Aer Lingus to discontinue service to three UK airports

Aer Lingus is discontinuing its services from Dublin to three British regional destinations from early next year.

The service to Leeds/Bradford and to Bristol will end on January 8th and to Newcastle on March 25th. On the same date new services will begin, using British Airways regional airlines.

The Leeds/Bradford service will be operated by British Regional Airlines and Brymon Airways, a wholly-owned subsidiary of British Airways, will operate the other two routes. Aer Lingus will code-share on these routes, so customers can still book flights through Aer Lingus.

"We're restructuring our fleet and taking off the aircraft type on these routes, the 50-seat Fokker 50 Turbo-Prop," an Aer Lingus spokesman said yesterday. "It's part of a growth strategy, developing new routes. We're developing the fleet, taking in new aircraft, but discontinuing that particular aircraft type. This has had implications for some services to the Irish regions; we haven't applied for the Galway route," he said.

The Fokker 50 aircraft are being replaced by the Airbus A319 jet aircraft.

Meanwhile, Ryanair has announced that it is suspending its daily flight from London to Lamezia in the south of Italy from December 1st. It said this arose because the board of Lamezia airport sought to amend the terms of its contract with Ryanair and was refusing to honour the contract entered into before Ryanair started to fly this route on July 1st. In the last six months, more than 30,000 passengers had been carried on the route, on what was the first international daily service from London.

Mr Michael Cawley, Ryanair's commercial director, said the airline regretted suspending such a commercially successful route. "We have been left with no alternative as we have found it impossible to maintain a satisfactory relationship with the board of Lamezia airport. They have sought to change our original agreement and to renege on a number of the provisions in that agreement. This is completely at variance with the partnership principle upon which Ryanair operates at all of our airports," he said.

He added: "We will be happy to recommence services to Lamezia should the board of the airport confirm that they will honour the terms of our agreement and will work with Ryanair to promote low-fare services, traffic and tourism at Lamezia and indeed Calabria."