£9m image overhaul for low-cost airline (From Daily Echo)

Low-cost airline Flybe launches £9m image overhaul

1:23pm Thursday 26th April 2012 in Travel By Matt Smith , Politics and business reporter

Southampton’S largest carrier Flybe will today launch a new £9m marketing campaign to distance itself from negative perceptions of low-cost rivals such as Ryanair.

The Making Flying Better campaign will promote a major overhaul of the airline’s ticketing structure in a bid to offer transparent, honest, all-inclusive pricing with more generous baggage allowances.

Flybe is also scrapping debit card charges and will start charging credit card fees for bookings rather than individual passengers.

The existing 'economy' ticket will make way for a lowest fare 'essentials' ticket and a 'new economy' ticket, while the top tier 'economy plus' will be retained.

The airline is also planning summer trials of free in-flight TV programming and entertainment through onboard wi-fi. It will feature on some of the aircraft flying out of Southampton.

A soon-to-be aired series of TV commercials will feature Flybe’s own pilots and cabin crew.

The new strategy will target both leisure and business travellers, who account for nearly half of Flybe’s customer base.

Simon Lilley, Flybe UK’s marketing director, told the Daily Echo that the “fundamental review” of the airline’s product and brand positioning was the “biggest change we’ve made as an airline since we created the brand in 2002”.

He added: “We know from our customers that they rank the Flybe experience highly but also that their expectations have, quite understandably, changed over the years.

"By introducing service improvements like our New Economy product, the removal of debit card charges and the utilisation of more technology throughout the journey, we hope our passengers will appreciate that Flybe is raising its game once again.”

Flybe, which is running a 32-route summer schedule from Southampton, earlier this month reported it had seen no let-up in the “challenging”

conditions which have grounded its shares in recent months.

The airline, which is forecast to have make a loss in the year to March 31 of £8.5m, said it was working on plans to increase revenues per seat, delivering cost reductions and better matching capacity to demand.

Since its launch in 2002, the company has increased from 44 routes, 28 aircraft and 2.6 million passengers to operate 211 routes, with a fleet of 83 aircraft carrying 8.5 million passengers.