FLYBE are pulling out of Bournemouth Airport, just six months after relaunching flights.

The budget airline announced it was withdrawing its business from the base this morning, just a few days after suspending flights to Glasgow and Jersey.

The latest blow for airport bosses comes just weeks after Royal Mail revealed they would be pulling their business after 30 years.

Flybe will be centring their south coast business at Southampton Airport, where they are also withdrawing their fleet of jet aircraft.

The airline currently flies to Jersey, Glasgow, Dublin, Paris and Amsterdam, having resumed their Bournemouth operation in March.

Flights will end on March 27.

Flybe chief commercial officer Paul Simmons said: “We have decided to consolidate the business network that was in place at Bournemouth, into our Southampton base.

"This will enable more frequency and more choice to our customers through consolidating our South Coast operation into one airport. As a result, we regret that we are unable to continue to operate the leisure routes we flew from Bournemouth in next year’s schedule.”

After Ryanair and Thomson, Flybe represents 17 per cent of passengers flying from Bournemouth Airport.

Paul Knight, managing director of Bournemouth Airport said they were "extremely disappointed".

"We have had a successful summer and there has been good demand for the leisure destinations that Flybe served with a large number of our customers choosing to use their services.

"However, we understand that Flybe has chosen to focus its network on its long established hub at Southampton instead.

"We remain committed to providing a good range of choice to our loyal customers here in Bournemouth and there remains a wide range of destinations served across the networks of our other based airlines.

"We are continuing to work with these airlines to build on the successes of this summer, and seek to identify new growth opportunities by continuing to expand the range of destinations available to our customers in the future."

Ryanair ran a scaled-back summer schedule this year, reducing their flights from 16 to 9, claiming they did not have enough aircraft.

The return of Flybe earlier this year was tipped as the biggest expansion of services at Bournemouth Airport since the £50m investment in 2010/11 when a new departures terminal and arrivals hall were built.