bmi Regional, a subsidiary of UK carrier bmi British Midland International, has announced plans to launch a new business link from East Midlands to Frankfurt. The new service will launch on October 31 and will operate three times every weekday and with a single rotation on Sundays using a 49-seat Embraer ERJ-145.
“Germany has always been a popular destination and by offering direct flights from East Midlands Airport to Frankfurt we can meet the increasing demand from business and leisure travellers,” said Steven Griffiths, Business Director, bmi Regional.
The schedule has been developed to allow business travellers to complete their work in Frankfurt in a day, but will also appeal to leisure travellers looking to fly directly to Frankfurt or to any destination in parent Lufthansa’s network from its hub.
“This new service is exactly what businesses in the region have been telling us they urgently need,” said Stephen Turner, Commercial Director, East Midlands Airport. “Not only does it offer direct access to one of Europe’s primary business and financial centres; its status as a global hub airport also provides seamless worldwide connections to The Americas, Africa, Asia and India, all with the convenience of flying from your local airport.”
Although this is East Midlands’ only link to Frankfurt, the airport already has connections to three German cities – Ryanair offers flights to Berlin-Schönefeld, while bmibaby has a seasonal service to Munich and will relaunch flights to Cologne / Bonn from November 4. An estimated 124,000 O&D passengers travelled between East Midlands and Germany in the past year.
Bmi Regional already offers flights from East Midlands to Brussels, a route which shares a similar dynamic to its new Frankfurt service. This is flown 13 times a week under a codeshare with European Star Alliance partners Brussels Airlines, Lufthansa and SAS Sacandinavian Airlines, with Air Malta Austrian Airlines, Etihad Airways and Ukraine International Airlines placing their own code on selected flights. In 2010, bmi Regional carried 23,197 passengers on this route, according to UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) data. Around 18,000 of these were estimated to be O&D travellers, the remaining 22.4 per cent beginning or ending their journey at another destination.
Related Content
