The Manchester-Beijing route is reported to be worth at least £250 million in economic benefits to the UK over the next decade, with two-thirds being felt directly in the Northern economy in terms of increased jobs, economic activity and tourism. By providing a non-stop service, the new route will also generate journey time savings worth £5 million every year for business passengers and avoid the inconvenience of changing planes at another airport.
The additional aircraft will arrive ahead of a July 22, 2016 launch of the four new routes and will also facilitate frequency growth in some of its existing markets. Wizz Air will offer new twice weekly links between Cluj-Napoca and Alicante, Berlin Schoenefeld, Billund and Doncaster Sheffield, with the German capital become the newest destination in its network of 113 airports.
The hosting of this year’s Routes Americas forum helped support Denver International Airport in securing the return of the German carrier’s Munich link. It was the first time that the German carrier had attended the regional event with delegates Daniel Pauli, Manager Network Planning Hub Munich and Stephan Vinson, Hub Development Frankfurt providing representation for its growth strategy at its two hub airports.
Norwegian is known to be studying a number of new markets for growth as it starts planning for the arrival of its new 787-9s. Although further growth in the US is among the scenarios under consideration, a number of other markets are also under evaluation, including São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Delhi, Mumbai, Cape Town and Durban.
Irish flag carrier, Aer Lingus, a recent addition to the IAG portfolio, is to launch flights between Dublin and Los Angeles, Newark, and Hartford during the summer 2016 schedule, while British Airways will relaunch its New York operation from London Gatwick after a seven-year hiatus.
Lufthansa is to launch a new three times weekly link between its Munich hub and Tehran from April 14, 2016 using an Airbus A330-300, while also boosting capacity on its existing Frankfurt – Tehran service by switching from an A340-600 to a Boeing 747-400. Meanwhile, Austrian Airlines is to introduce a second daily rotation on its Vienna – Tehran route from March 11, 2016 with a new day flight complementing its existing night operation.
Although first formed as a charter business in 1990, Pegasus has taken-off in the scheduled market since it was acquired by ESAS Holding in 2005 and over recent years has been among the fastest-growing major scheduled airlines in Europe, even out-performing its local rival Turkish Airlines in terms of capacity growth.
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 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.
Air India is one of three airlines to serve the Delhi – London market alongside British Airways, Jet Airways and Virgin Atlantic Airways and which together will offer a total of seven daily flights from this winter – Air India three, British Airways two and Jet Airways and Virgin Atlantic Airways with single daily rotations.
The arrival of the single 737-800 will facilitate the introduction of new links to Corfu from Birmingham, Bratislava, Budapest, Cologne, Rome, Katowice, Poznan, Pisa, Rzeszow, Venice and Warsaw Modlin as well as enable increased frequencies on its existing routes from Brussels Charleroi, East Midlands, London Stansted and Milan Bergamo.
The creators of the bestselling video game Minecraft are to start an airline, according to Swedish media reports. Markus Persson and Jakob Porser have registered a new company with the purpose of leasing aircraft.
United currently has 22 787s in its fleet and will receive three more before the end of this year. These include a mix of 787-8 and larger 787-9 variants which allow the carrier to fit the right-sized aircraft to its existing and new markets. The aircraft is being used at San Francisco International Airport to support the growth of United hub operation from where it provides nearly 280 daily flights to more than 90 destinations in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia/Pacific.
If the speculation is true, Aer Lingus will be the only airline offering a direct flight between Europe and Hartford Bradley International Airport, branded as the ‘Gateway to New England’. In fact the airline will be the sole carrier to serve the facility from outside North America with existing links limited to just domestic services in the US and flights into Canada.
Flight schedules for a new five times weekly link from Frankfurt have already been loaded into the GDS for launch in late April 2016, just a week before British Airways launches its new London - San José operation.
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.
Although Transaero is continuing to fly, operational control of the airline has already been passed across to Aeroflot and bookings are no longer being taken beyond December 15, 2015. Although nothing has been formally confirmed on the likely bankruptcy of Transaero, these actions and an ongoing unscheduled safety audit by Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency, Rosaviatsia, will likely lead to the closure of the carrier, with creditors such as Sberbank and Alfa Bank set to bring bankruptcy proceedings against the carrier.
The airline has confirmed it will add two further long-haul destinations to its network from spring 2016 with a three times weekly offering to Fukuoka in Japan and a four times weekly link to Guangzhou in China from its Helsinki Airport hub.
The latest update of the airline’s inventory for 2016 shows the cancellation of any future bookings for the Port of Spain – London Gatwick route with effect from January 12, 2016. This would mean the last flights on the three times weekly route will operate from the Caribbean on January 9, 2016 and from the UK on January 10, 2016.
The Star Alliance member will launch a four times weekly link between Chengdu’s Shuangliu International Airport and Charles de Gaulle Airport in the French city from December 12, 2015. It had previously planned to introduce the route from January 28, 2016 and initially scheduled to operate just three weekly frequencies.
As part of its profitability strategy, SAS is turning to regional partners to more efficiently feed its hub airports through the operation of smaller capacity aircraft into lower demand markets. It already has arrangements in place with Cimber Air and Flybe using a mix of Bombardier CRJ900 jets and ATR turboprop equipment.
The reciprocal bans have the potential to hit both nations' already struggling economies, reroute flights across a large part of Europe and lead to further economic disentanglement between the neighbouring states. Latest data from the World Bank's shows Ukraine's real GDP was expected to fall by over 7 per cent, making Russia and Ukraine the world's two worst-growing economies.
The news that Norwegian has selected the Irish regional airport to launch new transatlantic links to Boston and New York in 2016 and 2017, respectively, was unexpected and showed how the airport is working with local partners and the world’s airlines to develop enhanced global connectivity.
Faro Airport is located in the Algarve, in the southwest of Europe, and provides access to a growing market of airlines and destinations, currently operating to 69 destinations in 15 countries. Famous for providing access to the sustained leisure travel market of the Algarve, Faro Airport is also the gateway to the coastal city of Huelva, another important Spanish tourist destination.
The new route to Paris will commence in May 2016 and will supplement the existing London route operated by rival carrier, American Airlines. The daily flight will launch on May 12, 2016 and will be operated using a 164-seat Boeing 757-200ER in conjunction with the airline's joint venture partners Air France, KLM and Alitalia.
