[Mike in France]

Hi,

Last year Ryanair announced a new service from London (Stansted?) to Clermont Ferrand in France from April 2008.

Their site does not list this as one of their destinations.

Does anybody have any news on this service?

[barondeblot]

Hi Mike, Fellow sufferers we must be...,we bought a place in the Puy de Dome region in March 2006, in June 2006 Ryanair stopped St. Etienne and now we have to drive some 2.5-3 hours to Limoges for a direct flight to Stanstead. We have a 'part time' neighbour who bought an ancient watermill in a nearby village who spends most of his professional life protecting HRH in Buckingham Palace in London, my wife commutes via Paris CDG or Orly or Amsterdam and Air France have managed to lose her suitcase at least 8 times over the last 12 months (not funny if our daughters's birthday, Easter or Christmas presents, let alone perishable foods are inside). Air France also frequently cancel the last flight to Clermont Ferrand from Paris for technical reasons or do not wait for the Heathrow to Paris flight when it comes in late despite that it terminates at Aulnat for the night, resulting my wife having to spend the night in a Paris

[barondeblot]

Hotel when she clearly would rather like to spend her short weekend with us. It is also strange to look at a map of coverage of France by Raynair that it seems to favour a 'westerly decreasing moon shape' over the whole of France leaving an enormous eastern sector without any service. There seems to be no competition to Air France and they probably do not have a care in the world because of their monopoly situation. I ask for news at the Aulnat information desk virtually every Sunday afternoon (the most horrible time for us when my wife has to depart at 17:10h to arrive at her Ilford appartment at @ 23:30h). None of the staff know anything about Ryanair's alleged April 2008 return, on Ryanairs Website/route news are new routes way beyond April 2008 but not a word about Clermont-Ferrand. I am sorry but I cannot help it but there is a genuine feeling of disapointment here, I think the Auvergne has so much to offer, the scientifically orientated businesses in an around CF, the tourism and other opportunities are most certainly held back by a lack of positive action between certain individuals responsible (I believe the name Renee Souchon was mentioned as one of the persons responsible in previous articles) - strangely there are no contact details on any of the websites linked to send him a message, by e-mail or otherwise to let him know how our community of ex-pats here feel about this subject. Please correct me if I am wrong on this.

Kind regards Martin