Flybe flights from Newquay are moving to London Heathrow

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I mentioned this briefly in my ‘breaking news’ article on the Virgin Atlantic takeover of Flybe on Thursday. I wanted to repeat it as that article was not emailed and you may have missed the line anyway.

The Government announced on Thursday that it will provide additional funding to allow the daily Newquay to London Gatwick service to switch to London Heathrow from 31st March 2019.

The service will also increase from three to four flights per day.

It is not yet clear if this service will continue to benefit from no Air Passenger Duty, and whether long-haul flights connecting to the Newquay service will also be APD exempt.

Flybe will continue to operate the service using a turboprop aircraft. Whilst these are rarely seen at Heathrow, Flybe already runs its Heathrow services to Aberdeen and Edinburgh this way, requiring a bus transfer to and from the aircraft.

The existing Flybe services use Heathrow Terminal 2 – there is no word yet on whether Newquay will also do so.

Category

General

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

Shoestring says:

25 Nov25 November 19:30

O/T so I’ve burned (1) my 90K IB points on flights, humming my way thru (2) my wife’s 90K IB points, some way to go but the end is in sight with her hotel in Sevilla.

How about you? Anybody trusting to hiding them in BAEC?
- Shoestring says:
  
  25 Nov25 November 19:32
  
  Deadline 30th November. Use them or lose them.
- Shoestrings cat says:
  
  25 Nov25 November 19:53
  
  Spent. Iberia have thrown enough hints in the pot that they have to be used as stated. People’s choice though.
  - Joe says:
    
    25 Nov25 November 20:02
    
    I don’t have any – but if I did and I wanted to hide them i’ve have moved from Iberia to a 3rd party and then again to a second 3rd party – makes it harder to track them!
    - Chris says:
      
      25 Nov25 November 21:11
      
      They simply dint need to track anything.
      
      If you have spent fewer avios than you gained from the promo then the difference will be debited on or around Dec 1st.
      
      It makes no odds where they went after IB, it isn’t relevant. They were either spent according to the promo rules or they weren’t
- FlyingChris says:
  
  25 Nov25 November 20:21
  
  Used them on hotels through the Iberia portal. Not the best value but saved about £225 on an upcoming InterCon stay so still very much up on the deal. Zero balance in the IB account – but interestingly before spending them I moved them out of IB to BAEC (as needed a larger balance to book a 241 online at midnight and then get a refund the next morning), and then back to IB to book the hotels. Fingers crossed it doesn’t go negative as a result – but at least can prove spent 90k through their scheme.
  - Shoestring says:
    
    25 Nov25 November 20:27
    
    Same here. Transfer out—> in
    - Russ says:
      
      25 Nov25 November 20:57
      
      Could be interesting. Presumably Iberia will run an audit trail showing what happened to the points. One thing’s for sure it’s going to get very interesting for some come 1st December.
    - Shoestring says:
      
      25 Nov25 November 21:15
      
      I think it’ll be a simple computer test: did this account redeem 90K points after x date?
      
      If not —> goto -90K
      
      (ask Raffles about goto and computer programs – he made a buck or two lol)
    - Doug M says:
      
      26 Nov26 November 00:08
      
      I think at worse it’ll be deduct 90K less what you did use. They can’t take 90K if you didn’t use them all, only what wasn’t used of the the 90K.
chef says:

25 Nov25 November 22:55

20,000 points turned up in my SPG account this weekend so hopefully when they transfer over thats the Marriott conversion sorted, fingers crossed.
- Jay says:
  
  25 Nov25 November 23:59
  
  Will wait to see if any turn up into mine soon as was told by end of the month.
Peter K says:

26 Nov26 November 21:29

As far as I’m aware the current NQYLGW service is not exempt from APD, the exemption only applies to departing flights from Scottish Highland and Island airports. The LHR slots allowing flybe to do the switch of the NQY route from LGW are becoming available from the remedy imposed by the EU allowing BA’s takeover of bmi in 2012. As flybe will have operated their LHREDI/ABZ routes for 2 years (with slots from BA under the EU remedy) they can now utilise any remaining unused slots originally provided for under the EU remedy to launch other routes.

The switch of the 4 times daily Plymouth/Newquay-London service from LHR to LGW happened whilst the airline operating the route was under BA ownership. Subsequently both Plymouth Airport and the Plymouth based airline were sold to Sutton Harbour Holdings and the airline operated under the brand Air Southwest until the airline and Plymouth City airport were closed down.