A twice-daily flight will link Newcastle with central London from January 2019.
Flights will depart for the capital at 0805 and 1750 and return to Newcastle at 0945 and 1930 every weekday, while one service will run on a Sunday evening.
London City, which turned 30 last year, does not operate flights from midday Saturday to midday Sunday.
The flights will be operated by Eastern Airways, a franchise partner of Flybe, which is marketing the new service.
Eastern calls it a “business focused” route, cutting the Newcastle-London journey time from three hours by train to 70 minutes.
It will use Eastern’s Saab 2000 aircraft, which seat 50 passengers.
Roger Hage, General Manager for Commercial and Operations at Eastern Airways, said:
“This is part of our strategic business alignment to serving core regional business hubs and supports our belief of it being vital that major UK cities have direct fast convenient air-links between the regions and city of London, especially given the current London Heathrow capacity restrictions.”
The convenience of London City could help the service to succeed where others between Newcastle and London have failed, such as Jet2’s service to Gatwick and Easyjet’s to Stansted.
British Airways offers up to five flights per day between London Heathrow and Newcastle.
One-way flights start at £79.99. For comparison, BA is currently offering Newcastle-Heathrow flights from £74 return on various dates in 2019.
Customers still get more flexibility by train, with departures from King’s Cross every 30 minutes and return tickets available for less than £100 if booked far enough in advance.
Tickets are available on the Flybe website now, for flights between January 7 and March 29, 2019.
Flybe’s interim results are due to be released later today (November 14), and a report by Sky News suggests the board is exploring a sale or merger with a rival carrier.
