The Barcelona-headquartered carrier, established by the original founders of Vueling, has developed bases in France, Italy and Spain after first launching flights in April 2012 from Marco Polo Airport in Venice, Italy using a fleet of Boeing 717-200s. It arrived in the Bordeaux market in 2012 and based on this month’s schedules the city’s Mérignac Airport now the fifth largest point in its network and second largest in France after Nantes Atlantique Airport.
The low-fare airline will introduce new year-round scheduled holiday flights from Norwich to Alicante and Malaga from March 2016, with the addition of Geneva expected later in 2016. The partnership will see one of Flybe’s stored Embraer E195 jets return to the skies, and planning is already underway to maximise its use by the airport.
Central and Eastern European low-cost airline specialist, Wizz Air, will slightly modify its existing model by introducing a second aircraft type to its fleet later this year. While maintaining the one fleet family concept, the budget carrier has switched 26 of its outstanding orders for the A320, for the larger A321 variant and will place the first aircraft into service in the last quarter of this year.
Ryanair opened the Copenhagen base at the end of last month as it continues to develop its network offering from primary airports to support business as well as leisure demand. It is initially stationing a single Boeing 737-800 at the airport but expects a further three aircraft to arrive over the course of the year to support its network expansion.
With five based aircraft, Berlin will become the airlines’ 73rd base, and will see the launch of sixteen new routes, bringing the total number of destinations to 22.
The airline will introduce new routes to Alicante and Naples (a new market and return of a former destination) and boost frequencies to Dalaman and Faro as it offers 28 weekly flights from Leeds Bradford to ten sun and city destinations across Europe during the summer 2015 schedule.
