Europe

The airline is expanding its operations from Spain, with new links from Barcelona, Madrid and Malaga.

The Spanish airline has announced 13 new routes and additional frequencies for its summer 2015 schedule.

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 airline has added an additional 20 routes to its schedule, including three from its new Amsterdam base.

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.

Both lower oil prices and an overall strengthening of worldwide GDP growth are the main drivers behind the improved profitability.

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 French premium start-up has reportedly announced a new route between Newark and London, to begin in March 2015.

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.

The frequency growth will see Qatar Airways boost capacity to Barcelona by 32.1 per cent in 2015, while total capacity into Spain will increase 30.4 per cent to almost 360,000 seats in each direction. According to MIDT data, the airline carried an estimated 458,000 passengers on its flights to and from Spain last year.

The airline has been offering a service on the Bogota – Barcelona route since June 2006. An estimated 76,000 passengers flew on the route in the first nine months of this year, up 10.1 per cent on the same period last year, with Avianca reporting average loads of more than 85 per cent.

Over the past ten years, Barcelona El Prat Airport has seen a substantial amount of growth in terms of its international market.

Barcelona is one of the most popular destinations in Spain, with a history among the oldest in Europe, and a sensational amount of culture. At the same time, it has a reputation for being a modern and cosmopolitan city, with a huge amount of shopping and nightlife.

Tenerife has taken on an active role in enhancing air connectivity to the island and Turismo de Tenerife, the official agency on the island responsible for promoting the island internationally as a premier leisure destination has highlighted air connectivity as one of key priorities within the growth strategy.

The Chancellor’s Autumn Statement revealed that Air Passenger Duty (APD) will be abolished for children under 12 from next May.

At Routesonline we've decided to take a look back at the news breaking the same week in previous years and revisit it one or two years later to see what’s happened since we released the news.

The new airline will operate under a revised Eurowings brand but will be flown under the air operator certificate (AOC) of SunExpress Deutschland using the latter’s cockpit and cabin crews. It will be based at Cologne/Bonn Airport and will initially launch operations from the end of 2015, serving destinations in Florida, Southern Africa and the Indian Ocean.

The airline initially announced 22 new routes, and has since added a further nine routes for its summer 2015 schedule.

The French low-cost airline has planned six new routes for its summer 2015 schedule.

Currently Blue Islands operate alternate day direct flights from Jersey to Amsterdam and Paris and twice weekly services to Zurich, which customers, especially the high yield business travellers that help support regional air links, find inconvenient.

The Luxembourg based cargo airline is expanding its services to Vietnam, with the addition of a second flight into Ho Chi Minh City, and a fourth frequency to Hanoi.

It appears that Qatar Airways will inaugurate scheduled passenger flights with its new Airbus A350XWB from January 15, 2015 on the Doha – Frankfurt route. The Gulf carrier, the launch customer for the next-generation airliner, has already revealed the German city would be the first destination for the aircraft, but it has yet to confirm when the flights will launch.