The school holidays are about to trigger the start of the busy summer getaway period for Exeter Airport and up to 25,000 passengers will be travelling through the terminal in the next seven days.
The week will see twelve and a half thousand passengers using the airport on variety of routes from the Isles of Scilly to as far away as Sharm el Sheikh.
South West flights from Exeter to St. Marys have increased to five a day and over the summer 11,000 passengers will use the service.
The holiday operator Thomson, which has a based Boeing 737-800 aircraft at Exeter, has a busy schedule which includes Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Portugal, a range of Spanish islands, Tunisia, and Turkey. Air Malta also operate from Exeter and Thomas Cook offers flights to Palma.
Flybe, who have their headquarters at Exeter offer Alicante and Malaga five times a week and they fly to the other Spanish destinations of Barcelona and Palma. The airline operates half a dozen domestic routes including three flights a day to Manchester, which together with Paris and Amsterdam offer world-wide connections. Flybe also fly to Bergerac, Nice Rennes and Dusseldorf.
The Dusseldorf flights offer German tourists a weekly link to the South West and Austrian visitors this year are expected to top two and half thousand on their specially charted Niki flights.
Richard Broadley, Exeter Airport’s commercial manager, said: “This looks as if it is going to be a bumper start to the summer holidays and one of our busiest for a few years. With the recent good weather our outbound passengers this year are already in the holiday mood but they are pleased to be getting away from the household chores and routine. We are all geared up for this summer but also looking ahead to 2014 as the new Thomson schedule was recently announced with Crete and more flights to Menorca.”
