The company’s inventory for its Thomson and all-inclusive First Choice businesses includes holiday packages from Bristol to Cape Verde, Cyprus and Egypt which will see Thomson Airways and its partners offer new links to Sal in Cape Verde, Hurghada in Egypt and Paphos in Cyprus.
The new service from Lufthansa’s hub in southern Germany will commence from January 1, 2015 and will provide fast and efficient access to the many nearby ski resorts. Whether it’s Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Zillertal, Kitzbühel, SkiWelt Wilder Kaiser-Brixental or other resorts in the Alps – as long as there is a helipad on site, customers will be able to choose their own destination.
United Arab Emirates (UAE) national carrier Emirates Airline is to introduce a third daily rotation on its route between Dubai International Airport and Birmingham Airport in the UK. The new flight, operated by a Boeing 777-300ER will commence from August 1, 2015, and opened for reservations earlier today (December 22, 2015).
The four times weekly Naples – Madrid route, flown by an Air Italy Boeing 737, has joined Bologna, Genoa and Geneva as new destinations to be served by Meridiana from Naples International Airport in the winter 2014/2015 schedule.
This will mark the return of direct flights into Asia for the Scandinavian flag carrier from Sweden’s capital city. In the past ten years it has previously offered links from Stockholm to both Beijing and Bangkok, the latter on a seasonal winter basis, but these were both suspended from spring 2009.
The predominantly leisure markets will be served by the new ‘Jump’ business of the carrier which will see Lufthansa CityLine fly up to 14 Airbus A340-300s reconfigured in a higher-density, three-class, 298-seat arrangement under the Lufthansa brand.
The low-cost carrier has announced new services from its Budapest base to Hurghada on the East coast of Egypt and Alghero in Sardinia, Italy, for the summer 2015 season.
Vietnam Airlines has opened reservations for its first Airbus A350XWB services this week. The airline will be the second operator of the new generation widebody airliner after Qatar Airways and plans to deploy the aircraft on its route between Hanoi and Paris CDG from the end of the third quarter 2015.
The new link will be the only scheduled international link from Lorient to the Mediterranean and will see the Irish carrier generate an estimated 18,000 passengers per year to Lorient, a seaport in the Morbihan department in Brittany in north-western France.
Norwegian will make its debut at Birmingham at the end of March 2015 with a three times weekly service from Malaga commencing on March 30, 2015 and a three times weekly route to Madrid following from March 31, 2015. The third route to Barcelona will follow from June 1, 2015 and will be flown on a twice weekly basis.
The North South Wales air service was established in 2007 and Linksair have been the aircraft operator on the route for the past two years on behalf of Citywing. It is now fully responsible for the route after being awarded a four-year contract to fly the route from the Welsh Government.
The Austrian low-cost carrier is to launch flights from Bratislava to Brussels and Palma in summer 2015 and to facilitate its new services will operate one of the shortest international flights in the world between its base in Vienna and the Slovakian capital.
The Government of the Azores has been working to protect local residents while creating conditions for the entry of new operators into the market, as they can generate added value to the region. For a long time flights from the Azores to both Lisbon and Porto have been restricted to being flown by local airline SATA and Portugal flag carrier TAP Portugal, both state controlled.
VLM will initially launch an up to twice daily link between Antwerp and Geneva from January 26, 2015, using a Fokker 50. The carrier will offer two flights every weekday on its 'launch' route with an early morning and early evening flight, particularly ideal for business travellers.
The SkyTeam alliance member will debut the aircraft on a weekly service to New York from April 12, 2015 and will also deploy the aircraft on a three times weekly route to Montevideo from April 13, 2015. The arrangement will enable the carrier to offer an enhanced service on both routes, while it will support the Polish carrier’s over capacity as it continues its business restructuring.
Our analysis of schedule data shows that the carrier has boosted its capacity from Spain’s second city over the past ten years from 112,650 departure seats in 2004 to 8.8 million in 2014. This has seen its share of departure capacity grow from just 0.6 per cent in 2004, when Iberia dominated operations, to a market leading 37.9 per cent in 2014.
