Flybe moves towards Chapter 4 in its restructuring: Profitability

Last month, Flybe announced that it would establish a new base at Robin Hood Doncaster-Sheffield Airport in summer 2016. The airport is only ten years old and among the UK's smallest, ignored by most of its leading airlines and mainly used by Wizz Air to serve destinations in eastern Europe. Sheffield is the UK's fourth biggest city, but it lacks connectivity.

Flybe will offer a combination of leisure and business routes, together with vital links to major hubs in Paris and Amsterdam. And the airport will suit Flybe's strategic preference for avoiding competition. It will launch eight routes from Robin Hood, and has indicated that it will also have ten other new routes from other airports in 2016.

Flybe has undergone a lengthy period of restructuring, including more than two years under current CEO Saad Hammad and is now growing once more. The airline's results for the first half of its FY2016 indicate that it may indeed now be entering what Mr Hammad calls the profitable growth chapter of its story.