ISLANDERS of a certain vintage will remember Flybe’s ancestor, Jersey European Airways, which itself was the creation of a merger between Intra Airways and Express Air Services.
Intra was synonymous with the ‘glory days’ of tourism in the late 60s and 70s, flying former military Dakotas, and Viscounts, to and from the Island.
The birth of JEA
JEA was created in 1979, flying those Viscounts as well as Twin Otters, the Shorts 360 and other aircraft types. Four years later, Lancastrian Jack Walker, who had moved to the Island as a1(1)k, bought the airline. Under his ownership, it grew substantially. New aircraft – including the workhorse Fokker F-27 and BAe 146 ‘whisper’ jet – joined the fleet, and its route network expanded.
Although the Island remained a significant hub for JEA, with air crew, ground staff and engineers all based at the Airport, the airline’s aim to become a leading UK regional carrier led to its renaming to British European in 2000 and, two years later, to Flybe.
To Exeter…
By then, the airline had already moved its headquarters to Exeter Airport.
In subsequent years, the company’s links to Jersey weakened further: its engineering base closed and, eventually, the Jersey base shut down entirely.
For years, the airline had employed and trained Jersey-based pilots and cabin crew, but that pipeline of opportunity came to an end in 2014.
Yet Flybe remained a significant airline for Islanders. EasyJet may have become the main carrier to and from Gatwick, but Flybe was still the principal (and often only) airline operating to and from such important regional airports as Southampton, Birmingham and Exeter.
It also entered into a codeshare agreement with Blue Islands on inter-island routes.
An unwelcome reputation
Although it often performed well on punctuality tables, Flybe gained an unwelcome reputation among Islanders for being unreliable, and gained the nickname ‘Flymaybe’.
Many Islanders, therefore, were only mildly surprised when Flybe – which by then had been sold by the Walker family – went into administration for the first time in March 2020, one of the first high-profile airline casualties of the pandemic.
Flybe 2.0 takes flight
Eyebrows may have been raised higher at the news, in April 2021, that attempts were being made to resurrect Flybe by a global private equity firm, which had purchased the brand for a nominal sum.
Any last strand connecting the airline with the Island of its ancestry was severed last March, when Jersey was left off ‘Flybe 2.0’s’ proposed route network.
Instead, the now Birmingham-based airline would serve Belfast, Newquay, Avignon, Amsterdam and other routes, but not the Channel Islands.
Services took off last April but Flybe cancelled all flights on the weekend as it went into administration, leaving thousands of passengers stranded and out of pocket.
With the end of the new Flybe, the final chapter of a Jersey-founded airline – which employed hundreds of Islanders and carried many, many more over many decades – finally came to a close.
