Do you know if any of the "no frills" operators have considered operating flights to the Gambia during the British winter? Thomson holidays have pulled out of the Gambia this winter, so it is now just Monarch and Thomas Cook flying from the UK. If the "no frills" operators are mothballing some of their planes this winter, why don’t they start flying to The Gambia? Tessa Harding, Ely

Sunday Times travel expert Richard Green responds: The main problem is the distance from the UK to The Gambia’s main airport at Banjul, which at just over 2,700 miles, is about at the far range of the aircraft types that are used by all of the UK based low cost carriers.

They use either Airbus A320’s or Boeing 737’s, and started off serving cities between one and three hours flight time from their base airport.

Gradually this has increased, and now there are low cost airlines that fly from the UK to Morocco (easyjet.com and Ryanair.com), the Canary Islands (easyjet.com, and jet2.com), Cyprus (easyjet.com and jet2.com), and Israel (easyjet.com and jet2.com).

Making a refuelling stop isn’t a good option for the carriers, as they would incur many extra costs, like landing fees, and the extra fuel of too take offs etc, plus they would not seem a good choice as against other charter or traditional carriers that use more long range aircraft and can make the flight non-stop.

There will be new long-range short-haul destinations added to the low cost networks in the coming years, and no doubt improvements in the range that the twin-engined passenger jets can fly too, but unfortunately it is unlikely that any will start flying to The Gambia any time soon.

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