The inaugural flight to Birmingham departed on schedule, heralding the start of important times for Dundee Airport.

There is a lot riding on the new services for the airline itself, and for the airport as it seeks to show there is a market for additional air services and it can establish itself as a regional centre.

The flyWhoosh flights are the first time in almost five years Dundee has had more than one scheduled air service, with ScotAirways already flying to London City.

Alan Fullilove, president of White Eagle Aviation, the Polish company that operates the aircraft for flyWhoosh, said today he believes they are in Dundee to stay.

They were satisfied with the response from the travelling public so far, but much would depend on their continuing support, he said.

“We had been looking at the UK for some time before coming to Dundee and chose Dundee because it fits our profile,” he added.

Mr Fullilove continued, “We are increasingly looking at operating across Europe and not just in Poland.”

White Eagle operates in Italy and elsewhere on the Continent.

He revealed it has access to another 46-seater ATR 42 plane and will consider bringing it to Dundee and establishing further routes.

Meanwhile, the new services will fly to Birmingham twice daily, Monday to Friday, with a single middle of the day rotation to Belfast.

There will also be a single flight to each destination on Sundays.

Asked if the long-term plan was conditional on their success, Mr Fullilove said, “The simple answer to that is yes.”

He said there are other potentially interesting routes he believes could be viable.

If the second aircraft is brought to Dundee the firm will look to make the city its UK base.

Already it has contracted a company to establish a maintenance base at Dundee and has half a dozen pilots and seven cabin crew, together with engineering staff and a station/operations manager, based at Riverside.

He said the signs were good and they would know within six months whether the new routes will work.

Today’s initial flight was not without incident.

The northbound leg to Dundee was delayed as security at Birmingham had apparently not encountered a kilted airline executive before and Commercial Director Aden Murcutt was led off for a more thorough search.

Passengers later landing at Birmingham, from Dundee, were welcomed by the skirl of the pipes courtesy of Robbie Lawrie, of West Midlands Police Pipe Band, who was born in Dunfermline.

MAJOR STEP

Dundee’s Economic Development Convener, Councillor Joe Morrow, said he was confident the people of the city will use the routes to Birmingham and Belfast.

He said the flyWhoosh services represented a “major step” in achieving the objectives of Dundee Airport, which he said had a major contribution to make to the local community.

Gary Langlands, President of Dundee and Angus Chamber of Commerce, said, “We have been campaigning to get a lower cost airline with good connections to a European hub for some time.

“We are delighted flyWhoosh has picked up the gauntlet and it gives us access to Birmingham as well as Northern Ireland.

“We believe this will be good, not only for business but also for tourism in the area, which we have an ideal opportunity to promote with The Open Championship (at Carnoustie in July) coming up.”

Mark Watkins, business development manager of Birmingham International Airport, said they had been committed to the Dundee project for a long time and paid tribute to flyWhoosh commercial director Aden Murcutt for making it happen.

He said, “It has been a labour of love from the airports’ perspectives and it is great to be here on day one.”

He said they needed to attract only a fraction of the half million passengers travelling between Birmingham and Edinburgh to make the service viable.

If they could bring in 10% of the total, it would warrant a third daily rotation.