Travel question: I booked a flight with Flybe – have I made a mistake?

Q I’m looking to book flights for August 2019, but I’ve seen a recommendation not to book any Flybe flights for the future. Do you think this is good advice? After all, the airline has been taken over, so surely finance should now be OK?

Kay V

A I am not sure where you saw a recommendation not to book with Flybe, but I urge you to ignore it.

The UK’s biggest regional airline has been through some tough times – losing money heavily through the winter as a result of Brexit uncertainty, excessive capacity and ferocious competition. But largely it has been business as usual.

A consortium of Virgin Atlantic, Stobart Air and a US hedge fund has pumped in tens of millions of pounds to keep the airline afloat, and is now assessing the future network. Flights from Exeter, Norwich and Doncaster-Sheffield from October have been cut.

But the airline’s policy has been to protect as much as possible its summer schedule. Basically, if you buy a ticket on the carrier, then there is every intention that the flight should go ahead.

At the start of April the carrier suffered a series of cancellations – on Wednesday 3 April, more than 30 flights (or about 5 per cent of the schedule) were grounded due to a shortage of pilots and cabin crew.

Flybe tells me it has addressed the issues and “does not foresee a repeat of the high level of flight cancellations experienced on 3 April 2019”.

So I would buy confidently – but, as with any flight booking, always have a plan B just in case your intended departure is disrupted.

Every day our travel correspondent Simon Calder tackles a reader’s question. Just email yours to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder