THE appointment of a general manager at Birmingham Airport has led JerseyEuropean Airways to consider plans for major expansion at its Midlands hub.
John Brayford, a former British Airways project manager in the passenger and cargo team, will be in charge of commercial and operational business in the newly created role.
JEA’s expansion plans will focus on opening up new routes to European destinations and increasing capacity on existing key services. Larger and more efficient aircraft arriving this year will allow expansion.
JEA sales and marketing director Jonathan Breedon confirmed the growth plan.
He said the airline will unveil a new European route this winter for a summer start and build up traffic on underserved routes including the Channel Islands and Glasgow.
“The strategy is to build up Birmingham,” he said. “We are the biggest carrier to Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands and hope to announce a new route from Birmingham soon.”
Breedon said the arrival of new 50-seatCanadair Regional Jets and large 78-seat Dash 8-400 turboprops during 2000 will enable the carrier to put extra capacity on to key routes.
He said ageing Shorts 360s will be phased out by June. The aircraft are typically used on low-yield routes such as Exeter-Birmingham to feed traffic on to connecting flights. Breedon said this connecting traffic was vital to JEA and was an area to focus on at Birmingham.
He said: “There is not really enough traffic to sustain just an Exeter flight to Birmingham, but many passengers are connecting on to Continental Airlines flights to Newark or American Airlines flights to Chicago. This is an example of our hub and spoke system at Birmingham.”
The arrival of the Dash 8 aircraft, suitable for short to medium flights, will also allow JEA to study new services to important European cities. It currently only serves Paris, Toulouse and Irish destinations from Birmingham and is looking to expand to other business destinations.