Eastern Airways, Aurigny to turn Southampton into a hub

Eastern Airways (T3, Humberside) has announced that it has entered into a codeshare partnership with Aurigny Air Services (GR, Guernsey) which will establish Southampton as a hub connecting Eastern’s network in the United Kingdom and Ireland with Aurigny’s services Channel Isles network. “This is a first step in codeshare partnerships by Eastern Airways following return to being an independent operator following the demise of flybe. (BE, Exeter) earlier this year, to which Eastern Airways had been a franchise provider. We shall also shortly add a number of interline agreements especially aiding our Teesside-London Heathrow service and major hubs such as Manchester Int’l,” it said. The new cooperation will cover Eastern’s existing services from Southampton to Belfast City, Manchester, Newcastle, GB, Leeds/Bradford, Aberdeen Dyce, and Dublin Int’l. The airline plans to add more routes to its Southampton network starting in Spring 2021. In turn, Aurigny Air Services connects the city on the southern coast of England through Guernsey. It does not currently serve Jersey either from Southampton or any other city. Jersey is served from Southampton by competitor and another former flybe. franchisee Blue Islands (SI, Jersey). According to the ch-aviation capacities module, Eastern Airways and Aurigny Air Services have a combined market share by capacity at Southampton of 30.2%, which positions them taken together as the second-largest player at the airport behind Blue Islands (40.5% market share) but ahead of Loganair (LM, Glasgow Int’l) (20.8%).