Thomsonfly

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thomsonfly

IATA BY	ICAO TOM	Callsign TOMSON
Founded		1962 (as Euravia)
Hubs		Birmingham International Airport Cardiff Airport London Gatwick London Luton Manchester Airport Newcastle Airport
Focus cities / secondary hubs		Bournemouth Airport Coventry Airport Doncaster-Sheffield Airport
Alliance		TUIfly Alliance
Fleet size		47 (2006)
Destinations		87
Parent company		TUIfly-(TUI Group)
Headquarters		Wigmore House, Luton
Key people		Colin Mitchell, Nick Winspear
Website: http://www.thomsonfly.com

Thomsonfly Boeing 757-200

Thomsonfly Boeing 767-300 series at Glasgow International Airport, Scotland.

Thomsonfly (formerly Britannia Airways) is the low fares airline of Thomson Holidays with bases across the United Kingdom. Thomsonfly is the largest charter airline in the world. Thomsonfly is now 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, 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]

1 History
2 Destinations
3 Fleet
4 Awards
5 External links
6 References

[edit] History

Thomsonfly traces its roots to its parent airline, Britannia Airways, which was founded by Ted Langton. Langton needed a reliable airline to fulfill 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-oriented 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. The airline became involved in controversy when it took over ownership of the airport lease. 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, so Thomsonfly continued to operate from Coventry awaiting the outcome of the case. Planning 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 was 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).