There are now almost 390 Boeing 787 Dreamliners flying to destinations around the world and there remains a ‘buzz’ around the modern generation airline programme with the positive impact of what the manufacturer describes as a “game-changing airplane” being used in airline marketing to highlight the equipment.
Ryanair will station three Boeing 737-800s in Sofia from the end of October 2016 to support a network of 90 flights across 21 routes and which are forecasted to deliver around 1.5 million passengers per annum. This will position the carrier among the leading operators at Sofia Airport accounting for around a quarter of future traffic.
Have you wondered what enticed an airline to a certain destination? What the data says about demand on the city pair and connecting markets? What external factors may have influenced the airline in selecting a specific city pair? How this business case differs from others? Our new ‘Route Case’ offering will seek to provide the answers all within a single 20 minute meeting slot at our events.
Twenty years after it first launched flights from Manchester, Virgin Atlantic is making history by offering the northern city’s first direct service to San Francisco as part of an expanded summer 2017 schedule that will also deliver a regular link to Boston. The two new routes will cut journey times to both US cities by eliminating the need for connections.
The airline is seeing an increase in demand for flights into Istanbul and this market demand has created an opportunity to deploy additional capacity into Sabiha Gokcen. Airlines do not generally like to split operations in a city due to the need to offer support resources in each location. However, capacity constraints at Ataturk Airport and the location of Sabiha Gokcen mean this is an easier decision to take.
Flybe is basing two 118-seat Embraer E195s at the airport this summer offering flights to Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Jersey, Newquay, Malaga, Alicante and Faro. It will add the Dusseldorf link, its second route into Germany, from the end of October 2016 and further route growth is planned.
The UK Government’s Regional Air Connectivity Fund was launched last year as a way of encouraging new routes to and from UK regional airports and improving connectivity for business and leisure travellers.
The aircraft will be the fourth 777 dedicated to its Gatwick operation that is configured in a three-class arrangement. Cape Town will be one of four long-haul destinations BA is launching from Gatwick this year, with flights to Costa Rica starting on April 27, 2016 daily flights to New York’s JFK beginning on May 1, 2016 and flights to Lima, Peru commencing on May 4, 2016.
The low-cost carrier will offer a weekly service from November 1, 2016 adding to the existing links it offers to the popular US conference and leisure destination from Copenhagen and Stockholm which were launched last November. The flight will be operated using a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner configured with 291-seats.
The twin explosions at the airport on March 22, 2016 were shortly followed by another at a metro station in the centre of the Belgian capital and left about 34 dead and 250 wounded. So-called Islamic State (IS) has said it was behind the attacks and warned that more would follow. But, how can and will the industry react?
Have you wondered what enticed an airline to a certain destination? What the data says about demand on the city pair and connecting markets? What external factors may have influenced the airline in selecting a specific city pair? How this business case differs from others? Our new ‘Route Case’ offering will seek to provide the answers all within a single 20 minute meeting slot at our events.
Aer Lingus is understood to be wet-leasing at least one aircraft for mainly Saturday operations from Dublin between the end of May and early September this year. The aircraft will operate weekly flights from Dublin to Bilbao, Bordeaux, Lyon, Nice, Perpignan and Santiago de Compostela, our Airline Route blog has revealed.
Wizz Air will transfer its flights to Gdansk, Skopje and Kiev from next month and at the same time end its flights to Riga. It will continue to connect Hamburg to Gdansk with four flights a week and Skopje and Kiev with twice-weekly flights from April 17, 2016.
The budget carrier has served the Lithuanian market for over ten years, initially with a London Stansted – Kaunus operation. It first introduced flights into Vilnius in May 2011 when it debuted services from Bergamo, Bremen, Dublin, Girona, London Stansted and Rome Ciampino. Its expanded offering will mean it will be providing over 3,000 seats per day into the Lithuanian market from the coming winter schedule.
The aircraft, which is configured with 86 seats and will be leased between the busy summer months of June and September 2016, will allow Air Serbia to expand its flight network with non-stop flights to Hamburg in Germany and Kiev in Ukraine being introduced from its Belgrade base. In addition, the aircraft will be deployed on the carrier’s existing Belgrade – Sofia route.
The growth will be supported through the arrival of an additional 98-seat aircraft, arriving in June, will be the 20th Embraer to join the British Airways fleet at London City. The extra routes mean that BA will have its busiest ever summer at London City Airport where it will operate over half the flights, despite speculation that it could cut its operations related to a change in ownership and charges at the Docklands facility.
This month easyJet will launch its first flights to Montenegro, its 32nd country in its network and an emerging destination with limited current international connectivity. The country was a well-known tourist spot in the 1980s and has both a picturesque coast and a mountainous northern region. Yet, the Yugoslav wars that were fought in neighbouring countries during the 1990s crippled the tourist industry and damaged the image of Montenegro for years.
When it comes to Europe, particularly across the East, low cost carriers have dominated the industry. But the boom certainly isn’t over just yet. Last year, we witnessed Ryanair become the number one airline operating from Poland, after overtaking the national carrier LOT Polish Airlines and with predictions that European low-cost carriers (LCCs) will continue to outgrow their full service airline rivals, what can we now expect from the region?
Already this year, Europe has seen a significant increase on passenger traffic across its airport networks, with figures showing January 2016 grew by an average of +6.3%. With passenger growth expected to be a continuing trend, airport hubs across the continent must now adapt to meet these new demands.
The year round, four times weekly service to Aberdeen is Icelandair’s second gateway in Scotland, and sixth in the UK. The new route was announced after the city successfully hosted last year's Routes Europe.
The growth in passenger numbers is expected to continue in 2016, as eleven new scheduled services have already been announced for this year, including new direct transatlantic services to Hartford Connecticut, Los Angeles, Newark and Vancouver. There are also new long-haul charter services to Cancun in Mexico and Montego Bay in Jamaica.
Philippine Airlines will configure its A350-900s with a premium three class layout and plans to operate the aircraft on non-stop flights from Manila to the US west coast and New York, as well as on services to new destinations in Europe. The aircraft will enable the carrier to operate non-stop service on the 8,000 nautical mile Manila – New York route all year round with a full passenger load.
The air service development team at Dublin Airport have identified a number of unserved markets in Asia that can sustain regular scheduled flights to the Republic of Ireland’s capital city and are attending Routes Asia in Manila, Philippines to fill these network gaps. It particularly sees a notable role for Asia’s Star Alliance members at Dublin Airport having grown the number of airline members using the airport from this summer.
An estimated 240,000 two-way passengers a year are currently flying between Europe and Fort Myers, according to MIDT data for 2014. The German market accounted for 54.4 percent of this demand ahead of the United Kingdom and Switzerland – the only other country markets to have annual flows of more than 10,000 passengers.
