Cherbourg Airport

[Linnorton]

Does anyone know what really happened to scupper BMIbaby and their flights from Southampton?  There seemed to be two theories. That the airport weren't willing to upgrade passenger facilities and/or that BF put pressure on them.  If either are true, it seems to be a spectacular own goal as far as the Cotentin Peninsula is concerned.  What really happened?  I think we should be told.

[Will]

Forget the conspiracy theories. There just was not sufficient interest.

[Linnorton]

But you can't beat a good conspiracy theory.  I thought there was interest in the service.  We met one flight in April and a good number of passengers got off and a good number got on.  I would have thought it would have been worth persevering for a while.  I don't fly normally but I would have given it a go. Certainly, I know people who wanted to use it and there was a fair amount of interest in this forum.

[Will]

My understanding was that the first few flights were reasonably well subscribed, but looking at future bookings the route just didn't have anything like the degree of take-up that the operator's other routes enjoyed, so it wasn't worth making it a regular service.

[chicfille]

FlyBE fly from Southampton to Rennes now, and have also started other routes to Brest (from Exeter, Southampton & Birmingham). Not that Brest is particularly convenient. I hope the Rennes route gets sufficient use because it's great for us!

[Coco]

I suppose with the fastcraft going to Cherbourg from Portsmouth there's not a great deal of time gain by flying from Southampton to Cherbourg and of course you also then have to hire a car and can't load up with lovely French goodies to take home.

Now other UK airports to Cherbourg, that's a different matter and considering that the cotentin, Manche in general and western Calvados are both at least an hour and a half to either Dinard or Beauvais, I would have thought that there could well be demand for flights into either Cherbourg, or better still (for us!) Carpiquet (Caen).