Low-cost giant Ryanair is to debut in Ukraine with flights to Kiev from four European cities, while Central and Eastern European low-cost airline specialist Wizz Air is to further expand its activities in the country with growing summer 2017 operations from both Kiev and Lviv.
A record number of votes were received for this year’s awards. Discover which airports and destinations have been recognised for their marketing achievements by the airline network planning community.
The confirmation of this deal follows extensive discussions between the management of Aer Lingus and its parent company International Consolidated Airlines Group (IAG) over the growth of the Dublin-based carrier’s long-haul network and the value IAG places in Ireland’s growing hub at Dublin Airport, one of fastest growing transatlantic departure markets of the current decade.
After a year of work, a Swedish government-appointed commission recommended in late November 2016 that airlines operating in Sweden should pay a tax of between 80 and 430 Swedish crowns ($9- $47) per passenger per flight to compensate for climate pollution. Under the proposal, the lower end would relate to domestic and European flights while a levy of between SEK280 (for city pair markets under 6,000km) and SEK430 (for city pair markets beyond 6,000km) would be added to medium- and long-haul international services.
As first revealed by our Airlineroute news stream in the middle of last month, Qatar Airways is deploying the first LATAM aircraft on one of its two daily flights between Doha and Munich. It debuted on the QR059/060 rotation from March 2, 2017 and another of the LATAM airframes will be used on the second QR057/058 service from April 1, 2017. The additional two LATAM A350-900s will be used on Qatar Airways’ Doha – Madrid route.
A striking new pier at Oslo Airport is scheduled to open in April, but the feature is only part of a thoroughgoing renovation that will lift capacity to 32 million.
While all operators to date have adopted the standard nine-abreast arrangement initially detailed by the carrier in its catalogue, Air Caraïbes has selected a dense ten-abreast configuration with a seat width of just below 17 inches, enabling it squeeze more returns out of the aircraft. This additional seat in each Economy row will mean the carrier’s A350-900 will seat just short of 400 passengers - 389 passengers in a three-class configuration (18 in Business, 45 in Premium Economy and 326 in Economy).
For a long time Ryanair has served the greater Frankfurt market via its operations from Hahn Airport, a secondary facility around about 120 km (75 mi) from the city. However, as part of its business maturity and to boost premium traffic the carrier is now serving more major airports and its arrival into Frankfurt is a major part of this network project.
airBaltic will inaugurate the Riga – Abu Dhabi service from the start of the winter schedules on October 29, 2017 and will operate four weekly return flights using its CS300. The Etihad Airways ‘EY’ code will also be displayed on the flight under a full codeshare partnership.
As widely expected, European low-cost carrier Norwegian will introduce its new Boeing 737MAX fleet into operation on flights between the UK and Ireland and the United States of America. The budget airline will offer 38 new weekly transatlantic flights this summer from Edinburgh, Belfast, Cork, Shannon and Dublin serving ten routes.
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.
Phnom Penh, located in the south-central region of Cambodia, is the most populous city in Cambodia and is a gateway to World Heritage Site Angkor Wat, near Siem Reap. Recent growth and infrastructure development has led to Phnom Penh becoming a significant economic and tourism destination.
Latest data from the organisation’s membership shows global passenger traffic grew 7.3 per cent in December 2016 and 5.5 per cent for the year as a whole. All regions except Africa posted growth in passenger volumes for the year, ranging from 2.2 per cent in the recessionary Latin America-Caribbean region to over 9.0 per cent in the buoyant Asia-Pacific and Middle East regions.
During the peak summer season in 2016, Dublin Airport had 48 flights per day to and from 12 cities in the United States and five Canadian destinations. Last year Aer Lingus launched three new transatlantic services - to Los Angeles, Hartford, Connecticut and Newark and Air Canada Rouge launched a new Vancouver service.
The growing interest in Budapest as a destination is certainly helping to put Ferenc Liszt International on an increasing number of airline network maps, but for Kam Jandu, chief commercial officer, Budapest Airport, a long-haul link to the US is seen as a route of strategic national importance to Hungary.
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.
The return of KLM into London City comes at a time that capacity on the Amsterdam route is at its highest level. Amsterdam continues to be a hugely popular route for the airport, last year seeing a six per cent of passenger growth and becoming the second busiest route in terms of passenger numbers.
After a record performance handling 24.7 million passengers in 2016, Swedavia has confirmed it will reduce airport charges at Sweden’s largest international air gateway by an average of one per cent as of April 1, 2017. As a result, the airlines’ charges at the Stockholm Arlanda hub will have been decreased by a total of 6.5 per cent over the past three years. Since 2005, Swedavia’s airport charges have been cut by more than 20 per cent.
The aircraft based in London and Spain will have the same customer offering and appearance as other airline operations at SAS and with corresponding requirements in terms of safety and standards. The airline says the aim is for the new operations to be up and running from winter 2017/2018, providing a smaller number of departures as a complement to SAS’s existing production.
As the chief executives of both Etihad Airways and Lufthansa spelled out this week, there are clear development plans to broaden the commercial partnership as they explore further cooperation in a number of areas, including freight operations, procurement and passenger services to improve their competitive offering globally and in the European market.
This latest growth from Ryanair for winter 2017/2018 and further connectivity gains will boost international capacity from Israel beyond ten million seats for the first time. This is a significant landmark as the five million figure was only surpassed less than ten years ago in 2008.
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.
