Budget airline bmibaby is to withdraw services from Manchester and Cardiff airports this year.

The company has blamed the financial downturn for the axeing of routes at the end of the summer season in late October 2011.

Twelve out of 13 services from Manchester will go, including flights to Lisbon, Bordeaux, Geneva and Prague, with just Belfast remaining.

All nine Cardiff routes will end, including Geneva, Malaga, Faro and Ibiza.

A bmibaby spokesman said: “In the current economic climate it is essential for bmibaby to focus on airports where the airline already has a strong market presence and where there are strong growth opportunities for the bmibaby business.

“Therefore bmibaby has optimised their current flying programme and as a result of this bmibaby will cease operations from Cardiff Airport and from Manchester Airport at the end of the summer 2011 flying programme.”

Andrew Harrison, managing director of Manchester Airport, said: “We understand bmibaby’s reasons for the decision and remind our passengers that the destinations will still be served by other carriers in the winter.

“We continue to see strong growth from carriers such as Monarch, Ryanair, Flybe, easyJet and Jet2.com at Manchester and are confident of a strong summer programme that will still include bmibaby. We’ll also still see the airline group presence at Manchester with bmi keeping a significant presence and bmibaby will still be flying from one of our airports at East Midlands.”

The bmibaby spokesman added that in light of the changes two Boeing 737 aircraft based at Cardiff and two Boeing 737 aircraft based at Manchester will be moved to Belfast, Birmingham and East Midlands airports from this winter.