Travel agents based in Northern Ireland say they are more cautious about relying on regional carriers after the collapse of Flybe.
Several agencies in the country had to quickly rebook passengers after the airline entered administration in the early hours of Saturday morning, for the second time in the space of three years.
Flybe operated 10 routes to and from Belfast, eight of which are currently served by other carriers.
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Sandra Corkin, managing director of agency chain Oasis Travel, said: “We’re going to have to reconsider booking these smaller airlines because we cannot continue to be the fall guy.
“There’s a lack of confidence on the side of agents and customers.”
She explained two sisters contacted her around 7am on Saturday morning ahead of their Flybe flight to London where they were celebrating a 60th birthday party.
“We paid the difference – it was only a few hundred pounds,” said Corkin. “I was rebooking them from my bedroom onto Aer Lingus flights.”
Around 20 customers in total will have to be rebooked after Flybe’s collapse, Corkin confirmed.
“Before the Covid pandemic, we took out the supplier failure insurance for this sort of regional airline, but we’ve not been able to put in place the insurance post-Covid because the prices have been too high,” added Corkin.
Both Terra Travel and Travel Solutions decided not to book Flybe when the latest iteration of the airline began operations in April 2022 after it was acquired Thyme Opco, a company related to US hedge fund Cyrus Capital.
Damian Murphy, managing director of Terra Travel’s branch in Portadown, said: “We wanted to let Flybe get up and running initially. We thought we would leave it and it’s has turned out to be the right decision.”
Peter McMinn, managing director of Travel Solutions, noted how few Flybe bookings sales staff made.
However, he added: “When they came to Belfast in April last year, we reached out to them, but they failed to respond to us. They made little effort to engage with us. The number of customers that were affected I could count on one hand. We had less than half a dozen Flybe bookings.”
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