Waterford Airport in the south east of Ireland will have scheduled services once again from July. The airport has no scheduled service at the moment with the last services being flown by VLM in 2016.
A new airline startup called Aer Southeast will be flying Saab 340 aircraft between Waterford and London Luton from 24 July. Routes to Manchester and Birmingham are also planned to go on sale shortly.
Waterford Airport
The airport is located just over 7km from the city of Waterford, which has a population of 55,000. The closest main airport is Cork Airport which is about 133km away while Dublin Airport is around 180km away.
Aer Arann used to fly between Galway and Waterford with ATR 42 aircraft. I took the flight once and found both airports to be extremely small regional facilities which both closed to scheduled traffic soon after.
Aer Southeast
It appears to me that Aer Southeast has been created specifically to open up scheduled services from Waterford. The Irish Independent reports the airline is owned by SkyTruckers Ltd which has backing from Irish and Scandinavian investors.
Looking at Aer Southeast’s web site shows a big picture of the airport sign and when looking at Youth Fares the text mentions a fine of “Kr 300” which must point to the Scandinavian investment angle. Flights are available for reservations from 20 June 2017.
Overall Thoughts
The announcement of new scheduled routes from Waterford with a brand new Irish airline is a surprise. It looks like flights depart at 09:30 daily, arriving at 11:00. The return from London Luton leaves at 11:30 and arrives back in Ireland at 13:00.
I certainly didn’t expect anything like this, but it is good news for people in the region who need to travel to the UK. The Saab 340 seats around 34 passengers so hopefully this will match well with demand. Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
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Featured image via Aer Southeast.
Good morning, its Jim Carway here, I present Luton Irish Live at Diversefm and would be very interested as and when to keep our listeners informed of your ;local flights into Waterford from Luton, already i have had enquiries from various people and have redirtected them to your website for the current position. I myself have flown to Ireland 6 times already this year alone so personally would be interested as and when available. many thanks, you can reach me at jimcarway@hotmail.co.uk or my mobile 07977063233 . Take care and can I wish you every success.
Jim Carway.
You are best to keep up to date on the Aer Southeast web site, which is http://www.aersoutheast.com – I am following developments as well. There has been no update since the announcement of the suspension of the commencement of services. Once there is more information, it will be on their web site and I will also report on it here in the blog. Thank you for reading, Jim!
Thank you !
No problem!