Passengers travelling on bmi’s inaugural flight from Manchester Airport to Toulouse sampled a flavour of France before they even boarded the aircraft. bmi cabin crew served French cheeses and wines to help launch the airline’s new route in style, while an accordion player provided French café-style music at check-in.

bmi’s first direct scheduled link between Manchester Airport and Toulouse, in southwestern France, is a daily service, operated using a 37-seat Embraer jet aircraft .

Alex Grant, bmi’s director of network planning, revenue management and regional commercial, said: “We remain committed to providing regional links throughout the UK and beyond and the launch of this service shows just that.

“Clearly there are very important business links between these two destinations due to the aerospace industries. However, we also expect high leisure demand through the year as Toulouse lies close to the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic coast. We are delighted to launch this route and expect high demand from the travelling public in the North West.”

Councillor Brian Harrison, Chair of Manchester Airport plc, said: ” We are proud of our close working relationship with bmi. With this new Toulouse service, bmi now operates eight routes from Manchester as well as various codeshares. The route undoubtedly offers great value to people flying out of Manchester. We wish bmi every success with this new venture.”

John Spooner, Managing Director of Manchester Airport plc, said: “This new service to Toulouse is great news for us, but more importantly, good news for travellers who want to travel direct to the French city for either business or leisure. Passengers no longer have to travel there via Gatwick and the flying time from here is just 70 minutes. Manchester Airport and its airline partners continue to offer more choice, great service and competitive prices to passengers.”

Passengers travelling on the route benefit from the recently introduced one way fare structure adopted by the airline. This enables passengers to choose from the lowest available fare on each leg of their journey, without being inhibited by minimum stay requirements, such as the restrictive “Saturday night stopover”. Internet fares will start from as low as £79.30 one way in economy, including all taxes and charges.

Services between Manchester and Toulouse will be operated by bmi regional, a wholly owned subsidiary of bmi, the UK’s second largest full service scheduled airline and the only regional airline in the UK to offer its customers the comfort and speed of an all jet fleet. In addition, the bmi regional Embraer fleet has an average age of under 2 years.

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