Airline, BMIbaby, has announced it will stop flights from Manchester and Cardiff airports at the end of this summer.
The budget airline has blamed the economic down-turn for the cuts, which will come in late October, saying they needed to concentrate on more established routes.
Four BMIbaby planes will be redeployed to Belfast, East-Midlands and Birmingham airports.
Staff will also be moved to new locations.
The 69 positions as Cardiff will be moving and 64 of the 97 positions at Manchester also being redeployed.
A BMIbaby spokesman said: “In the current economic climate it is essential for BMIbaby to focus on airports where the airline already has a strong market presence and where there are strong growth opportunities for the BMIbaby business.
“Therefore BMIbaby has optimised their current flying programme and as a result of this BMIbaby will cease operations from Cardiff Airport and from Manchester Airport at the end of the summer 2011 flying programme.”
Currently the airline operates 40 flights a week from Manchester and 30 a week to European destinations from Cardiff.
They added that parent company British Midland International (BMI), who has recently been taken over by Germany’s Lufthansa, would retain a ‘significant presence’ at Manchester airport.
Andrew Harrison, managing director of Manchester Airport, said: “We understand BMIbaby’s reasons for the decision and remind our passengers that the destinations will still be served by other carriers in the winter.
“We continue to see strong growth from carriers such as Monarch, Ryan air, Flybe, EasyJet and Jet2.com at Manchester and are confident of a strong summer programme that will still include BMIbaby. We’ll also still see the airline group presence at Manchester with BMI keeping a significant presence and BMIbaby will still be flying from one of our airports at East Midlands.”
BMIbaby plans to introduce seven new routes from Belfast and two from East Midland’s airport.
Sarah Taylor
