Blue Air have announced that their latest European base, and their first in the UK, will be at Liverpool John Lennon Airport (LJLA). As part of the airline’s expansion strategy, a 189 seat Boeing 737-800 aircraft will be located at the airport at the beginning of 2017’s Summer season.
This will see four new services introduced at the airport; a daily departure to Rome Fiumicino, Milan Bergamo will be served four times weekly, as will Hamburg, and a three times weekly service to Alicante. With the addition of the four new services, an additional 160,000 seats will be on offer to and from Liverpool next summer.
The Romanian carrier already serve Liverpool with connections to Romania. The carrier launched services to Liverpool in December 2014, with a link to Bucharest departing three times a week. Within three months, a twice weekly service to Bacau launched, followed by a twice weekly service to Cluj-Napoca in June 2016.
The announcement of Liverpool as a new base for Blue Air carries on from a very successful month for the airport. During the month of September, the major European low-cost carrier Wizz Air announced a new service to Lublin, Poland. This service will commence in May 2017, joining the carriers other links from Liverpool to Warsaw, Gdansk, Katowice, Riga and Budapest.
Irish carrier Ryanair announced their latest service out of LJLA to Sofia, Bulgaria. This link marks the first direct scheduled flights between the two cities, operating twice a week, as part of the carrier’s expansion plans at the airport for Summer 2017. Next summer more than 200,000 additional seats will be available for new links to Prague, Marrakesh, Girona and Bari as well as the Sofia service.
Blue Air are forecasting a 50 percent rise in passenger traffic across their network by the end of the year, compared to 2015, with a record high of 3.2 million travellers. The airline’s CEO has highlighted the importance of this new base, as they bring services to previously unserved cities from Liverpool.
Gheorghe Racaru, CEO of Blue Air said, “The UK is a strategic market for Blue Air and we strongly believe that basing a 737-800 at Liverpool will allow us to strengthen our position as one of Europe’s fastest growing airlines.
“Our commercial performance continues to be robust across our network comprising more than 80 routes now, with particular strength on city routes used by business and short break leisure travellers. These results demonstrate the success of our strategy and we will continue to further develop this trend in Liverpool.”
Liverpool John Lennon Airport has been enjoying considerable growth in recent months, and as Blue Air’s eighth base this is sure to continue. 2015 was the airport’s best year since 2012, with over 4.3 million passengers handled – an eight percent increase in passenger figures. The number of airlines operating at the airport more than doubled. The first half of 2016 has seen passenger numbers continue to rise with a 15 percent growth, with figures rising for 17 consecutive months.
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