Fly Romania Reveals Proposed Operational Plans

New Romanian low-cost carrier, Fly Romania, intends to launch operations in April 2014, initially offering six routes, comprising a mix of domestic and international services. The carrier will operate from a base in the capital’s Bucharest Henri Coandă International Airport but will also offer limited international connections from Timisoara and the only current scheduled links from Tulcea’s Danube Delta Airport.

According to data from our blog, Airline Route, the airline will inaugurate flights on April 15, 2014 with a five times weekly link between Bucharest and Timisoara and three times weekly links from the Romanian cities to Verona. The same week the start-up will add a three times weekly link between Bucharest and Genoa and a weekly Bucharest – Tulcea – Milan Bergamo rotation. New three times weekly international links to Reus and Hahn, popular low-cost alternatives for Barcelona and Frankfurt, will commence from Bucharest at the start of June 2014.

Fly Romania is understood to simply be a marketing brand for existing Romanian charter and ACMI operator Ten Airways as it seeks to expand into the scheduled market. The carrier inaugurated operations in 2010 as a successor of Jetran Air and currently operates a fleet of two McDonnell Douglas MD-82s and three MD-83s. It is part of the part of Tender Group, a significant Romanian conglomerate with interests in fields such as energy, oil and gas industry services, geological prospecting, road infrastructure, real estate, agriculture and more.

The Romanian international aviation market used to be dominated by national carrier, TAROM, but the SkyTeam alliance member has seen its influence decline over the past couple of years as Central and Eastern Europe low-cost specialist Wizz Air has expanded its own activities in the country. However, it remains Romania’s most prominent carrier with its largest rivals Blue Air and Carpatair having restructured over the past few years. Our analysis below shows the total number of international seats available from Romania over the past ten years and the capacity shares of Romania's three largest scheduled operators.