In our regular Routes News series we take a look at the people that attend Routes events and find out more about them, their jobs and the current industry issues impacting them.
The new Belfast City route will commence from June 1, 2017 and will be operated using a 72-seat Bombardier Dash 8-Q400 turboprop. It will operate from Keflavik International Airport in Iceland, providing extensive connection options to the Transatlantic network of Icelandair from the mid-Atlantic island as well as support growing business and leisure flows into Iceland which is becoming an increasingly popular leisure destination.
A growing tourism industry and increased business investment make Northern Ireland’s capital city of Belfast an exciting destination for Routes Europe 2017.
Today (Tuesday, 26 April) the Routes Europe air service development forum was officially handed over from Kraków in Poland to Belfast in Northern Ireland – the destination for 2017.
The Northern Irish city will take on hosting duties for Routes Europe 2017. Hosted by Invest NI and Discover Belfast, they will show what the city has to offer as not only host, but as a destination.
The low-cost carrier will initially position a single Boeing 737-800 at Belfast International Airport to support the London Gatwick operation, a route that it will directly compete with easyJet. A further two aircraft will be stationed at the airport later in 2016 to introduce five more routes for the winter season from October 2016.
At the launch of its summer 2016 schedule, Brussels Airlines confirms new routes will be introduced from Brussels to Belfast City, Crete, Jerez, while new winter routes to Las Palmas in Gran Canaria and Tenerife will be continued into the summer.
The DC-3s arrival in Belfast coincides with KLM’s return to the Northern Ireland market. The flag carrier will inaugurate a daily link to Belfast City from its Amsterdam Schiphol base from May 18, 2015, not only support point-to-point demand but also providing connection options to over 200 destination from the major European hub.
The hosting of Routes Europe in the Northern Ireland capital, Belfast, in April 2017 will bring significant benefits to the city, country and entire Ireland, said Minister Arlene Foster, head of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment in the Northern Ireland Executive at the formal announcement of the 2017 edition of the forum.
Just as its aviation heritage developed, Belfast has bloomed as a destination from very humble beginnings after starting out as a small hamlet with fertile land along the mouth of the Lagan. It is now emerging as a developing business and leisure destination as it moves away from its historic industries such as shipbuilding to develop as a centre for the arts, higher education, business, and law.
This ‘start up aid’ will be made available from the Regional Air Connectivity Fund which was announced by the UK government in June 2013 and is open to airports with fewer than five million passengers per year. This fund has already been partly distributed to support strategic routes to London from Newquay and Dundee but is now being extended to bids for more routes.
The carrier will introduce new scheduled services from Amsterdam to Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK; Krakow, Poland and Montpellier, France from May 18, 2015 with flights to be operated by its KLM cityhopper regional business.
The route is expected to be popular with Belfast’s business passengers and is expected to generate 50,000 departing passengers per year. Belfast has a well-established Business and Financial Services sector, and business customers will be able to reach the city’s business district 10 minutes after leaving the airport due to the location of George Best Belfast City Airport.
Here is the first of our regular series of industry trivia questions where we ask readers to vote on a particular subject during the month before revealing the actual results at the end of the month.
The low-cost Spanish airline has announced 31 new routes for its summer schedule, mainly departing from Barcelona and Rome. The airline has also announced its first destination to Northern Ireland, to operate twice weekly.
A report from Airport Coordination Limited (ACL) has revealed that UK low-fare carrier Flybe has secured slot allocations to operate on five domestic air routes from London City from September this year, although neither the airline nor airport has confirmed the plan.
