Blue Islands announce more flights as Flybe pull out

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Blue Islands today announce that they will be adding additional flights to their popular twice daily Jersey – Bristol schedule. This will ensure that sufficient frequency and capacity remains following the cessation of Flybe’s services in January 2014.

The locally based airline will add a midday Saturday rotation from 29 March 2014 in good time for the busy summer season.

Rob Veron, managing director looks forward to providing more flights for Blue Islands’ passengers.

“As Jersey’s locally based airline, we’re committed to the serving the island. It’s important that we make sure a Saturday service remains. Bristol has been one of our greatest success stories to date, illustrated by our requirement to replace the 19 seat Jetstream aircraft with our 48 seat ATR aircraft in March this year. Around 70% of the passengers during the summer months are visitors to our islands, therefore an additional Saturday service will provide more travel options to our island.”

On behalf of Jersey Airport, Group CEO for Ports of Jersey, Doug Bannister, said: “We are delighted to see an increase in services on the Bristol route, in particularly on a Saturday, which continues to be the most popular day of operation for inbound leisure travellers. Today’s news further demonstrates Blue Islands commitment to its Jersey flying programme. Should our passenger numbers on this route continue to increase we have further capacity available to meet this as our customers require”.

The introduction of a Saturday service will provide an extra 1500 seats on this route during 2014. Since operating the larger ATR aircraft on this service in March, Blue Islands have increased passengers numbers by 67%.

Blue Islands have been operating twice daily flights to Bristol since April 2011 and have carried over 50,000 passengers during this time.