Ryanair has axed four routes from Stansted and one from Liverpool giving passengers less than six weeks' notice of the change. Flights from Stansted to Ostend, Maastricht, Reims and Clermont Ferrand will cease from January 14, as will the Liverpool to Brussels route.
Passengers who have booked flights after January 14 will be offered a full refund or a free transfer to the nearest alternative airport. In each case, this is at least 70 miles away. Ryanair will start four new routes from Stansted from January 15: Linz in Austria, Bari in Italy, Erfurt in Germany and Jerez in Spain. Liverpool passengers will be able to fly to Girona (billed as Barcelona by Ryanair) from February 5.
Ryanair is running a seat sale alongside the reshuffle of routes with all taxes included in fares from £10 on all routes between January 5 and March 18. Bookings must be made by midnight on Monday.
Passengers from regional airports will have a bigger choice of European routes next summer as low-cost airline FlyBE announced new routes from Birmingham, Bristol, Exeter and Southampton. Birmingham will have flights to Perpignan; Bristol gets Bergerac and Bordeaux; new Exeter flights are to Alicante, Málaga, and Faro; while Southampton will have services to La Rochelle, Limoges and Perpignan. These flights have gone on sale on flybe.com.
Excel Airways starts flights on December 15 from Gatwick to the Caribbean with return fares from £299, including taxes. The airline will offer weekly return flights to Barbados, Grenada, Tobago and St Kitts. The aircraft will have three classes with a business-style seat costing from £599 return. Bookings on 01342 316900.
Canadian low-cost airline Zoom starts flights between Gatwick and six Canadian cities next May. Fares start at £89 one-way, plus taxes, for flights to Toronto, Ottawa and Halifax, and £129 to Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver. Zoom (flyzoom.com, 0870 2400055) has taken 5,000 bookings in the month since it was launched.
A new Polish low-cost airline plans to launch flights between Stansted and Warsaw on December 15. Airpolonia, owned by a Polish business consortium, will offer fares from £10, excluding taxes. Fares for the early flights over the holiday season are higher. Details on airpolonia.com.
Air Malta will launch direct flights between Gatwick and Catania in Sicily on May 2. One-way fares on the full-service flights will start at £59.80, including taxes. Seats go on sale on Monday on 0845 3456045 (airmalta.com).
