Slovenian carrier Adria Airways is to further boost connectivity from the Polish city of Łódź in summer 2015 with the introduction of a regular new hub link between the city’s Władysław Reymont Airport and Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands. The flight will commence from the end of March 2015 and will operate on a six times weekly basis (daily except Saturdays).
The Star Alliance member first introduced flights to Łódź in March 2014 with a six times weekly connection to the German city of Munich, providing important connection opportunities via its global alliance partner Lufthansa from its Bavarian hub. However, for summer 2015 it has confirmed it will now base a single Bombardier CRJ700 at Władysław Reymont Airport to grow connectivity. The growth in Poland is part of a revised outlook at Adria to place less of a focus on the carrier's limited home market and to develop as more of a European than Slovenian air carrier.
This deployment of the leased airliner will enable Adria Airways to introduce a second rotation on the Łódź – Munich route, enabling same day returns during weekdays and single flights on Saturday mornings and Sunday afternoons. The new 12 times weekly schedule will introduce additional connection opportunities from Munich and better support local business demand between the two cities. The Munich route is currently served with a larger CRJ900.
The new Amsterdam route will operate between the two Munich weekday rotations and provide a late morning departure from Łódź and early afternoon return from Amsterdam. This will be the first regular flights between Łódź and the Netherlands.
Adria will be one of only two carriers currently scheduled to operate from Władysław Reymont Airport in 2015. The other, Ryanair, offers year-round flights to Dublin, East Midlands and London Stansted and a seasonal link to Oslo Moss-Rygge. It had previously also offered flights to Bergamo, Bremen, Bristol, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Oslo Sandefjord-Torp, Shannon and Stockholm Skavsta, but like many operators as scaled-back activities in recent years.
Łódź is centrally located in Poland and is the country’s third-largest city. However, it is just 135 kilometres (84 miles) south-west of the capital Warsaw and the opening of the A2 motorway linking the two cities in 2012 has reduced travel time to approximately one hour, making it much harder to generate and sustain air services from Łódź.
Alongside Ryanair’s cuts, SAS Scandinavian Airlines closed a route to Copenhagen and Central and Eastern European low-cost specialist Wizz Air closed its links to Dortmund, London Luton and Stockholm Skavsta.
At its peak, Łódź was handling over 2,000 scheduled aircraft movements during the summer of 2008, but this number fell to just over 1,000 during the past summer schedule. Air capacity in and out of Łódź reached a peak in summer 2012 when both Ryanair and Wizz Air were active at Władysław Reymont Airport however it has subsequently declined 49.4 per cent from 329,472 seats in summer 2012 to 166,810 in summer 2014.
The chart, below, highlights the changes in schedule capacity over the past ten years, as well as the clear seasonal variations in traffic from Łódź.
Data provided by 
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