The network growth follows an increase in demand between the US and St Lucia, located in the eastern Caribbean Sea and part of the Lesser Antilles. According to arrivals data, visitors are travelling to St Lucia at a record pace with international arrivals from the US currently up nine per cent versus last year.
After the merger of Vilnius, Kaunas and Palanga Airports last year, the Lithuanian air gateways have witnessed a significant increase in passenger and flight volumes, sales and overall net profit over a year-long period.
British Airways has announced it will introduce its first Boeing 787-9 into its fleet in September 2015 and will initially deploy the larger Dreamliner variant on its route between London Heathrow and Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi, India from the start of the winter 2015/2016 schedule in late October.
Low-cost Russian airline, Pobeda has banned passengers from chewing gum on board because it is spending too much scraping it off its airplanes interiors.
Although the carrier has almost ten years experience in the cargo business, this will be its first growth into scheduled passenger operations. It intends to launch operations from September 2015 using a small fleet of three Boeing 737-500s that have already been acquired and are currently undergoing pre-service maintenance in Jordan.
Initially established in September 1994 under the AirZena brand, the carrier provided charter flights to the United Arab Emirates, Italy, China, Egypt, India, Syria and regular scheduled flights to Austria. It was granted national carrier status in November 1999 and latterly the Georgian Airways title has been added.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has said that more jobs could be generated and additional economic growth could be achieved in Namibia if intra-African markets are opened up to allow for greater airline transport connectivity.
The three-times-weekly link will be operated with Air Canada’s ultra modern Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, and the new service will cut travel time between the two cities by five hours.
The state-run airline has proposed to fly three weekly flights each to San Francisco and Toronto from New Delhi with a Boeing 777-200LR aircraft, which is likely to be reconfigured to include more seating capacity, the airline has said.
Madeira Airport in Portugal hopes to exceed the 2.5 million passenger per annum milestone this year after reaching a record high of 2.46 million passengers in 2014. The growth in demand has been supported by an increase in connectivity to the Portuguese archipelago.
The airline will operate three routes from Eilat Ovda Airport in the far south of the country, near the border with Jordan. Initially, flights will operate to and from Budapest in Hungary, Kaunas in Lithuania and Krakow in Poland.
The airline plans to introduce new services to London Luton, Berlin Schönefeld, Manchester, Amsterdam and Bristol – the latter of which will be a brand new destination for Vienna Airport.
The twice-weekly service will operate on Wednesdays and Sundays from May next year to the German city which is located in the centre of the Rhine-Ruhr region – Germany’s largest metropolitan area.
The airline industry is opening its eyes to Moldova as an international market and meetings at this year’s Routes Silk Road forum in Tbilisi, Georgia have helped establish at least one new air service and confirmed an increased capacity offering on an existing route.
UK ACMI and airline sub-charter specialist, Titan Airways, is seeking to raise its profile among the world’s airlines and is using the Routes regional event calendar to interact with airlines in specific regions.
Transaero announced plans to debut the Airbus A320 Family variant into its fleet from July 2015 in March last year when it confirmed a deal with ICBC Leasing, part of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, to introduce six A321 aircraft on operating leases for delivery through March 2016. These are the first of up to 30 A321s that are due to enter the Russian carrier’s fleet within the next five years.
In recent years China has overtaken both USA and Germany to become the largest outbound market in the world with Chinese travellers now the top source of tourism cash, according to the UNWTO. In 2012 their annual spend was estimated at $102 billion, growing to a market of 97 million and spend of $124 billion in 2013 and 110 million and $165 billion last year.
United Arab Emirates (UAE) carrier, Emirates Airlines has announced that it will launch a service to Mashhad in Iran, its second service to the Western Asian country.
In his presentation highlighting aviation market trends in Russia, Ascend's Evgeny van der Geest provided an interesting insight into the current structure of the sector in the Russian Federation, including a growing lessor involvement - particularly from international businesses - which is fueling a fleet renewal process that is continuing to see the removal of older Soviet era airliners with western aircraft models.
Aeroflot Russian Airlines is reviewing its future long-haul fleet renewal after it was revealed just last month that the carrier had cancelled its order for 22 Boeing 787 Dreamliners. The flag carrier had been due to take delivery of the aircraft in 2014 but previous delays with the programme meant that the deliveries had been put back to 2016.
The resumption of direct flights between Georgia and the UK should be among the main route development targets for the United Airports of Georgia team, according to a senior executive at Adjara Group Hospitality, the fastest growing, privately held owner and management company in the Georgian hospitality industry. It has been over two years since there were direct flights between Georgia and the UK.
