The number of Northern Ireland residents using Dublin Airport increased by eleven per cent to more than 570,000 last year, growing about twice as fast as average passenger numbers at the airport.
As first revealed by The HUB at the end of last month, UK low-fare carrier Flybe is to inaugurate five new routes from London City Airport from the start of the winter schedules in late October 2014.
With this expansion Wizz Air will grow its Polish fleet to 16 Airbus A320 aircraft in the summer peak of 2014: five based aircraft in Gdansk and Katowice, four in Warsaw Chopin Airport and one aircraft in Poznan and Wroclaw.
European regional carrier Etihad Regional has launched a twice-weekly service linking Geneva in Switzerland, and Toulouse in southwestern France, its first year-round route to France from its Swiss base. The inaugural service, operated using a 50-seat Saab 2000 touched down at Toulouse’s Blagnac Airport at 4:40pm on April 17, 2014.
Irish budget carrier Ryanair has announced a new link between Paris Beauvais and Figari Corsica operating from June 2, 2014 to October 24, 2014, initially operating four times weekly, increasing to six times weekly in August.
The new links to Ibiza, Palma and Reykjavik will depart Birmingham late at night and return in the early hours of the morning, supporting the carrier’s plans to enhance fleet utilisation.
Qatar Airways is to introduce a non-stop link to the popular Indonesian leisure destination of Bali this summer. The direct link to Denpasar will reduce journey times to a destination that has seen growing demand from across the Qatar Airways network over the past couple of years.
The resumed Gulf Air service between Athens and Bahrain will offer passengers improved connections between Greece and Bahrain. When the route was previously flown by the carrier up to 11,000 annual bi-directional O&D passengers flew between the two countries.
Every year almost two million passengers fly between Kazakhstan and Europe, a market that the airline sees a good potential for further growth in the years ahead having grown 51.3 per cent in the past five years.
As part of a commercial cooperation agreement between Cargolux and HNCA, the freight carrier intends to develop a dual-hub strategy centered on Luxembourg’s Findel airport in Europe and on Zhengzhou’s Xinzheng International Airport in Asia.
During the 2014/2015 winter schedule from October 26, 2014 until March 28, 2015, Air France will deploy the A380 on three weekly rotations between its Paris hub and Abdijan.
Since commencing operations at Glasgow Airport on April 10, 2004, Emirates has carried over 2.4 million passengers across its global network, which now covers 141 destinations. Emirates currently offers over 43,000 passenger seats per month to and from Glasgow, following the upgrade of its second daily service to a Boeing 777 in 2012.
The Rt Hon Patrick McLoughlin MP, Secretary of State for Transport, declared the extension to London Southend Airport’s terminal officially open on April 7, 2014, while the airport was actively seeking to further expand its network at the Routes Europe forum in Marseille, France.
At lunchtime today the forum will be officially handed over to Aberdeen City and Shire, the host of the 2015 event, at a ceremony that is due to be attended by Lord Provost of Aberdeen George Adam, Aberdeenshire Provost Jill Webster and Aberdeen International Airport managing director Carol Benzie.
Pau-Pyrenees Airport in southwest France hopes to take advantage of the strong business flows within its catchment and the obvious yield benefits that offer to secure new direct air connectivity.
flynas has inaugurated its new long-haul network as it adds a new dimension to its flight offering. The carrier, which describes itself as Low-Cost Carrier Plus, offering customers added value, has wet-leased Airbus A330-200s from ACMI provider HiFly.
WestJet Airlines continues to study the introduction of widebody aircraft into its fleet, but an executive of the carrier revealed in this year’s Routes Europe Strategy Summit in Marseille, France that the carrier has never been closer to formalising a deal.
It has been a tough few years for the airport, Hungary’s largest air gateway, following the collapse of national carrier Malev in February 2012, but the past year, during which it hosted the previous Routes Europe forum, has seen it continue to back fill the lost capacity and introduce links into new markets.
Passenger traffic at Dublin Airport is continuing to grow faster than the European average, building on its strong performance during 2013. Passenger numbers at Dublin are outpacing the total European average and are significantly ahead of the average for airports within the European Union.
Routes Europe 2014 kicked off with the hard-hitting Strategy Summit in Marseille on April 6, 2014. The motto of the day could be described as “plus ca change”, as around 20 high-level speakers from Europe and beyond attested to constant change in all parts of the aviation and tourism industry.
