Flybe restarts flights from the UK – two years after going bust

FLYBE has finally restarted flights, two years after the airline went into administration.

Offering domestic routes with a short term price of £19.99, the first flight has since taken off from Birmingham, a hub for the airline.

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Flight BE404 landed just 51 minutes later at Belfast Airport, the second larger base for Flybe.

Passengers were greeted by complimentary biscuits on the inaugural flight and inflight snacks.

While it is just offering domestic flights for now, European routes will also restart later this month.

Flybe chief executive Dave Pflieger, said: “Today is a big day for everyone at Flybe.

“Over the coming weeks and months our flight schedule will further ramp up as we take delivery of additional aircraft and serve other new destinations from Birmingham including Amsterdam, Avignon, Brest, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen.”

Domestic flights between Belfast, Birmingham, Leeds and Heathrow are starting this month, with the first European flight starting on April 28 between Amsterdam and the UK.

Flights to French airports Avignon, Brest and Toulon Hyères will begin in July, with 23 routes planned by August between the UK, France and the Netherlands, with 93 flights a week.

One-way flights begin from £29.99 on most routes.

Flybe went into administration in March 2020 with the loss of 2,400 jobs as the pandemic destroyed large parts of the travel market.

Before then, the airline flew approximately eight million passengers a year, both in the UK and Europe.

Flybe isn’t the only airline to have gone into administration in recent years – in 2017, Monarch Airlines went bust, leading to thousands being stranded abroad.

In 2019, Icelandic airline WOW Air went bust although airline PLAY has since replaced it with cheap UK to the US flights via Iceland.

Thomas Cook also collapsed in 2019, but relaunched last summer.

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