Lufthansa said it plans to launch flights to Baghdad and Erbil from both Frankfurt and Munich during the summer schedule. It said demand for Iraq service is "growing" and traffic rights and "further infrastructure improvements" are required. Subsidiary Austrian Airlines currently serves Erbil from Vienna. Air France will launch five-times-weekly Paris Charles de Gaulle-Abu Dhabi service on May 3 aboard an A330-200. Iceland Express will launch twice-weekly Keflavik-Winnipeg service in June.
Germanwings will open its sixth German base in Hanover in the spring, a source close to the airline told ATWOnline. A formal announcement is expected today. German media reported that up to three A319s will operate approximately 70 weekly flights from HAN.
Air Berlin will launch weekly flights to Rimini from Hamburg, Munster Osnabruck, Baden-Baden and Nurnberg on May 15, Stuttgart on May 16 and Berlin Tegel on June 5. Emirates will increase its 11-times-weekly Dubai-Jakarta 777 service to twice-daily on March 1.
Aer Lingus Group will scale down its base at London Gatwick to three A320s from five at the start of the summer schedule as it anticipates demand will remain "soft" in the first half of 2010, although it expects to report a "small" operating profit before exceptional items in the second half of 2009.
Last year airlines felt the lingering effects of the economic downturn and its widespread impacts. The smell of kerosene hung in the air as fuel prices stayed sky high, with demand spiralling downwards and there was an inevitable squeeze on yield as airlines sought to attract capacity on their aircraft. But against this bleak backdrop – and despite further airlines filing for bankruptcy, 2009 has been a year of strategy, with carriers consolidating to survive, new trends emerging and route opportunities created. Routesonline recaps some of the major events last year that impacted air services.
