BUDGET airline Flybe will close its route between Liverpool and Belfast later this month, as it battles with a slowdown in ticket sales.

The once-a-day service from Liverpool John Lennon Airport to George Best Belfast City Airport will cease on October 30.

Shares in Flybe plunged 35% yesterday, after the carrier admitted bookings slowed significantly in September as the financial gloom took hold.

It said winter ticket sales were below expectations, after the poor September performance.

Flybe said it was too early to say whether the slowdown was a short-term reaction to the economic gloom or “a long-term market adjustment”.

In a statement about the axing of the Belfast route, the airline told LDP Business: “Flybe carefully reviews the viability of all its 200-plus routes, looking not only at passenger numbers but also at external cost pressures such as the extortionate Air Passenger Duty system being levied by the domestic aviation sector, where its passengers pay twice as much tax as Europe- bound travellers.

“This ongoing monitoring of our routes enables us to both increase regularity where demand exists, but also highlights when passenger numbers make a flight economically and environmentally harder to justify.”

Flybe’s sales in the six months to September were up 9%, but this was 1% lower than expected.

The Exeter-based group’s latest statement follows a profit warning in May, when it said trading had been hit by high oil prices.