Wizz Air made its debut in the Romanian market in July 2006 when it introduced flights to Tirgu Mures from Budapest and now offers flights from eight Romanian destinations comprising, Arad, Bucharest Henri Coanda, Cluj-Napoca, Constana, Craiova, Iasi, Sibiu, Tirgu Mures and Timisoara covering 95 routes to 15 different countries and offering more than two million annual seats from the country.
Ahead of this year's World Routes forum, Routesonline is providing another look at our series of articles on the leading airlines and airports and most used aircraft types across regions of the world last year. Here we look closely at the airports of Eastern Europe and highlight the region's top performers.
Under the terms of the deal, which will run for an “at least five year” period, Small Planet will initially base four Airbus 320s in Cambodia between November 2015 and March 2016 to fly tourists into Siem Reap from China and South Korea. Last winter the Eastern European ACMI provider had placed two of its aircraft with Sky Angkor in a pre-cursor to this long-term partnership.
The airports, including Newcastle, Birmingham and Bristol have commissioned new research into the costs of devolving APD, which states that without policies to mitigate the effects of APD cuts in Scotland and Wales, English regional airports could see their passenger numbers fall by around 2.2 million by 2025.
The latest update of the airline’s inventory for the winter 2015 schedule shows that Qatar Airways will introduce an additional two weekly flights (Fridays and Sundays) on the route from December 1, 2015, while a further weekly rotation (on Tuesdays) will be added from December 15, 2015.
The return to Shanghai highlights the continued importance of the Chinese market to the leading European carriers and the high value attached to its outbound market in particular. The airline previously served the Chinese city between April 2004 and January 2007 but stopped the flight as part of the redimensioning of the airline’s long-haul fleet and the decommissioning of its Airbus A330 and A340 long-haul fleets.
Caribbean Airlines is reportedly poised to exit the long-haul market completely to concentrate on services to the US and Canada. The UK flights have been in operation for three years but have failed to make money in the face of competition from established UK carriers.
Like many UK airports, Liverpool John Lennon Airport has had a strong 2015 and recorded its seventh consecutive month of growth during August, with year-on-year passenger growth of 7.24 per cent. Total passengers for August exceeded 470,000 with increases in available seat capacity and strong load factor performance contributing to the impressive growth this year.
AirBridgeCargo’s new link to Singapore establishes the first dedicated freight link between Changi International Airport and the Russian capital and will further strengthen the Asian gateway’s connectivity to Russia and beyond. The airline is offering a twice weekly service on the Moscow – Singapore – Hong Kong – Moscow routing using a Boeing 747-8F.
The surprise announcement this week, driven by the country’s ongoing financial crisis, has been approved by the Russian Government and will continue the recent airline consolidation in the country which has already seen Aeroflot take over a number of its regional rivals.
The airline, which supports seat-only and package holiday demand between the UK and destinations across Europe, the Mediterranean and into North Africa, is believed to have secured significant discounts to take late production aircraft ahead of Boeing’s transition from ‘Next-Generation’ to ‘MAX’ series production.
Ryanair will initially position a single Boeing 737-800 at Milan Malpensa from December 1, 2015, its 15th base in Italy. The new resource will enable the carrier to introduce a twice daily link to London Stansted and daily operation to Comiso as well as a four times weekly service to Bucharest and three times weekly offering to Seville during the winter 2015/2016 schedule.
The type is debuting from this month on the Incheon – Frankfurt route with a three times weekly rotation on the KE905/906 flight from September 2, 2015, replacing a 777-300ER. This will increase to a daily deployment from October 1, 2015.
August has seen a number of start-up carriers taking shape across the world, including South African carrier, Fly Blue Crane, and Air Costa Rica which is set to launch later this year
Emirates currently operate three daily flights to the German city, two of which are currently operated by a Boeing 777-300ER while the other is serviced by the Airbus A380 jumbo jet.
Delta and Virgin Atlantic are showing that their anti-trust immune joint venture across the Atlantic is yielding new routes that previously may not have been viable.
In the first semester of 2015, passenger growth was up by a further 1.4 percent, while a number of new routes have also been added to the airport’s growing destination map.
This will be the airline’s fourth route from Liverpool, and will complement Flybe’s existing services to the Isle of Man, Belfast City and Amsterdam which commences on September 7, 2015.
The new route will be operated by the group’s Air Iceland subsidiary and will run four-times-weekly on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, operated by Bombardier Q400 aircraft in two-class configuration.
The flag carrier and largest airline of Finland will commence services to Billund, Edinburgh, Svalbard and Pula next year for its summer 2016 schedule.
Eurowings, as part of the ongoing fragmentation and restructuring of Lufthansa’s long-haul offering, will introduce widebody Airbus A330 aircraft on 12 October 2015 from Cologne and Hamburg to Palma Mallorca.
Icelandair will launch new nonstop service between Keflavik International Airport in Reykjavik and Montreal’s Pierre Trudeau International Airport on 19 May, 2016.
