Central and Eastern European ULCC Wizz Air this week plans to restart selected routes from London Luton and Vienna, subject to no further government restrictions being put in place.
This week: AirAsia begins routes to Belitung; Volotea to station two A319s in Naples; Loganair to start Cornwall Newquay flights; SAS expands network with 14 new routes and more.
On the first anniversary of the demise of Monarch, Routesonline looks at what happened to the routes operated by the UK leisure carrier at the time of its failure and how the market reacted.
Low-cost carrier Ryanair is to further expand its capacity from Manchester Airport this summer with the launch of ten new routes. It comes as new research reveals the UK airports which have enjoyed the largest passenger growth over the past year, with Manchester among the front-runners.
IAG, the owner of British Airways and Aer Lingus, is to expand its presence at Gatwick Airport after striking a deal to buy the majority of slots vacated by the collapse of Monarch. Hungarian carrier Wizz Air is also set to take Monarch's former slots at London Luton.
The administrators of failed British airline Monarch have revealed that advanced sale talks were held in the run up to the carrier’s collapse, while its management team were also mulling a change in business strategy to focus on profitable long-haul routes.
Hungarian low-cost airline Wizz Air is to launch five new routes from London Luton after confirming plans to base four additional Airbus A320 aircraft at the UK airport.
Low-cost carrier easyJet has revealed the identity of its next chief executive but – despite the airline’s strong performance in recent years – the new man at the helm may not be in for an easy ride.
Wizz Air is to base up to seven aircraft in the UK over the next two years as chief executive József Váradi readies the Hungarian low-cost carrier for a period of industry uncertainty.
Take-off and landing slots at London Gatwick, Manchester and Birmingham that were previously controlled by collapsed carrier Monarch Airlines are set to be reallocated to other airlines after administrators lost a legal bid to retain them.
Fly Kiss will operate under the auspices of SiAvia, a Ljubljana, Slovenia-based subsidiary of Enhance Aero with a fleet of 49-seat Embraer ERJ-145s which are already part of portfolio of the charter provider. Its initial network will include a mixture of non-stop and one-stop flights which it says will significantly enhance connectivity between city pairs that have limited or no current links.
With as many as 305 flights a day scheduled between UK and USA this summer, the two nations remain well connected. However, there are growing signs that the UK’s referendum vote to leave the European Union in around two years is dampening business demand and creating an uncertainty that is forcing airlines on both sides of the Atlantic to reconsider their network plans.
Slovenian carrier Adria Airways will provide an important hub link into the Star Alliance network via Lufthansa’s Bavarian hub at Munich Airport, while Wizz Air will introduce a low-fare offering to London, introducing 27,000 seats to and from Olsztyn-Mazury in the current calendar year.
Although the Air France-KLM Group low-cost brand has previously served the UK market from the Netherlands, the new links from Paris Orly into England and Scotland’s capital cities by its Transavia France operation represent its first ever flights between France and the UK.
