Thomson expands its low fare flights nationwide

13.09.2005 The UK’s leading travel company Thomson has today announced that its low fares airline Thomsonfly.com will be offering high frequency flights from 11 UK airports for the summer months of 2006.

This announcement unveils the next phase in Thomsonfly.com’s low fares strategy which will mean that the majority of the UK population will be within a one hours drive of Thomsonfly.com low fares flights, enabling them to travel for as little as £29.99, one way including taxes and charges.

The company currently operates low fares flights from regional airports in Coventry, Bournemouth and Doncaster and now eight new airports are to be added for Summer 2006. The new airports are Manchester, key London airports Gatwick and Luton, and Birmingham, Cardiff, Newcastle, Nottingham East Midlands and Glasgow.

Managing director of Thomson, Peter Rothwell, said, “Extending the low fares flights programme nationwide is a key step for Thomson. We are continuing to explore the growing independent travel sector - the investment in the low fares flights programme is one of the key activities in this strategy - both attracting new UK customers and serving overseas customers needing inbound travel to the UK. More than 80% of the Thomsonfly.com customers to date are new to Thomson - which demonstrates how effective the airline is in attracting new customers.”

From May 2006 Thomsonfly.com will operate low fares flights from Cardiff, Gatwick, Luton, Manchester and Newcastle to four Spanish destinations - Palma, Malaga, Alicante and Ibiza. In addition high frequency flights will be operated from Birmingham, Nottingham East Midlands and Glasgow to Palma - all at low fares.

These new flight services will trigger a expansion of its existing fleet - growing its fleet from 43 aircraft in 2005 to 48 aircraft in 2006. Combined with the lower frequency holiday flights Thomsonfly.com will operate in 2006 from 26 UK airports to 87 destinations worldwide.

Guy Stephenson, commercial director of Thomsonfly.com said, “Thomsonfly.com believes in providing flight services to popular destinations at low fares from local airports, which our customers like because they are friendly and convenient. However we also have ambitions at a national level, which demands a presence in the UK’s major cities. We offer flights to the places where people want to travel to - rather than trying to create demand for places that people may not even have heard of.”

Thomsonfly.com carried 500,000 passengers in 2004 and predicts that it will have carried over 1.5 million passengers in 2005. The new flights will mean the company will carry close to 2 million passengers on its low fares services in 2006.

Over 95% of bookings have been made online at the website Thomsonfly.com. The website enables to manage their booking online - empowering them to make changes or add services as they wish.