Scottish budget airline to double fleet and add transatlantic flights

13.03.05

Flyglobespan, the fast-expanding Scottish budget airline, will double the number of planes it has by the summer, and is planning transatlantic flights from Scotland next year.

Tom Dalrymple, the airline’s founder and chairman, said that his expansion plans also include introducing Flyglobespan’s first domestic flights to London within the next 3 months.

Flyglobespan is taking delivery of 3 new Boeing 737-800s, one a month over April, May and June, plus 2 further 737-600 long-range aircraft next month, bringing its Glasgow and Edinburgh Airport based fleet up to 10 planes.

The budget airline flies 12 direct routes to European cities from Glasgow and 9 from Edinburgh. A new direct daytime route from Glasgow to Prague will allow Flyglobespan to introduce its first domestic routes early and late in the day, round-tripping between Glasgow and either Gatwick or Stansted, in direct competition with British Airways and Easyjet.

Dalrymple also said he was planning to add the first wide-body jet to his all-Boeing fleet, with a long-range 250-seat 777 operating transatlantic from Glasgow from next year. He refused to be drawn on exact routings but these are likely to include Orlando or Sanford in Florida.

Dalrymple laughed off comments by Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary that only the Irish airline and Easyjet would survive a low-cost 'bloodbath', saying 'You can’t knock what (O’Leary’s) achieved, but you only have to look at our figures.' [the Scottish airline, which last week announced profits almost doubled from £2m to £3.7m].

'Unlike Ryanair, Flyglobespan only flies into major airports and doesn’t rely on bus connections', he added.

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