This appetite for regional flights is feeding through to airline's passenger volumes. Graeme Ross, director of Scotland for Eastern, said: "From early 2003, we have more than doubled in size. We now have 25 aircraft operating 750 flights a week on 24 routes.
"Our passengers are primarily business travellers. Time is very important and if you are spending nine or ten hours driving or are on a train, you are not at your most productive."
Ross said that frequency of service was a big draw rather than capacity, especially in the less well connected regions. "If people can get to a meeting and not spend a full day out of the office, then they will do that. And if you put an air service in place people are also going to want to use them to find new markets. This is a stimulus to business."
Mike Rutter, sales and marketing director for Flybe, said their market had grown from 2.1m passengers in 2002 to a projected 5.5m this year. "We set out to revolutionise the UK domestic market.
The vast bulk of Flybe's business is UK point to point and 40% of its travellers are on business.
Rutter said their market now covered airports in the south west, Scotland, the north west and the north east. The net step he said was to develop in the south east, possibly at Southend.
Like Ross, Rutter says the introduction of new routes has stimulated the market. "When we started the Southampton-Edinburgh route, we put on 10,000 new passengers in the first month," he says. "We now have 120,000 more flying this route when before they would have gone via Gatwick or Heathrow. And we are also saving them up to seven hours travelling time."
It's about time
The expansion of Britain's regional air services has meant that a day trip from Aberdeen to Southampton or Inverness to Birmingham is often possible. Before such trips could take two or even three days incurring the expense of overnight stops. The consequent savings in time, cost and convenience can be sizeable, even when taking into account airport check-in and the fact that airports are situated outside city centres.
- Aberdeen-Southampton: a direct air trip takes 2 hours 10 minutes flight time while the indirect service via Manchester takes 5 hours 20 minutes flight including the wait. By train, the journey takes up to 9 hours 59 minutes including a Tube trip across London. The difference is 7 hours 49 minutes on the direct flight and 4 hours 39 minutes on the indirect flight.
- Aberdeen-Norwich: Flight time: 1 hour 10 minutes. Train time: up to 8 hours 58 minutes. Difference: 7 hours 48 minutes
- Aberdeen-Bristol: Flight time: 1 hour 35 minutes. Train time: up to 9 hours 14 minutes. Difference: 7 hours 39 minutes.
- Inverness-Birmingham: Flight time: 1 hour 40 minutes. Train time: up to 8 hours 42 minutes. Difference: 7 hours 2 minutes.
- Inverness-Manchester: Flight time via Edinburgh: 2 hours 40 minutes including wait; Train time: up to 8 hours 23 minutes with up to three changes. Difference: 5 hours 43 minutes.
- Leeds/Bradford-Southampton: Flight time: 1 hour 10 minutes. Train time: up to 4 hours 44 minutes including Tube trip across London. Difference: 3 hours 34 minutes.
- Exeter-Glasgow: Flight time via Belfast: 4 hours 55 minutes including wait. Train time: up to 7 hours 48 minutes. Difference: 3 hours 2 minutes.
Stanley Slaughter is editor of businesstraveleurope.com and has specialised in writing about business travel for the past ten years
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