WORLD ROUTES: ESSENTIAL NEWS ROUND UP

There was plenty of news coming out of World Routes in Beijing last week - here are four of the biggest stories from the event:

• Abu Dhabi will host World Routes in 2012. HE Khalifa Al Mazrouei, ADAC chairman, said: "World Routes Abu Dhabi will provide the ideal opportunity to showcase to the industry the extraordinary economic transformation underway in Abu Dhabi as well as the progress on the iconic Midfield Terminal Complex at Abu Dhabi International Airport which will increase airport capacity to 40 million passengers per year."

• For the first time, AirAsia X hosted a best practice session at World Routes, which was aimed at providing tips and advice to airports in how best to position themselves to become the airline's next ‘hub of choice'. The session outlined the potential for an airport in the Middle East to attract a based AirAsia X aircraft to its market.

• There were 75 tourism authorities at the second World Tourism & Air Services (TAS) Summit, co-organised by Routes and the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), in Beijing. Mike Howarth, chairman of Routes said: "Tourism authorities are becoming more involved in the route development process, increasingly providing finance support for key services which will underpin important tourism revenues. In short: they are now moving up the supply chain and following the same path as airports a decade ago."

• Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad (MAHB) officially launched the world's first Next Generation Hub at KL International Airport at World Routes, which will introduce facilities to enable passengers to connect seamlessly between all types of carriers and between different types of terminals. Sallauddin Mat Sah, general manager of Malaysia Airports, said: "Today's passengers are presented with numerous options from full service carriers, low cost carriers, various routings, prices and so on. The best option could be a combination of a full service carrier and a low cost carrier". He added: "Malaysia Airports is already seeing a growing trend of passengers who self-connect between the Main Terminal Building and Low Cost Carrier Terminal at KLIA. A feasibility study revealed that the existing landside bus transfer service between the two terminals sees at least 500 ‘self connect' passengers per day (or 1,000 passenger movements), representing an annual market of over 180,000 passengers".

Source: Routes News