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Bmi drops Heathrow-Inverness air link
Bmi is dropping a daily link from the north of Scotland to London and trimming frequency between Leeds/Bradford and Heathrow.
The airline’s Inverness to Heathrow service will disappear from the March 30 start of summer flying schedules as will a late evening flights between London and Leeds/Bradford, leaving four flights a day.
Passengers with reservations on services which are being suspended will be offered a full refund or re-booked on another service.
However, the new timetable will see the introduction of an additional late evening service between Heathrow and Manchester, taking the total to eight flights a day, as well as an improved schedule for the three times daily service between Heathrow and Durham Tees Valley.
Summer-only services to Alicante and Nice will not operate in 2008 but Bmi is to double the number of flights between Heathrow and Moscow Domodedovo to twice daily.
Bmi managing director Peter Spencer said: “Charges such as the punitive air passenger duty that affect domestic travellers in particular have made fares higher, and the inflation-busting airport charge increases that have been implemented at Heathrow over the last few years – which are set to grow even faster from April 2008 – puts further pressure on short haul services like Inverness.
“We are very disappointed that there has been insufficient demand to operate a viable profitable operation on this route but load factors have not been sufficiently high enough to sustain the service.
“We acknowledge the efforts that Inverness Airport has made to assist Bmi in the continuation of the route through the level of fees at Inverness Airport.
“We also appreciate their lobbying regarding proposed fees and increases at Heathrow and the disproportionate structure of charging adopted by BAA.
“However, despite these efforts the route is just not a viable proposition due to the cost of the operation and the limited passenger volumes that it attracts.”
by Phil Davies
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