All direct flights from Exeter

Your Comments (9)

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  Vicky

  12 January 2012 at 11:52 | #

  Can't argue with Exeter, a proper little regional airport. No expensive showpiece terminal building and no Ryanair! I know Flybe have their critics, but I'd rather use them and Thomson than Ryanair any day.

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  George Dunn

  24 January 2012 at 00:20 | #

  I think Exeter airport does pretty well considering the size of the city, but one obvious missing route is London -- I wouldn't expect Flybe to get hold of any slots at Heathrow, but either London City or Gatwick for connections would be great.

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    James Avery

    24 January 2012 at 00:22 | #

    Answer: this question has certainly come up before on other aviation forums, and I think the answer is primarily a question of distance. Flybe offer an excellent network of domestic flights throughout the UK, but they don't really tend to do the completely bargain basement flights that airlines like easyJet and Ryanair offer -- yes, they have the occasional fare sale, but their main focus is the business passenger and the time pressed leisure flyer. This means that they can rarely compete against train services on price terms alone, and as Exeter to London Paddington is only around two hours anyway, they don't have much advantage to offer in terms of speed and convenience either.
    
    London City flights are no longer available from any airport in England -- both Newcastle and Leeds are substantially larger than Exeter, but they both had flights from London City which only lasted for a few months. Also, take a look at trains heading toward Exeter, and compare them with Virgin Trains on the West Coast -- and you will see that they have a lot less first-class carriages. This shows that there just isn't the same level of demand from business users to travel to London as there is from cities in the Midlands and northern England.
    
    Flights to Gatwick might well offer some useful onward connections, but bear in mind that Flybe are not like British Airways -- so they have little to gain by feeding somebody else's long-haul network. So we're back to the same issue -- why would you go through the inconvenience of getting to Exeter Airport, catching a flight to Gatwick, and still having to spend at least half an hour on the train getting into central London, when you can just take a train directly to Paddington, or Waterloo if that is more convenient.

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  Janner58

  24 January 2012 at 12:31 | #

  I was expecting Exeter airport to pick up a lot of slack following the demise of Plymouth, but the only extra route seems to be Norwich, which never had Plymouth flights in the first place. Why is this?

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    Mark Avery

    24 January 2012 at 12:33 | #

    I'm afraid that Plymouth airport suffered a long, slow decline before the plug was finally pulled. One of the biggest problems at Plymouth was that so many routes were operated via Newquay, totally destroying the whole speed advantage that flying was supposed to have in the first place. By the time the final routes were axed, Plymouth airport had just a small fraction of the passenger throughput that Exeter enjoyed, so any small blip in demand would have easily been catered for on existing flights from Exeter.

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  Devon Cream

  24 January 2012 at 15:13 | #

  How come Flybe seem to have an almost complete monopoly on flights from Exeter? Isn't it about time airport bosses started talking to Ryanair, so we can have a few proper low-cost routes?

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    Mark Avery

    24 January 2012 at 15:57 | #

    This is largely because Flybe and Exeter are a natural match of airline and geography. Although Exeter is increasingly becoming the airport gateway for southwest England, following the demise of Plymouth and the ongoing struggles at Newquay, the population of the city itself is still relatively small compared to other major English cities with airports, especially nearby Bristol for an example.
    Ryanair's fleet have around twice as many seats on each aircraft as Flybe's, and this makes it much harder to sustain routes. Although there is no technical reason why Ryanair couldn't operate flights from Exeter, as the airport is perfectly capable of handling long-haul flights to destinations as far away as Barbados, Ryanair have completely pulled out of the domestic market for flights within England and Scotland. Even when it comes to flights to Northern Ireland, Ryanair have no presence there. Apart from that, Flybe also have their headquarters and a major maintenance and training base at Exeter, so I don't think any extra competition on the kind of terms Ryanair like to dictate is likely.

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  Harpo

  24 January 2012 at 16:19 | #

  I regularly travel from my home near Birmingham to Devon and find driving down the M5 pretty tortuous, especially during the peak holiday periods. What should be a three-hour journey can easily end up being six or seven. Why have Flybe missed out on the obvious opportunity to start flights from Exeter to Birmingham or East Midlands?

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    Mark Avery

    24 January 2012 at 16:53 | #

    I certainly know what you mean about the M5! Mind you, nothing compares with the infamous Route du Soleil between Paris and Marseille. I digress, in answer to your question I think it is highly unlikely that we’ll ever see flights from Exeter to Birmingham or East Midlands because there is a regular and relatively fast train service which starts in Plymouth or Penzance and runs through Exeter on its way to Birmingham and beyond. This provides a much better point-to-point service than any airline might otherwise offer on this route.

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