British low-fares airline to fly to Dublin

LOW-FARES British airline MyTravelLite, which already operates to Birmingham from Knock and Belfast, yesterday announced it will provide two daily flights to and from Dublin.

"Dublin is the final link for us and Birmingham's thriving Irish community," MyTravelLite managing director Vanessa Lenssen said yesterday.

"Since March, when we added Knock to our flight programme and two daily flights to Belfast, we've been looking at Dublin to open up the capital to our existing customer base." she said.

The airline insisted its each-way 1.99 (plus taxes) flight fare from Dublin to Birmingham is not a once-off fare offer. The route begins on September 30

The carrier doesn't have any plans to offer a London route. Chief operations officer Tim Jeans, a former Ryanair sales and marketing director, accepted the company would be facing competition on the Birmingham-Dublin route from Ryanair and Aer Lingus.

Meanwhile, Ryanair head of communications Paul Fitzsimons said: "This is not the first time an airline has announced a Dublin route and it won't be the last, and like all the others, they won't beat Ryanair on price, frequency or punctuality."

Ryanair said its fares to Birmingham started at 0.99 half that of the newcomer and had twice as many of flights.

MyTravelLite said it had carried more than 700,000 passengers since its launch in October 2002, fulfilling its promise to deliver low fares.

Welcoming yesterday's announcement, Aer Rianta director of Dublin Airport Robert Hilliard said the decision underpinned the attractiveness of the airport to low-cost airlines.

The introduction of the route opened up a host of low-fares travel opportunities for Dubliners, he said.

Mr Jeans said it was selling 80% of its places on the 180-seat daily flight from Knock. "Knock has gone as well as any route that I've started in my entire time in the airline business, so we're very delighted for that," he said.