George Best airport boss: We already have interest in all defunct Flybe routes – and this collapse may even strengthen the airport

Flybe’s collapse has led to headaches for passengers and deep uncertainty for staff – and has raised questions about the future of the city airport, where Flybe accounted for about two-thirds of passengers.

But amid warnings that the firm’s failure spells serious harm for the Province’s economy, airport chief executive Brian Ambrose told the News Letter there has already been interest in all 12 currently defunct Flybe routes.

For the calendar year of 2019, Belfast City Airport handled roughly 2.6 million passengers. Flybe’s operations accounted for 1.6m passengers – or about 62%of the total.

Customers with Flybe tickets are being told not to turn up to the airport, and the terminal was extremely quiet and empty yesterday.

Unionist politicians have used the collapse to renew their calls for Air Passenger Duty to be axed, whilst the Unite union demanded outright nationalisation of Flybe – saying it is concerned about movement between NI and GB, given the Irish Sea border Brexit is expected to create.

The Stobart Group, part of a consortium which bought Flybe last year, blamed “the impact of Covid-19 [coronavirus] on Flybe’s trading”.

Flybe’s routes from Belfast were as follows:

Aberdeen, Birmingham, Cardiff, East Midlands, Edinburgh, Exeter, Glasgow, Inverness, Leeds/Bradford, London City, Manchester, Newquay, and Southampton.

A new route to London Southend had been due to start in June 2020.

The other operators and routes at the airport are: London Heathrow (Aer Lingus), London Heathrow (British Airways), Carlisle Lake District (Loganair), Dundee (Loganair – due to start from April), Amsterdam (KLM), and Teesside (Eastern Airways, due to start next week).

However, by 1pm yesterday Loganair announced it will take over Flybe’s old Aberdeen and Inverness routes, with daily services coming into effect on March 16 and 23, respectively.

At time of writing there was no indication that the other routes had been picked up.

However city airport chief executive Brian Ambrose told the News Letter it had been an extremely busy day, and he was “keeping going on adrenaline”.

Asked how long the airport could keep going on such reduced passenger numbers, he said: “Thankfully the business is in a strong financial position, so there is no immediate crisis. Secondly, we’re very confident that we can ‘backfill’ all [of the old Flybe] routes.

“There’s been strong interest from a range of airlines for each of the routes, with the larger routes attracting multiple airlines. I’d be disappointed if there wasn’t further route announcements in the coming days.”

Unite the union has said there were roughly 100 people employed directly by the airline in Northern Ireland. Mr Ambrose said the airport as a whole has between 1,500 and 2,000 people working in it.

Only around 70 are directly employed by the airport (including 33 private firefighters) and “we have no plans to make anybody redundant ourselves” said Mr Ambrose.

“With two-thirds of your business disappearing, it’s a very quiet terminal today,” he added. “There’s not many people in the coffee shop, there’s no queues for taxis.

“If we succeed in replacing that business quickly, then that gives all those companies the assurance to work with us and be ready for the uplift when it comes.”

Flybe was bought in February 2019 by a consortium of investors.

The city airport meanwhile is owned by London-based business 3I Infrastructure.

Mr Ambrose said 3I Infrastructure has given “their total support” to the airport, but that the airport is in a strong enough position that it does not have to draw on 3I’s cash to shore it up.

“We’ve every confidence that we’ll replace the business We’re not going to need any support from anyone. And we could well come out of this whole process stronger than we entered into it.”

He hopes most routes will be sorted “within weeks or a month or so”.

Asked about the impact of coronavirus (which was blamed by some investors for Flybe’s collapse) Mr Ambrose said city airport’s passenger numbers were down 9% last month, and “we believe most of that is coronavirus impact”.

But “how deep and how long” the impact will be, he cannot say.

Flybe did not fly out of Belfast International or the regional Londonderry airport.