British regional air carrer Flybe (BE/BEE) discontinued all flight operations on Thursday, March 5th. It was the biggest regional air carrier in UK and Europe. Partnered regional air carriers Blue Islands (SI/BCI) and Stobart Air (RE/STK) have continued with flight operations on their routes. Scottish regional air carrier Loganair (LM/LOG) discontinued partnership with Flybe three years ago.
Flybe was founded in 1979 under the prevoius name Jersey European Airways (JY/JEA), as a merger of small regional air carriers Intra Airways from Jersey Isle, and Express Air Sevices from Bournemouth. The main operational base was at Exeter Airport. In 2000 they changed their name into British European (BE/BEE), and two years later into their current name. From 2011 Flybe also tried flight operations on Scandinavian market as Finnish regional air carrier Flybe Nordic (FC/FCM), but Scandinavinan flight operations were sold to Danish Air Transport (DX/DAT) in 2015.
Before the end of operation the fleet had 63 planes: 54 Bombradier Q400s and 9 Embraer ERJ-175s. Flybe was the biggest operator of Bombardier Q400s in Europe. Earlier they used to fly with Embraer ERJ-195, Embraer ERJ-145, British Aerospace BAe-146, Canadair CRJ-200 and ATR-72.
Flybe didn’t offer any routes to Croatia for this year. But during previous years they used to operate seasonal routes to Dubrovnik, Split and Zadar from London (Southend Airport), Birmingham, Exeter, Nowrich and Southampton.
Photo © Avioradar – Jan Kotek