A Romanian court of appeals has ruled to cancel alleged state aid offered by Timisoara Airport to Wizz Air, upholding a ruling from the Timis Tribunal last year.
Aeroflot will increase daily Moscow Sheremetyevo-Donetsk SSJ100 service to 2X-daily Jan. 7, using an Airbus A319. Silver Airways will launch 17X-weekly Fort Lauderdale-Orlando service and 12X-weekly West Palm Beach-Tampa service Jan. 7. UTair will launch 2X-weekly Sochi-Trabzon Boeing 737-500 service Dec. 17. It increased daily Moscow Vnukovo-Kiev service to 2X-daily Dec. 3.
The opening of Berlin Brandenburg Airport could be postponed again, according to several German media reports, after fire safety experts found more problems with the facility’s security system last month. The airport was originally scheduled to open in June, a date that was postponed to August, and then to March 2013, due to technical issues concerning fire protection installations. In September, it confirmed the new opening date would be Oct. 27, 2013.
Ryanair will cut its flight schedule at Budapest Airport by 40% following its latest spat with the airport’s operator over the cost of services. The Irish low-cost carrier will cut 10 routes and reduce the number of flights to and from the Hungarian capital from 280 to 170 a week because of what it says are increased charges and inefficiencies at the airport.
London Stansted Airport is seeking financial aid from the UK government to improve its much-criticised rail link from London. Stansted lies approximately 30 miles northeast of the capital but the current Stansted Express rail service, although frequent and re-equipped just a year ago with modern rolling stock, takes between 45 minutes and an hour to traverse what is essentially a branch line. Journey times have actually increased in recent years due to ageing infrastructure, such as signalling equipment, which is becoming unreliable.
Ethiopian Airlines said Addis Ababa Bole Airport is expanding infrastructure to accommodate the carrier’s aggressive growth plans. “A new ramp is already completed and we can now park 24 airplanes,” CEO Tewolde Gebremariam told ATW. “Another ramp is being built for 14 more aircraft and the third step is to expand the terminal. This will take us to 2025. After that a new airport will be built.”
The Maldives government has terminated a $511 million contract awarded to Bangalore-based GMR Group in 2010 for the upgrade, expansion and operation of Male International Airport. The government said the agreement was “legally invalid,” a decision GMR is disputing.
Virgin Atlantic Airways won its bid to take all 12 pairs of London Heathrow remedy slots demanded by the European Commission following the takeover by International Airlines Group of British Midland. The giving up of slots was a condition of the takeover deal; IAG also owns British Airways.
London Heathrow Airport has lost its position as Europe’s primary hub airport due to its runway capacity shortage, according to former IATA CEO Giovanni Bisignani. Speaking at the Future of Air Transport Conference in London, Bisignani said that Heathrow now connects to fewer destinations than it did 20 years ago as well as to fewer destinations than its competitors—Frankfurt, Paris Charles de Gaulle and Amsterdam Schiphol.
Munich Airport, Lufthansa’s second largest hub in Germany after Frankfurt, said cost-reduction programs by Lufthansa and Air Berlin will curtail its growth.
