Passengers stranded as Aer Lingus regional carrier Stobart Air enters liquidation
https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/ne ... 64611.html22 hours ago
Almost 500 staff have lost their jobs and thousands of passengers face uncertainty after a regional airline closed down. Stobart Air, based in Dublin, has ceased all operations from today and is appointing a liquidator.
The airline provided a busy network of flights badged as Aer Lingus Regional.
Travellers booked on a dozen flights to and from Belfast City airport have been grounded. Services linking the Northern Ireland airport with Birmingham, East Midlands, Edinburgh, Exeter, Leeds Bradford and Manchester are all cancelled.
Links from Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester and Newquay to Dublin have also been cancelled, as well as Irish domestic routes from the capital to Donegal and Kerry.
Stobart Air was founded in 1970 as Aer Arran, originally serving the island of Inishmore off the west coast of Ireland. It had an expanding network of regional routes in the UK and Ireland. Many of the links replaced those left unserved by Flybe, which collapsed in March 2020 at the start of the coronavirus crisis.