flybe. (2002) (Exeter) has announced it will move its Newquay to London service from London Heathrow back to London Gatwick from March 29. In a related network planning move, the airline has also announced it will commence flights from Heathrow to Düsseldorf, presumably using some of the slots vacated by the 4x daily flight to Newquay, according to a report in the UK newspaper The Telegraph.

Both decisions have been made because flybe. is now free to use the slots on services to short-haul international destinations rather than domestic ones from the end of March. It was awarded the slots in 2017 as part of the "remedy" imposed by competition regulators on British Airways (BA, London Heathrow) after it bought bmi british midland (Nottingham East Midlands). The Oneworld carrier had to surrender the slots - estimated to be worth tens of millions of pounds - as long as the new owner operated them on certain domestic routes. Excluding its flights to Newquay, flybe. offers domestic flights to Edinburgh (40x weekly), Aberdeen Dyce (19x weekly) and Guernsey (daily) from Heathrow.

This network news comes during the same week as UK government ministers approved financial support for flybe. centring on giving the airline time to pay around GBP100 million (USD130 million) of outstanding Air Passenger Duty.

The existing Newquay operation to Heathrow was only switched by the UK regional airline from London Gatwick on March 31, 2019. The demise of the connection with Europe’s busiest airport had been widely predicted, as flybe. was not selling tickets on the route beyond March 28 for some time.

The airline collects a Public Service Obligation (PSO) subsidy on the Heathrow route, one of a few such PSO routes in the UK, which will remain in place when it returns to Gatwick. While some in Cornwall, the part of the UK where Newquay is located, will see the loss of a Heathrow flight as a blow to the region's connectivity, this will be softened by flybe. launching a new direct route to Amsterdam Schiphol from Newquay, also on March 29.

The now freed up 28x weekly slots at Heathrow have not just been earmarked for a Düsseldorf service, with a route to Paris Orly also being mooted by the UK newspaper The Independent. The French gateway is currently not served from Heathrow, while the German city is offered 35x weekly by British Airways (BA, London Heathrow) and 27x weekly by Eurowings (EW, Düsseldorf), when referring to the ch-aviation schedules module.