The long awaited apology:
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Flybe today apologised to passengers in Northern Ireland who have been hit by delayed flights - but insisted that the problems were being resolved.
Mike Rutter, the airline's chief commercial officer who was on a visit to Belfast, acknowledged that reliability had been a problem in recent months.
We set ourselves high standards and have not been meeting them for a number of reasons - such as the availability of air crews."
"We have put additional crews and aircraft in six locations and this means we have a second fully crewed aircraft on standby at George Best City Airport."
Flybe's performance has been criticised by passengers who have christened the airline 'Flymaybe'.
Mr Rutter acknowledged that some issues had arisen as a result of the airline's takeover in March of the BA Connect operation.
He said Flybe had a different culture to BA Connect, and that this had posed problems with regard to some of the staff the airline had inherited.
Mr Rutter said that Flybe had been operating a 25-minute turnround at airports such as Belfast City since 2002, and insisted this provided sufficient time.