Thomsonfly
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| Founded | 1962 (as Euravia) | ||||||
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| Hubs | Birmingham International Airport London Gatwick London Luton Manchester Airport Cardiff Airport | ||||||
| Focus cities | Bournemouth Airport Coventry Airport Doncaster-Sheffield Airport | ||||||
| Alliance | Part of the TUIfly Alliance | ||||||
| Fleet size | 47 (2006) | ||||||
| Destinations | 87 | ||||||
| Parent company | TUIfly-(TUI Group) | ||||||
| Headquarters | Wigmore House, Luton | ||||||
| Key people | Mark Smyth, Colin Mitchell, Nick White | ||||||
| Website | http://www.thomsonfly.com | ||||||
Thomsonfly is the charter and scheduled airline of Thomson Holidays with bases across the United Kingdom. Thomsonfly is the largest charter airline in the world. Thomsonfly is a part of the largest leisure fleet in Europe: together with six other airlines which are linked together by the family brand TUIfly, which is a part of the German TUI Group, the largest tourism group in Europe. TUIfly groups Arkefly (Holland), Jetairfly (Belgium), Hapagfly and HLX.com (Germany), TUIfly Nordic (Sweden) and Corsairfly (France) with a fleet of more than a hundred aircraft.
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 Limited holds a United Kingdom Civil Aviation Authority Type A Operating Licence, it is permitted to carry passengers, cargo and mail on aircraft with 20 or more seats.[1]
History
Thomsonfly can trace its roots to its 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 aircraft; 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-orientated rebranding. It used the Thomsonfly name to include all of the UK flying operations and, as a result, the larger Britannia Airways was rebranded as Thomsonfly in 2005.
Scheduled operations commenced on 31 March 2004 with four Boeing 737-500s from a new passenger terminal at Coventry Airport. Immediately the airline was involved in controversy when it took over ownership of the airport lease and 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 planning case was contentious and lengthy, Thomsonfly continued to operate from Coventry whilst the outcome remained in the balance. Planing permission has recently been granted for a larger passenger terminal and the ownership of the lease has passed to CAFCO, an airport and property development company with no links to TUI.
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.
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 part of Tui Airline Management (TAM).
The name 'Britannia Airways' disappeared forever on 31 October 2005, when the airline officially became Thomsonfly.com due to the new marketing strategy of the TUI Group to regroup all its airline activities under the same alliance: TUIfly. As a result, all the airlines under TUIfly were rebranded with the name best known in their local market or the name of the principal tour operator for which they operated flights. All the airlines, with the exception of HLX.com, acquired the suffix "-fly" and had their aircraft repainted in the light blue TUI colours with red TUI logo.
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Britannia Airways Boeing 737 (1985)
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Britannia Airways Boeing 757-200 (2003) -
Britannia Airways in Thomson colors (2003)
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Services
Regular flights currently operate between Coventry and Jersey, Málaga, Valencia, and Venice (all routes opened 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), Salzburg (26 November 2004), Lyon (16 December 2004), Faro (20 March 2005), Barcelona (27 March 2005), and Paris Orly Airport (30 October 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), Cologne/Bonn (1 November 2004), and Shannon Airport (3 November 2004), but these are not currently operational.
Flights also operate from Bournemouth to Amsterdam, Málaga, Paris Orly, Pisa, and Valencia (all from 22 March 2005), Palma de Mallorca (23 March 2005), Faro (24 March 2005), Alicante (31 October 2005), Tenerife (1 November 2005), Salzburg (1 December 2005), Lyon (16 December 2005), Gran Canaria (November 2006), Prague (November 2006), and Grenoble (December 2006).
Thomsonfly was the first airline to establish a base at the new Robin Hood Airport Doncaster Sheffield, commencing in April 2005. Routes operate to Alicante, Dublin, Faro, Jersey, Málaga, Palma de Mallorca, and Prague (all from 28 April 2005), Valencia, Paris Orly, and Pisa (20 May 2005), Ibiza (10 June 2005), Tenerife (1 November 2005), Gran Canaria (3 November 2005), Amsterdam (4 November 2005), and Lyon (16 December 2005).
Some of these routes only operate seasonally.
In September 2005 Thomsonfly expanded to offer low-cost flights from additional UK bases to destinations across Europe commencing in May 2006. These flights are additional to the Thomsonfly charter flights that already operate from many of these airports. Services will operate from Cardiff, London Gatwick, London Luton, Manchester and Newcastle to Alicante, Ibiza, Palma de Mallorca and Málaga, and from Birmingham, Glasgow and Nottingham East Midlands to Palma de Mallorca and London Gatwick Airport to Reus AB
Fleet
As of August 2006, the Thomsonfly fleet comprises:
- 18 Boeing 757-200
- 4 Boeing 767-200
- 8 Boeing 767-300
- 8 Boeing 737-300
- 4 Boeing 737-500
- 4 Boeing 737-800
The average age of the Thomsonfly fleet is 11.1 years years (at August 2006).
2 B767-200 aircraft have been sold to SilverJet, the all business class airline.
The airline has been evaluating the Boeing 787-8 for a considerable length of time. An order has not yet been placed and it the airline cannot expect to receive the type until 2013, at the earliest, due to the availability of production slots. There is a discernible lack of vagour in the direction of fleet renewal, although second hand 737-300s continue to join the fleet.
Awards
- AUC Crown Awards: Most Punctual Charter Carrier - 2004
- Travel & Tourism Web Awards: Best Airline - 2004
- Telegraph Travel Awards: Best Charter Airline - 2003
Ownership
Thomsonfly is part of TUI AG, the largest tourism and travel services group in the world, which is based in Hanover, Germany. This also includes TUI UK which has brands including Thomson - the UK's largest tour operator and Thomson Travel Shops - the UKs biggest travel agency. Thomsonfly is part of a TUIfly alliance that groups all the airlines of TUI including Hapagfly and HLX.com in Germany, TUIfly Nordic in Sweden, Corsairfly in France, Jetairfly in Belgium and recently Jet4you Morocco as the first non-European based airline. The combined fleet of TAM exceeeds 100 aircraft.