SAS First Network Carrier to Land at Łódź

SAS Scandinavian Airlines will become the first network carrier to launch scheduled flights to Łódź Władysław Reymont Airport in Central Poland when it inaugurates a six times weekly flight from the Danish capital Copenhagen on October 29. This is the Scandinavian airline’s eighth route into Poland with a network that this winter will comprise more than 70 weekly flights to six cities in the country.

Although Łódź is the third largest city in Poland it has not established as many direct flight connections as some of the smaller regional cities in Poland. Irish budget carrier Ryanair is currently the largest operator at the city’s airport with links to destinations in Germany, Italy, Norway, Republic of Ireland and the UK, while fellow budget operator Wizz Air has links to Germany and the UK. Charter carriers Enter Air and Sun d’Or also serve the airport on a seasonal basis.

In a major development for Łódź Airport, fast-expanding local carrier OLT Express is to open a small base this year and will introduce a new domestic connection to Kraków in July and international flights to Barcelona, Edinburgh, Frankfurt-Hahn, Paris Orly, Rome Fiumicino and Warsaw Chopin during the final quarter of 2012.

With capacity dominated by low-cost carriers, securing a first network carrier has been a major target for the airport and the arrival of SAS this winter will enable its one-stop network to be expanded significantly, including connection opportunities into the intercontinental market via Copenhagen. The SAS flight will be operated using a Bombardier CRJ200 flown by Cimber Air, part of a revised agreement with the new owners of the private entity.

"Poland is an extremely important market to us, considering its proximity to Copenhagen. We can offer a quick direct flight or an easy transfer to all our Polish destinations,” explained Joakim Landholm, Chief Commercial Officer, SAS.

This winter SAS will serve eight routes in Poland having introduced flights last autumn on the Stockholm – Gdansk route and earlier this year between Copenhagen and Katowice. The airline also provides direct links from Oslo to Gdansk and from Copenhagen to Gdansk, Poznan, Warsaw and Wroclaw.

The table below highlights the changes in O&D traffic between Scandinavia and Poland over the past five years. Although there are country variations, total O&D demand between Scandinavia and Poland was up 12.6 per cent in 2011 when compared with the previous year and up 54.4 on the estimated traffic figure from 2007. Looking at last year alone, SAS had a 9.2 per cent share of the total O&D traffic between Scandinavia and Poland, placing it as the fourth largest carrier behind Wizz Air (43.0 per cent), Norwegian (21.7 per cent) and Ryanair (14.9 per cent).