World Routes, the unrivalled airline route development forum, and global tourism charity the Travel Foundation, will join forces for this year’s event in Barcelona
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International Airlines Group (IAG) has confirmed its new low-cost long-haul business will operate under the LEVEL brand. The airline will launch from Barcelona from June 1, 2017 with flights to Buenos Aires, Punta Cana, Los Angeles and Oakland International using two Airbus A330-200s configured with a premium economy and economy onboard offering.
Cathay Pacific will offer a four times weekly service between its Hong Kong International Airport hub and Barcelona from July 2, 2017, subject to final government approval, continuing through the peak travel months until October 27, 2017. This will be the first ever non-stop offering between Hong Kong and Barcelona.
Barcelona seemingly has a good mix of the ingredients needed for IAG to make this new long haul low cost business work. It is a growing market in terms of demand and passenger flows are dominated by IAG airlines Vueling and Iberia providing a strong connecting feed into the long-haul operation to complement local traffic.
The link into this year’s World Routes host city will commence from April 28, 2017 and will be operated using a Boeing 777-200ER configured with 248 seats. The airline has been a major target for Aeroports de Catalunya as it seeks to boost connectivity into Northeast Asia, one of the fastest growing regions of the world and a major outbound market.
The annual World Routes air service development forum was officially transferred to the city of Barcelona at a ceremony today (27 September) in Chengdu, China.
Our analysis of schedule data shows that the carrier has boosted its capacity from Spain’s second city over the past ten years from 112,650 departure seats in 2004 to 8.8 million in 2014. This has seen its share of departure capacity grow from just 0.6 per cent in 2004, when Iberia dominated operations, to a market leading 37.9 per cent in 2014.
The frequency growth will see Qatar Airways boost capacity to Barcelona by 32.1 per cent in 2015, while total capacity into Spain will increase 30.4 per cent to almost 360,000 seats in each direction. According to MIDT data, the airline carried an estimated 458,000 passengers on its flights to and from Spain last year.
The airline has been offering a service on the Bogota – Barcelona route since June 2006. An estimated 76,000 passengers flew on the route in the first nine months of this year, up 10.1 per cent on the same period last year, with Avianca reporting average loads of more than 85 per cent.
