“On the first day of Christmas, language learning gave to me: a lovely trip to It-a-ly…”
Al has embraced the advent season with a little ‘advent’ure: opening some new doors and visiting old friends over in Italy.
As well as independent adult and teens, our school welcomes Italian school groups in the summer season – all stoked to be here in Newquay learning English and to surf on our cornerstone Surf & Study programme.
So, Al nipped across the continent this week to share some Christmas cheer, chat about our 2020 plans and, of course, do a spot of skiing.
More on his Italian adventure on his return!
Testing Travels
Getting in and out of our relatively isolated county, is clearly important for our students and our business.
Newquay Airport has been in the news as concerns were raised about the continuation of Flybe’s route between Newquay and London Heathrow.
Earlier this year, Flybe – Europe’s largest regional airline – changed their London hub from Gatwick to Heathrow. This switch was welcomed here at Babel Fish: Heathrow opens up many more routes into the UK for our potential students.
What’s happening now?
The concern was around the inability of travellers to book flights to Heathrow beyond the end of March 2020 on the Flybe site.
However, the route is run through a government policy protecting – and subsidising – regional air services to London though public service obligations (PSO).
The contract is held with the Department for Transport and Cornwall Council until 2022.
The route should be safe if the PSO contract is upheld.
Flybe and Cornwall Airport released a statement explaining simply that the route has not been released yet. Only a few of the current destinations are available to book beyond March 2020, and the Heathrow flight will be released in the next phase of their summer schedule.