Monarch Takes a Slice of Madeira Traffic

UK carrier Monarch Airlines is to introduce its first scheduled flights to the island archipelago of Madeira this winter with direct links to Funchal from London Gatwick and Birmingham. The UK leisure airline will offer three flights per week from its base at London Gatwick and two flights per week from its expanding Birmingham base from October 15, 2012.

“With over 40 years heritage we are confident our product offering is perfectly placed for the leisure market in Madeira,” said Kevin George, Managing Director, Monarch Airlines. “Our strategy for the airline is now firmly focused on scheduled operations and we are delighted to be adding the new Madeira route to our already extensive network of leisure destinations across Europe.”

The UK last year accounted for one fifth of all that traffic to Madeira, the second largest market and the new flights from Monarch will make a further 90,480 seats available each year. In 2011, an estimated 356,000 O&D travellers flew between the UK and Funchal in the Portuguese archipelago, an outermost region of the European Union. The table below highlights the planned scheduled weekly capacity between the UK and Funchal this summer (a week in August) and winter (the same week in November) prior to Monarch’s announcement, ranked by airline…

“The entrance of Monarch at Madeira Airport follows the strategy that the company has developed to consolidate the UK market and offer a wide range of destinations to its clients,” explained Duarte Ferreira, Director, Madeira Airports. “Also noteworthy is the fact that this operation will start in the winter, thus contributing to reversing the trend of increased seasonality that has been registered in the last years.”