Monarch Airlines is also a newcomer to Routes event and is attending Routes Americas in Lima this week. Among its wish list of new long-haul charter and scheduled destinations, Monarch is sizing up the Canadian market and more Caribbean routes with a view to securing new services for its summer 2010 schedule.
Turkish Airlines is increasing its fleet and is targeting the huge Europe to Asia traffic flows. TK is now larger in terms of weekly frequency than the Middle East carriers with a clear focus on its Atatürk hub. Routes News assesses its strategy to establish a leading hub, neatly aligned to its fast-evolving fleet mix.
It’s an unusual move, but the niche Swedish carrier, City Airline - which operates a small domestic and European network mainly for the business market - has formed a strategic partnership with Göteborg Landvetter (GOT) (its operational base) to help establish the airport as a key hub. Routes News evaluates the opportunity for Gothenburg as a future hub airport.
Limited competition in Serbia for low-cost traffic has prompted Wizz Air to test its market potential. It will serve scheduled flights to Belgrade from 24th July.
Thales said Belgocontrol, the Belgian air navigation services provider, inaugurated CANAC2, its new ATC system for Belgian airspace management built on the Thales Eurocat E-product platform. CANAC2 was installed in a new operational room dedicated to en route and approach control inside Brussels Airport's control tower and its contingency tower, as well as in towers at Liege, Ostend, Charleroi and Antwerp.
Ryanair will extend its maintenance facilities at Glasgow Prestwick with a second hangar, representing an £8 million ($12.5 million) investment. The 6,000-sq.-m. facility, due to open in October, will create 200 new engineering jobs and join to the LCC's existing 4,000-sq.-m. hangar that opened in 2004. Ryanair operates 29 routes from the airport.
Kingfisher Airlines was granted traffic rights from New Delhi to London Heathrow (its first European destination), Hong Kong, Bangkok and Dubai and from Mumbai to Colombo, Bangkok and Dubai. No launch date was announced. Kingfisher will operate A330s to LHR and HKG and A320 family aircraft on the remaining routes. Chairman and CEO Vijay Mallya said it "may even look at inducting new aircraft into our fleet sooner than planned so that we are fully geared to capitalize on the upturn. We are actively pursuing various options for fundraising and our plans are on track."
AirBaltic will launch thrice-weekly Riga-Tehran flights on June 8 aboard a 737. Germania will launch weekly Berlin Tegel-Beirut service on March 11 with a 737-700 and plans to increase frequency to thrice-weekly by April.
The second major snowstorm to hit the US Mid-Atlantic region in five days closed airports up and down the East Coast yesterday, forcing cancellation of thousands of flights and resulting in delays across the nation's air transport system.
Ryanair will establish a base at Kaunas, its 40th, in May with two 737-800s. Routes from the airport will double to 18, including new service to Berlin Schoenefeld, Dusseldorf Weeze, Edinburgh, London Gatwick, Bergamo, Oslo Rygge, Paris Beauvais, Tampere and Girona. The LCC said the new base represents an investment of more than $140 million and that it "is in continuous negotiation with four other Central European airports" regarding new bases.
The US Dept. of Transportation yesterday tentatively granted the slot swap transaction involving Delta Air Lines' Washington National slots and US Airways' New York LaGuardia slots but said the approval is contingent on the sale of 20 of the 125 LGA pairs and 14 of the 42 DCA pairs.
Continental Airlines suspended Wednesday operations at its Newark hub as it anticipated a winter storm. A second significant snowfall was forecast to hit the US Mid-Atlantic region, which yesterday was still suffering flight cancellations as a result of the storm that hit last Friday and Saturday ( ATWOnline, Feb. 9). The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority said it does not expect any flights to operate at either Dulles or National today.
OpenSkies will launch five-times-weekly Paris Orly-Washington Dulles service on May 3 aboard a 757 with 72 business class seats. The British Airways subsidiary commenced operations in June 2008 with an ORY-New York JFK service and soon acquired Paris-based L'Avion, which operated 10 weekly 757-200 all-business-class flights between ORY and Newark. OpenSkies planned to be flying six 757s by the end of 2009 but dropped its Amsterdam-JFK route last summer owing to lack of demand. On Jan.
Greek air traffic controllers planned a 24-hr. strike today, grounding all flights to and from Greece. Athens-based Aegean Airlines said it was "forced to cancel all flights on its network."
