Eastern Airways is to forge a codeshare pact with Channel Islands airline Aurigny to expand regional connectivity.
The partnership has an initial focus on the two airlines’ connections at Southampton airport.
Both carriers are aligning their booking systems by working with the developers of ‘Worldwide by easyJet’ to allow a seamless single point of booking for each other’s services to or from Guernsey via the south coast hub.
This will be bookable on Eastern Airways website from later this month as schedules become aligned to allow connectivity.
The development is first of a number of codeshare and interline agreements by Eastern Airways as it seeks to plug gaps in services lost with the collapse of Flybe in March, covering destinations such as Belfast City, Manchester, Leeds-Bradford, Teesside and Aberdeen.
These will be followed in the new year by Newcastle and Dublin among other new services planned for spring 2021.
Eastern Airways managing director Tony Burgess said: “We are excited to commence this partnership with Aurigny, which will allow us to and collectively provide greater connectivity focused initially on our Southampton airport hub.
“This will open up a wide array of connections throughout the UK and the Channel Islands to all of our customers including Manchester, Belfast, Leeds-Bradford, Teesside, Aberdeen, Dublin and new destinations planned for 2021.
“By forging this partnership and joining our networks, we will now look forward to welcoming many more customers on board and providing them with an extended choice of simplified route options and seamless connectivity whether they be travelling for business or pleasure.
“Flights are planned to be available for booking from later this month.”
Aurigny commercial director Malcolm Coupar added: “This is great news for our customers as it is often a challenge in small market jurisdictions to offer the regional connectivity desired by all as demand does not justify direct flights.
“By teaming up with Eastern we are able to provide our customers with more regional choice out of Southampton.
“As we come out of this pandemic, I expect we will see more airlines concentrate their operations out of certain hubs and that agreements between airlines will be more commonplace for the benefit of the customer.
“We are also working on agreements with other key airlines offering services from the UK to develop ‘Worldwide by Aurigny,’ which will offer customers connecting flights to worldwide destinations booked via the Aurigny website.”