Thomsonfly is the charter and scheduled airline of Thomson Holidays with bases across the United Kingdom. The scheduled side is a low-fare carrier operating services to 20 European cities. The bases include Birmingham, Bournemouth, Bristol, Cardiff, Coventry (CVT), Glasgow, Liverpool, London Gatwick, London Luton, London Stansted, Manchester, Newcastle, Robin Hood Doncaster Sheffield and Teesside (Durham Tees Valley).
Thomsonfly was originally a low-cost scheduled offshoot of the long-standing British charter airline, Britannia Airways, and commenced operations in March 2004 Coventry Airport. In May 2005, the entire airline operation of 'Britannia Airways' was re-branded as 'Thomsonfly', Britannia having been in business since 1962.
History
Thomsonfly can trace its roots to back to its original parent airline, Britannia Airways, which was founded by Ted Langton, who needed a reliable airline to fulfil his holiday company's charter demands. The airline began as Euravia in 1962 with a small fleet of Lockheed Constellations. It soon moved on to the Bristol Britannia; the name was changed and remained until December 2004. The greatest period of growth came when Britannia began acquiring Boeing 737-200 aircraft and the fleet expanded to 45 aircraft. Britannia was the European launch customer for the Boeing 767 and then moved to an all Boeing 767 and 757 fleet in the mid-1990s.
Realising that the Internet and a changing marketplace (taken advantage of by companies such as Easyjet and Ryanair) was leaving them behind, Thomson Holidays initiated a web-oriented rebranding, using the Thomsonfly name to include all of the UK flying operations and, as a result, the larger Britannia Airways was rebranded to Thomsonfly in 2005.
Scheduled operations commenced on 31 March 2004 with four Boeing 737-500s from a new passenger terminal at Coventry Airport and immediately became involved in controversy as a small number of local residents and Warwick District Council mounted a campaign against regular passenger flights from the airport, which had previously been used for both passenger and freight aircraft. The case is still ongoing as of 2005, Thomsonfly continue to operate from Coventry and the outcome seems likely to be in the favour of Thomsonfly.
Britannia Airways/Thomsonfly was the best on time charter airline in 2004 as measured by the Air Transport Users' Council and also won the respected 'TravelWeekly' best UK charter airline award for 2004.
To further complicate the history, Thomson Travel were taken over by the German steel and power turned travel company, Preussag, in 2001 and the entire company was subsequently rebranded as TUI AG and together with other acquisitions, became the world's largest travel company. Thomsonfly is a part of the TUI Group.
Services
Regular flights currently operate between Coventry and Jersey (route opened 31 March 2004), Málaga (31 March 2004), Valencia (31 March 2004), Venice (31 March 2004), Palma de Mallorca (2 May 2004), Pisa (2 June 2004) , Ibiza (12 June 2004), Amsterdam (28 September 2004), Alicante (15 October 2004), Cologne/Bonn (1 November 2004), Shannon Airport (3 November 2004), Faro (20 March 2005), Barcelona (27 March 2005), and Paris Charles de Gaulle International Airport (4 April 2005).
Flights also operate from Bournemouth to Amsterdam, Málaga, Paris, Pisa and Valencia (all 22 March 2005), Palma de Mallorca (23 March 2005), and Faro (24 March 2005), and from Robin Hood Airport Doncaster Sheffield to Alicante, Dublin, Faro, Jersey, Málaga, Palma de Mallorca and Prague (all 28 April 2005), Valencia, Paris and Pisa (20 May 2005), and Ibiza (10 June 2005).
Routes also opened from Coventry to Nice (22 April 2004), Naples (25 May 2004), Marseille (2 June 2004), Rome (3 June 2004), Cork (31 October 2004), Salzburg (26 November 2004), and Lyon (16 December 2004), but these are not currently operational or only operate seasonally.
Thomsonfly was the first airline to operate from the UK's newest airport, Robin Hood Airport Doncaster Sheffield (formerly RAF Finningley on the border of South Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire).
Fleet
As of June 2005 the current fleet of Thomsonfly includes 9 Boeing 767-300s, 4 Boeing 767-200s, 18 or 19 Boeing 757-200s, 1 Boeing 737-800, 4 Boeing 737-500s and 5 Boeing 737-300s based across the UK.
Code data
- ICAO Code: TOM/BAL
- Callsign: Thomson/Britannia