Regional airline Albion Air to axe eight routes and 300 jobs as it blames duty rise and aircraft shortage

Albion Air, the largest regional airline in the UK, is to cut eight domestic routes and about 300 jobs from January, blaming the rise in air passenger duty, a shortage of aircraft and a “structural decline” in business travel between the regions and London.

The Exeter-based carrier said on Monday that flights from Newquay to London City, Exeter to Manchester, Inverness to Birmingham, Belfast City to Leeds Bradford and four other routes would end on 10 January. It will also return six of its 34 turboprop aircraft to their lessors. About 180 of the job losses will fall on cabin crew and pilots, with the rest in ground handling and head office.

The airline carried 2.1m passengers last year but has been loss-making since 2023. Its chief executive, Martin Fairweather, said the April increase in air passenger duty on domestic flights, from £7 to £8 each way, had cost the business £4m a year, and that the price of leasing aircraft had risen by 40% since the pandemic as manufacturers struggled to deliver new planes.

“We have tried everything short of this,” he said. “We have cut our fleet, we have renegotiated with every airport, we have taken on contracts for the Scottish islands that nobody else wanted. But a 70-seat aircraft flying from Newquay to London with 38 people on it does not work, and the numbers have not come back.”

The decision will leave Newquay without a direct link to London, a route that was supported by a public service obligation until 2024. Cornwall council said it was “urgently exploring” whether a new subsidy could be arranged. In Inverness, the chamber of commerce warned that the loss of the Birmingham service would cut off the Highlands from the Midlands’ manufacturing supply chain. “You cannot run a precision engineering business on a six-hour train journey,” said its chief executive, Ailsa Macrae.

Unite, which represents about 400 of Albion’s staff, said it would ballot members on industrial action if compulsory redundancies were not ruled out. Sheila Dunmore, the union’s regional officer in the south-west, said: “This is a company that paid its shareholders a dividend in 2022 and is now asking crew in Exeter to carry the cost of its decisions. We will not accept that.”

Aviation analysts said the cuts reflected a wider retreat from regional flying across Europe. Tom Lindqvist, of the consultancy AeroStrat, said: “The economics of short domestic routes have been going backwards for a decade. Rail has improved, video calls have replaced the day trip, and the aircraft that used to be cheap are now scarce. Albion is not the first and will not be the last.”

The Department for Transport said it was in contact with the airline and would “consider all options” to protect connectivity for the most isolated communities. Passengers with bookings beyond 10 January will be refunded in full.