By Brian Ogle

MAJOR George Best Belfast City Airport user airline is getting geared up for major expansion from Northern Ireland.

Exeter-based airline Flybe, which recently absorbed BA Connect, making it the biggest regional airline in Europe, is planning direct services from Belfast to major Continental capitals and a range of French regional destinations, all direct from Belfast.

Chief Commercial Officer Mike Rutter confirmed that he has put his company's plans to Belfast City Airport and is waiting a response. If they get the green light, new direct routes to Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam would be operating by the start of Summer 2008.

And a range of French regional destinations such as Bergerec, Limoges, Brest, Avignon and Bordeaux - one of the country's major wine-growing regions - could also be made available, again all direct from Belfast.

"We have put our proposals to Belfast City Airport. If we are able to go ahead, the new routes would have the potential of carrying 300-400,000 passengers a year, and it is estimated that each 100,000 passengers can generate 100 extra jobs," said the Flybe chief.

"Currently we serve 41 destinations in France from the UK, with Rennes direct from Belfast City and Paris, via Cardiff, so no other airline has a more extensive network of flights to France that ourselves."

He said that the airline had coped well with the massive increase in flights and passengers since the acquisition of BA Connect, at a time when the airline industry was under considerable pressure with the challenges of APD, the environmentally aware lobby and security considerations.

"We are coping well because we know the challenges of the marketplace," he said.

Currently Belfast City is in third place in the airline's league table of passengers, at 1.4 million, but it is joint top with Birmingham and Manchester in the number of aircraft (10) currently based here.

"We take the Northern Ireland marketplace extremely seriously and the fact that we have people of the calibre of Andrea Hayes and Ken Harrower looking after this region speaks for itself."

Thirty five per cent of the airline's bookings continues to come through travel agents and Mike Rutter says Flybe will continue to forge strong links with the Travel Trade.

"Of course, we have had our own honest exchanges with the Trade in the past few years, but we will continue to take the relationship with travel agents extremely seriously, especially as we have found BA Connect had a very high content of bookings through the Trade.

He said that Flybe had one of the youngest and thus most environmentally friendly fleets in the world - and when the present replacement of aircraft was complete passenger numbers would jump from 5.5 million to approx 8 million, with a 10m target in a few year's time.

With replacement Q.400 aircraft, fuel saings are likely to be around 32 per cent with the carbon footbprint being cut by 50 per cent.

He said that the airline had been forward thinking with regard to fuel prices and did not envisage following the lead of some airlines which introduced fuel surcharges, and which raised them again in the last few weeks.