Flybe collapse raises questions over government commitment to regions

Back in January — as the government scraped together a rescue package for Flybe — transport secretary Grant Shapps declared that Europe’s largest regional airline would continue to keep the regions connected “for years to come”. For Flybe’s 2,400 staff — and thousands of customers — that promise now rings hollow. By Thursday morning, just hours after the airline collapsed, ministers were striking a very different tone. “Unfortunately, in a competitive market, companies do fail, and it is not the role of government to prop them up,” pronounced Kelly Tolhurst, the aviation minister. Industry sources suggest that ministers’ enthusiasm for saving Flybe gradually diminished as the talks progressed. Tolhurst was tasked with taking questions from multiple MPs concerned about the impact of the bankruptcy on their own constituencies. Many pointed out that Boris Johnson’s administration had repeatedly vowed to improve “regional connectivity”: so why had it let the company — which provided 40% of domestic regional flights — been allowed to go bust? Arlene Foster, leader of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist party, called the collapse “a big test for [government] commitment to UK regional connectivity”.<br/>