Manchester is cheap flight capital of the north
John Scheerhout
MANCHESTER Airport established itself as the cheap flight capital of the north today with a major new no-frills airline flying to nine destinations.
Jet2.com was unveiled as the latest low fares carrier to join the airport's budget travel revolution.
It will base six Boeings at Manchester and employ more than 200 cabin crew and pilots when it launches nine new routes to the continent from November.
Return tickets will cost from £42, including taxes.
The airline - a huge success at its first base at Leeds-Bradford Airport - will fly to Budapest, Faro, Geneva, Malaga, Murcia, Nice, Pisa, Valencia and Venice.
The arrival of Jet2.com, which has eight Boeings flying to 14 destinations from Leeds, will bring the number of no-frills routes available from Manchester to 31.
For years Manchester was noted for expensive air travel and only Ryanair, with one service to Dublin, offered a no-frills service. However, there are now a wide range of cut price services:
Bmibaby arrived last year and serves 13 destinations (Alicante, Barcelona, Belfast, Bordeaux, Cork, Ibiza, Jersey, Knock, Malaga, Murcia, Palma, Paris, Prague), with fares from £38.45 return including tax. Hapag-Lloyd Express flies to Cologne and Stuttgart and V-Bird flies to Niederrhein.
Fly Be offers a no-frills service to Southampton.
Rival
Air Berlin will begin services from Manchester to Hamburg, Berlin, Paderborn, and Dusseldorf from November 1, bringing the total of no-frills routes to 32.
Manchester's nearest rival, John Lennon Airport, Liverpool, offers no-frills routes by easyJet (Alicante, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Basel, Belfast, Berlin, Cologne, Geneva, Mardid, Malaga, Nice, Palma, Paris), and Ryanair and, from December, Wizz Air, with flights to Budapest, Warsaw and Katowice.
Manchester Airport managing director John Spooner said: "Manchester has become unrivalled in its choice of airlines and destinations. This is great news for the people of Greater Manchester.
"Jet2.com will base six aircraft here which shows confidence in us. We expect them to serve more destinations in the future."
The Jet2.com boss, Philip Meeson, a former RAF pilot, said: "Our aim is to be the number one airline for leisure travellers in the north.
"We're here to build on our overwhelming success in Yorkshire and in Northern Ireland and we will be offering the people of Greater Manchester and beyond genuine low cost services.
"We launched at Leeds Bradford with fewer aircraft, and now we dominate low-cost flights out of that region."
It is understood that tomorrow British Airways will unveil plans to open up five new routes to from Manchester, with the creation of about 140 jobs for cabin crew and pilots.
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