STOBART Group has terminated its talks with Irish airline CityJet.

The firm was discussing the sale of Stobart Air - the airline behind plans for scheduled flights from Carlisle Airport, owned by the group - but this will now not go ahead.

The company has said it will now run new flights from London Southend Airport, which is also owns, under an existing deal with Flybe Group.

It has been recently buying up the interests it did not already own in airline Stobart Air and now has the majority stake in the airline's holding company Everdeal. In October it announced a £12.5m deal to buy Invesco Asset Management's stake, bringing the group's shareholding to more than 80 per cent.

Last month the company announced it had agreed to buy up the remaining shares in the aircraft leasing company Propius Holdings.

It will buy Aer Lingus' 33 per stake in the business for $14.7m (£11.9m). Stobart already controls the other 67 per cent of the shares following the Invesco agreement.

To fund the latter deal, it announced the issuance of 10.1m shares at 155p, raising £15.6m.

The group will run flights to as many 18 new destinations by expanding an existing franchise deal with Flybe, starting in summer 2017.

It is not clear what, if anything, this deal might mean for plans for extra flights from Carlisle.

A group spokesman said: "Nothing is off the table."

The group has previously announced proposals to run flights between the Cumbrian airport and London Southend.

Stobart Group can trace its roots to the 1970s when it began as an offshoot of an agricultural contracting business in Hesket Newmarket.

It sold a majority stake in Eddie Stobart two years ago to concentrate on other interests principally aviation, warehousing and biomass.

CityJet chairman and chief executive Pat Byrne was quoted in The Irish Times as saying: “I’m very disappointed that having put so much time and effort into this and, for no apparent reason, the deal hasn’t happened.”

Flybe, based in Exeter, and is Europe's largest independent regional airline, with 7m passengers annually.