LONDON – After a two year gap, SUN-AIR has announced that it’s flights from Manchester to Billund, will resume from the 31st of October.
The route will be flown on SUN-AIR’s Dornier 328 aircraft. The carrier, which operates flights under the British Airways brand as part of a franchise agreement will run their Manchester-Billund service on Monday mornings and in the evenings of the remaining weekdays.
The route which was previously ran by SUN-AIR, has been axed since the airline was grounded in March of 2020. It still continued to operate charter and private flights including a shuttle service for employees of pharmaceutical manufacturer AstraZeneca between Manchester, Cambridge, and Gothenburg.
“Prior to the pandemic, the service operated for over two decades and carried more than 460,000 passengers from Manchester-Billund,” SUN-AIR said in a statement.
The airline resumed its flights in September 2022, with the reintroduction of their services between Billund and London City Airport.
Management statements
Sun-Air
Niels Sundberg, Chief Executive Officer of SUN-AIR, said: “We are incredibly pleased to restart this route from Billund and offer our passengers a direct connection to Manchester with our well-known full-service product on behalf of British Airways.”
“We’ll monitor the route closely and will look to increase frequency if we achieve the support on this service that we saw pre-pandemic.”
British Airways
Chris Fordyce, Head of Alliances at British Airways, said: “As the aviation industry continues to recover from the pandemic, it’s really encouraging to see SUN-AIR restarting routes that have been on hold. This route will offer even greater connectivity between Denmark and the UK, and we look forward to seeing its popularity return.”
Manchester Airport
Manchester Airport Managing Director, Chris Woodroofe, added: “We are delighted to see SUN-AIR and British Airways resuming flights to Billund.”
“This is a very successful, long-standing service, which plays a crucial role in connecting more than 22 million people in our wider catchment area with six million people in mainland Denmark. I am sure that it will prove to be just as popular as it was prior to the pandemic.”
SUN-AIR before the pandemic
Before SUN-AIR was grounded due to the pandemic, the airline served destinations such as, Brussels (BRU), Dusseldorf (DUS) and Oslo (OSL). There is no official world if and when those cities will return to its network.
SUN-AIR operated a big fleet of Dornier 328JET which can seat 32 passengers before its grounding. It has been made clear that, 8 of them are stored, 5 operated for British Airways, and 4 are operated for JoinJet which fly scheduled passenger services from Denmark.
I wish the airline a speedy recovery from the pandemic and hope to see them expanding their route network to pre pandemic levels soon. With air travel rebounding and almost all restrictions across Europe lifted, SUN-AIR can look forward to an increase in demand for its services especially after connecting Manchester to “Lego city” once again.
