As the route development community prepares to gather in Bergen for Routes Europe 2022, traffic across the country’s airports continues to recover from the effects of the pandemic.
The 15th regional route development event will unite some of the biggest carriers in Europe and across the world to drive sustained growth for the region’s route networks.
Routes Europe, the route development forum for Europe, will this April gather senior decision-makers in Bergen, Norway, to discuss some of the most pressing issues facing the aviation industry.
Norwegian is launching 16 new direct routes from Scandinavia from spring 2020, seven of which are from Oslo, Trondheim, Stavanger and Routes Europe 2020 host Bergen. The carrier is also making further changes to its transatlantic network by adding three new routes but dropping Madrid to New York from its schedule.
The flygskam – or flight-shaming – movement is materially impacting the public’s desire to travel and radiating across Europe from Scandinavia. Ahead of Routes Europe 2020 we speak to two of the key figures in the front-line of route development in the region.
Bergen, a city on the south-western coast of Norway surrounded by mountains and fjords, has been revealed as the host destination for Routes Europe in 2020. Routesonline caught up with Jasper Spruit, vice president of traffic development at airport operator Avinor, to find out more about Norway’s year-round appeal.
Many airports are not alive to the opportunities that exist from cargo because the benefits are not always immediately obvious, delegates at World Routes have been told.
Brussels Airport has been crowned the overall winner of the Routes Europe 2018 Marketing Awards. Leon Verhallen, the airport's head of aviation development, said: “We had not been nominated for two years in a row, so we are absolutely delighted to win this award and be recognised by our European clients."
Ethiopian Airlines' new five times weekly link to Oslo from its Addis Ababa hub will operate via Stockholm’s Arlanda Airport from March 26, 2017 using a two-class, 270-seat Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner equipment.
Ryanair's introduction of flights from Oslo Airport to London Stansted and Vilnius follows the confirmation this week of the closure of the airline’s base at Rygge after the Norwegian Government introduced of an 80NOK tax on all departing passengers. Ryanair said the “environmentally unfriendly tax” will damage Norwegian tourism, traffic and jobs and left it with “no choice” but to modify its Oslo operations.
In 2008, Avinor adopted a goal of reaching the 70 percent public transportation share in the ground transport service to Oslo Airport in 2020, but has now achieved this five years ahead of schedule, survey data from 2015 has shown. It remains on-track to to achieve a 75 percent public transportation share by 2030.
Located around 20 kilometres south of Bergen city centre, the airport handles more than six million passengers each year, but existing facilities are operating above capacity and many of the airport’s subsystems are heavily congested during peak periods.
