just over two years. Even if it survives, the number of major failures over such a short timescale is unprecedented. It’s a fundamental power shift away from smaller operators to the benefit of bigger, stronger airlines such as BA, easyJet and Ryanair. As far as consumers are concerned, the risk is that we will end up with fewer routes, fewer airlines to choose from and – with less competition – higher fares.
PROTECTION: NO MORE EXCUSES
Scheduled airlines, such as Flybe, do not have to protect their customers’ money. If airlines fail and passengers don’t have other arrangements in place, they will almost certainly lose the money they have paid – and if they are away when it happens, they will have to pay for a new flight home.
The recent glut of scheduled airline failures highlighted both this gap in protection and the need for a better way to manage failures. The Queen’s Speech just before Christmas included a promise to introduce legislation to deal with the issue. Surely, the Flybe scare now makes it impossible for the Government to renege on its promise.
JANE FOSTER
It’s a power shift away from smaller operators to the benefit of bigger, stronger airlines
DESTINATION EXPERT