In our regular Routes News series we take a look at the people that attend Routes events and find out more about them, their jobs and the current industry issues impacting them.
An announcement last month that LOT Polish Airlines will return its direct long-haul service between Kraków and Chicago from July 2017 after a seven year absence provides a fitting end to what will certainly be remembered as one of the most successful years in the airport’s history.
During the Summit, the audience were invited to participate via the website sli.do. This technology is an audience interactive tool for meetings, events and conferences which allowed those in attendance at the Summit to ask questions and vote in polls. Altogether, there were 82 active participants.
Valencia, the third largest city in Spain after Madrid and Barcelona, believes it is an ideal year-round destination for the world’s airlines and regularly takes a presence at leading aviation and tourism events such as Routes Europe to highlight what it has to offer. And it appears that a story of over 300 days of sunshine a year is being understood by the world’s airlines.
The airport is developing a much closer relationship with the budget carrier and this has brought what was just a single route operation to and from Dublin just over a year or so ago, to an eight destination network, including flights revealed this week to Gdansk, Warsaw Modlin and Wroclaw.
After this year’s excursion into Central Europe, next year’s event will head back to the United Kingdom and will take place in the city of Belfast, Northern Ireland. It will be hosted by Invest Northern Ireland and Visit Belfast with support from Belfast City Council, Tourism Northern Ireland, Tourism Ireland, Belfast International Airport and George Best Belfast City Airport. A formal handover ceremony for the event will took place on the final day of this year's forum.
Last night’s Networking Evening at this year’s record-breaking Routes Europe forum in Krakow once again showed that Poland’s second largest city knows how to put on a party. Our host and its partners have made tremendous efforts to showcase the hospitality, history, and development of what is emerging to be one of Central Europe’s prominent business and leisure break destinations.
One of Europe's leading hub, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol was announced as the overall winner of the Routes Europe edition of the Routes 2016 Marketing Awards which were formally announced last night during the Networking Evening event which took place at ICE Kraków in Poland.
The Northern Irish city will take on hosting duties for Routes Europe 2017. Hosted by Invest NI and Discover Belfast, they will show what the city has to offer as not only host, but as a destination.
UK leisure carrier Jet2.com will introduce a second route to this year’s Routes Europe host city of Kraków this week after the success of its current Newcastle – Kraków service that has been in operation since March 2011. The airline took time away from its busy Routes Europe meeting schedule to join senior officials from Kraków Airport to help promote the event on the second day of the air service development forum.
In recent years, Cyprus has solidified its status as a tourist destination with passenger numbers rising steadily. In 2015, the number of tourist arrivals to the island hit a 14-year high at 2.65 million. The first quarter of 2016 has already seen a 32.4 percent increase compared to the same timeframe in 2015.
We are increasingly surrounded by data from all types of sources and channels. It’s impossible for us to manage all that data, so how do we pick the right data to look at, how do we interpret that data and how much of that data is fact, fiction or intuition? In a short 20 minute session OAG industry advisor John Grant discussed some of the issues and dilemmas we face each day in handling that data during Routes Europe.
The industry can expect far more freedom in the skies within the next 15 years under increasing liberalisation. Giving a talk at this year’s Routes Europe in Kraków, Poland, entitled 'Route Development in 2030: How Regulation Will Affect Your Deals', Watson Farley & Williams LLP partner, Jeremy Robinson, said he believes legislation will become increasingly liberal.
The airport, which has recently been named as one of Ryanair’s latest bases, have their sights set on serving the likes of Belfast, Florence and the Baltic regions.
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.
The London Stansted-based carrier is icontinuing a strategic fleet renewal process as it aims to introduce more modern, economical and environmentally friendly aircraft to the operation. The aim over the next five years is to gradually phase out older aircraft and modernise the operation by introducing further Airbus types, which may include the A318, A319, further A321s and even perhaps the A330.
Emirates Airline's service from Newcastle to Dubai has for a long-time been hailed as a game-changer for North East England, not just affording better access into markets across the Middle East and into Asia and the Pacific via Dubai International Airport, but also due to the more than 14,000 tonnes of cargo its Airbus A330-200s and Boeing 777-300ERs have carried since it launched the route in 2007.
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.
The expanded summer 2017 offer will see new weekly flights to Faro, Malta and Naples and expanded services to Arrecife, Bourgas, Fueteventura, Ibiza, Larnaca, Mahon, Paphos and Zante. This will follow the debut of new routes to Hurghada and Las Palmas and frequency growth to Arrecife, Banjul and Tenerife in the winter 2016/2017 schedule, the latter seeing growth from one to four weekly flights for the full season.
Although BA can take ownership of these scarce resources over time, it is obliged to make them available to competitors in specific domestic markets. Although Flybe remained tight-lipped about any plan, chief executive Saad Hamaad is understood to believe smaller aircraft could help a Heathrow operation to succeed.
Routes Europe kicked-off in style yesterday with an engaging and thought-provoking Strategy Summit that debated some of the key topics impacting the aviation business across the region. Here's a round up of day one's activities.
At this year’s Routes Europe in KrakówPoland the power of event networking this was highlighted better than ever when a new air link was tentatively agreed during the short coach journey from the EXPO Kraków International Exhibition and Convention Centre and last night’s Welcome Reception at the Stara Zajezdnia Kraków by DeSilva.
The forthcoming UK Brexit vote should be used by the European Union (EU) as an opportunity to have an entire rethink over the political bloc’s problems. Speaking at the Routes Europe 2016 Strategy Summit, in Kraków, Poland, LOT Polish Airlines CEO Rafal Milczarski said he believed the UK’s voters will decide to stay in the EU on June 23. However, even if the decision is made to keep things the same, he urged Brussels not to treat it as a vindication of the current set up.
When US manufacturer Boeing first introduced the Boeing 787 Dreamliner it was marketed as a hub-buster, an aircraft that would enable airlines to fly non-stop point-to-point services between non-hub airports. Now after almost five years of airline service, data does not seem to necessary back up the initial views with only one in four current Dreamliner routes classified as a new air service.
