New FlyBe routes following acquisition of BA connect

FlyBe's website

Over on This French Life Craig McGinty's quick off the mark with detailing all of FlyBe's new routes that they launched yesterday.

FlyBe's press release contains further details of the new routes and price cuts on existing routes following their acquisition of BA Connect and makes their claim that they're now Europe's largest regional airport with 152 routes from 56 different airports. RyanAir would of course argue this point differently as they offer 454 routes from 130 different European airports - usual warnings about not trusting anyone's marketing statistics apply here!

In terms of options for getting to North-West France, FlyBe's announcement adds one new route from Edinburgh to Rennes which is about an hour from our french holiday home. Flights start on the 26th May and fares will be from £47.99 one way (including taxes and charges).
Significantly for me this is the first budget airline that flies direct from Scotland to a regional airport in Brittany so hope this will give me some more potential guests.

I've added the new budget airline route to the travel choices section of our website - if I've counted correctly this now means there are 29 budget airlines that fly direct into Brittany or close by.

New FlyBe routes to Brittany

FlyBe's website

FlyBe announced yesterday that following the acquisition of BA Connect it's starting a number of new routes in 2007.

Of particular interest to me of course are the new low-cost routes they're offering to Brittany:

• Manchester - Brest (three times a week from 5th April) for £34.99
• Manchester - Rennes (four times a week from 6th April) for £34.99
• Exeter - Rennes (three times a week from 8th May) for £31.99
• Belfast - Rennes (once a week from 26th May) for £39.99

Flight prices are as usual 'from' these headline rates (so usual message to book early to get these prices), are one way and include taxes and charges.

FlyBe also announced that they're recommencing the Southampton to Angers route from 26th March.

Rennes is only an hour's drive from our French Holiday Home, Brest is slightly further at about 2 hours and Angers 3.

I've now added these new routes to the travel options section of our website, if I've counted right there are now something like 30 different budget airline routes to Brittany!

cheapflights.co.uk doesn't appear to always live up to its name

Found an interesting new website today, cheapflights.co.uk, which advertises itself as a "Price comparison for cheap flights & travel from the UK & Ireland"

Cheapflights from the UK & Ireland

As well as a cheap flight news blog and a 'telephone cheat sheet' to get through to a real person when phoning different airlines, the main sections of their site are a set of flight directories for different destination airports (the A-Z destination list along the top of the page) and a flight search engine.

It's these last two that I felt sadly let the site down as they simply don't have the full range of lowcost airlines that I know exist today. I've listed the main budget airline carriers that fly to Brittany on the 'how to reach our Brittany Gite' page on our Gite website, comparing my results against cheapflights.co.uk showed a number of omissions.

For example on the Dinard airport page (which is the closest airport to our Gite at about 60 miles away), there are a number of flight options shown such as Manchester, Aberdeen, Newcastle and Birmingham; but all these are full-price flights costing £200-£600. RyanAir for instance isn't shown with their flights from Stansted or Nottingham (usually around £20 each way).

Similarly Lorient airport (an hour's drive away) isn't shown as a destination at all on cheapflights although AerArran and Air France both fly there from a number of UK and Irish destinations.

More positively, the Brest airport page (2 hours drive) shows FlyBe routes from Southampton, Exeter and Birmingham as well as more expensive flights from Gatwick, Isle of Man, Belfast City and others; however it doesn't again show RyanAir's service from London Luton to Brest.

I suppose in summary cheapflights is a useful additional site to search for flight options to Brittany (as well as to other destinations of course!) but it's clearly not totally comprehensive in its listings.

Spoke too soon about AirWales - they've gone out of business

Oops, yesterday I posted about the new low cost airline AirWales that flying into Rennes and they've ceased flying already !

Martin Selway (whose Brittany Gite is close to ours on the other side of Josselin) pointed out to me after reading my blog posting that Air Wales's website currently said:

Important Notice to all Air Wales passengers

Please note that with effect from Sunday April 23rd Air Wales have announced cessation of passenger services on all routes.

All passengers holding bookings with Air Wales for departures from April 24th 2006 onwards will be provided with a refund through the original payment method. To request a refund please contact our Reservations centre on 0870 777 3131 / IRE 1800 654193 and we will fully refund all monies paid.

A number of Air Wales' services have now been replaced by new carriers;

Cardiff- Newcastle - Eastern Airways
Cardiff - Brussels- Eastern Airways
Cardiff- Cork - Aer Arann

For services from Cardiff International Airport to Jersey and Paris CDG we recommend the following alternative services.

Cardiff- Rennes - Alternative services operate from Cardiff to Lorient with Aer Arann.
Cardiff- Jersey - Alternative services operate from Bristol to Jersey with Air Southwest or Flybe.
Cardiff- Paris CDG - Alternative services operate from Bristol to Paris CDG with BA Connect.
Exeter and Newquay - Cork - Alternative services operate from Bristol to Cork with Aer Arann.

For passengers holding reservations with Air Wales / BmiBaby to travel to Paris CDG please note that an automatic refund will be processed by booking agents bmibaby to the original payment methods. All queries regarding this should be forwarded to BmiBaby on 0870 264 2229 quoting your booking reference number and passenger name.

Air Wales apologise for any inconvenience caused. Should you have any queries please don't hesitate to contact us.

Now a few hours later, their site simply says:

With effect from Sunday 23rd April Air Wales has ceased all passenger operations. Please be assured that we are continuing to administer full refunds for all passengers affected.

I guess it's my own fault for writing the blog entry about AirWales a couple of weeks ago and not checking it before I posted it ...

This evening was spent with going through all the travel options for our French holiday website, removing AirWales, and checking that all the other routes still existed !

In doing so I found a new budget airline destination, Angers, which is about 3 hours drive from our Gite. FlyBe operate into there from Southampton as do AerArran from London Luton, Manchester and Cork.

Better do my research more thoroughly next time ...

New RyanAir Dublin flights to Brittany

Looking at RyanAir's website earlier today I noticed that they're adding a new flight from Dublin to Nantes, Brittany which is about 2 hours drive away from our Gite.

I've added the new flight details to the travel options section of our Gite website and was thinking that perhaps I'll have to start advertising in Dublin now.

The choice of flights is amazing really, there are now 11 low-cost routes into Brittany:

RyanAir fly

• London Stansted and Nottingham East Midlands to Dinard (1 ½ hours drive to the Gite)
• Stansted, Nottingham, Shannon and now Dublin to Nantes (2 hours drive)
• London Luton to Brest (2 hours drive)

FlyBe fly

• Birmingham, Exeter and Southampton to Brest (2 hours drive)
• Southampton to Rennes (1 hour flight)