Flybe has sold its 25 slot pairs at London Gatwick Airport to easyJet for £20 million.
The regional airline has been working on ways to reduce its costs, including pilot salary cuts, deferring deliveries on new Embraer jets, and now this cull of Gatwick flights.
Flybe currently operates seven routes from Gatwick, and carries around 550,000 passengers per year. It specifically blames a 102% increase in airport charges over the past five years for its decision to leave.
Flybe will continue to operate as normal all its seven domestic Gatwick routes – from Belfast City, Guernsey, Inverness, the Isle of Man, Jersey, Newcastle and Newquay – until Saturday 29th March 2014, with no changes to pricing, frequency or timings. It also confirmed that there will be no impact upon any other route currently operated from those seven airports and that the funds generated by the sale of the slots will be re-invested in the remaining 159 Flybe routes.
The move will likely see an increase in destinations and frequencies offered by easyJet at London Gatwick from next summer.
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