Ahead of Routes Europe 2018 in Bilbao, Routesonline provides a snapshot of Spain’s leading international airlines and airports, as well as the most used aircraft types on international flights.
This week: Primera Air adds Washington Dulles from London Stansted, while Hainan Airlines will become the first Chinese airline to operate non-stop flights between China and Mexico.
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.
bmi Regional is planning to spread its wings with an expanding repertoire of routes in niche European destinations. The airline's Jochen Schnadt talks possible future partnerships, aircraft orders and avoiding Brexit chaos.
This week: Primera seeks success with new A321neo route, Frontier's huge expansion, China Eastern seeks to compete more effectively in the Philippine market.
The £3.8 million UK government funding is a significant investment in supporting the Londonderry - London route. Based on bmi regional using a 50-seat Embraer ERJ-145 on the route and its 13 return weekly frequencies that will equate to 1,300 seats a week, 67,600 seats a year or 135,200 seats for the full two-year funding term. With 2,704 one-way flights scheduled to operate during this period that works out as over £1,400 of support per flight, or £28 per seat.
With a business model developed to appeal to hedge fund companies; the investment banking fraternity; senior executives; music, film and sport industries and others, Bliss Jet’s goal is to provide the closest offering to the halcyon days of Concorde - in terms of style and speed. It plans to launch flights between London Stansted and New York LaGuardia from the second quarter of 2017.
UK leisure carrier Jet2.com and its tour operator business Jet2holidays are to boost their activities out of their new at London Stansted Airport from summer 2017. Even before a flight has departed “phenomenal customer demand” has influenced the addition of a seventh Boeing 737-800 to its base fleet, an eight per cent capacity growth and the addition of four additional destinations to its inventory.
POP plans to establish regular links from London Stansted to two Indian cities: Amritsar (Punjab) and Ahmedabad (Gujarat). Subject to the successful completion of a 60 day rewards-based crowdfunding exercise in association with Trillion Fund Ltd to raise £5 million, the airline could take to the air as early as October this year.
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.
Complementing its existing operations from London’s Gatwick and Stansted airports, Thomas Cook Airlines will introduce weekly flights from Luton Airport to Ibiza, Mahon and Palma in Spain and Corfu in Greece during the summer 2017 schedule. These flights will be operated using Airbus A321 equipment which will fly in and out of the airport on a ‘W’ pattern between Fridays and Mondays.
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.
The new routes will launch from May 28, 2016 and will operate on a weekly schedule with flights to Ibiza, Malaga and Palma on Saturdays and Faro on Sundays. These are all markets currently served by BA from at least two other London airports – City and Heathrow, while Ibiza, Faro and Malaga are also served from Gatwick.
Ryanair will launch flights from the city from November 1, 2016 with a twice daily link to the Spanish capital, Madrid, a daily service to Brussels Charleroi and London Stansted, a four times weekly link to Berlin and twice weekly flights to Fez, Malta and Warsaw Modlin.
Extra capacity has helped to grow passenger demand between Dublin and London by 9% over the last calendar year, with almost 4.5 million people flying between the two capital cities in 2015.
Ryanair has more than quadrupled its capacity offering from Central and Eastern Europe over the past ten years with an average annual rise of 38.9 per cent between 2006 and 2015, according to schedule data from OAG. This has been to combat the emergence of Wizz Air, which over the same period has established itself as the largest carrier in these emerging markets.
Ryanair will initially position a single Boeing 737-800 at Milan Malpensa from December 1, 2015, its 15th base in Italy. The new resource will enable the carrier to introduce a twice daily link to London Stansted and daily operation to Comiso as well as a four times weekly service to Bucharest and three times weekly offering to Seville during the winter 2015/2016 schedule.
The airline will offer eight weekly Chambery flights and a once a week Turin service, while a brand new route for the carrier from London Gatwick to Grenoble will see it offer a weekly flight for independent ski tour operator, Skiworld from mid December 2015 to mid April 2016 on one of its three Airbus A320-200 aircraft.
According to Andrew Harrison, London Stansted Airport’s managing director, the new route will give the UK and businesses in the eastern region in particular, new direct access to Chinese markets and its launch represents the culmination of several years of working with the airline and their partners to deliver the new service.
The route switch follows agreements earlier this year for SAS to dispose of two of its slot pairs at the heavily constrained Heathrow Airport for a combined positive earnings impact of $82 million. The first slot pair was sold to an unidentified carrier for $60 million, while the second was sold to Star Alliance partner, Turkish Airlines for $22 million.
