The route announcement comes eight years after Ryanair pulled out of Cardiff Airport after it ended an at least daily service from its Dublin headquarters in May 2006.
OAG’s analysis of which airlines will be taking Europeans on holiday this summer is outlined in its OAG FACTS (Frequency and Capacity Trend Statistics) report for May 2014.
Building on the momentum from last year, when 17 new destinations where added to the network, the airline has further cemented its commitment to enhance connectivity between different cultures.
The Abu Dhabi-based airline’s first Airbus A380 will operate commercially to London Heathrow from December 2014, while its first Boeing 787-9s will debut on routes to Düsseldorf from December this year and then to Washington DC and Mumbai from January 2015.
UK leisure carrier Thomas Cook Airlines is to launch new long-haul links to the United States from London Stansted, Manchester and Glasgow as part of its expanded summer 2015 programme. The long-haul growth will be supported by a major investment in upgrading its Airbus A330 fleet to offer a much higher level of comfort to Transatlantic passengers.
The confirmation of the return of the route will now place the carrier in direct competition with its local rival Air Europa which inaugurated its own operations between Madrid and Montevideo in June 2013 just three months after Iberia ended its flights.
The airline’s first flight as an alliance member departed the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo to the Kuala Lumpur hub of oneworld partner Malaysia Airlines on the morning of May 1, 2014.
Brussels will be Emirates’ 147th destination. The non-stop service will be operated by a Boeing 777 in a three-class configuration. Emirates will be the first international airline to offer a First Class product from Brussels to the Middle East and Asia.
The move to introduce these routes is part of the UK’s largest tour operator’s strategy to ensure customers across the UK can fly from their local airport. There are also frequency increases enabling customers more choice and the ability to book a mix of seven, ten, eleven or 14 night holidays rather than the existing week and fortnight options.
Cambridge is one of the UK’s fastest growing economic cities but its close vicinity to Stansted Airport means it has previously found it difficult to secure and sustain regular air services.
The first of 13 aircraft it has on order, Qatar Airways is set to receive three A380 aircraft in quick succession this summer and the new aircraft will commence operations on the ‘QR003’ and ‘QR004’ rotations to and from London Heathrow.
In its formal application for an Exemption and Foreign Air Carrier Permit, Dreamjet confirms it plans to offer an all-Business Class service between Paris and Newark from the second half of June 2014 but has plans to expand its transatlantic network and “possibly add flights” from other European cities in the future.
The majority of the eleven widebodies will be sourced from International Lease Finance Coporation (ILFC) and will enable earlier delivery slots than if they had been acquired directly from the manufacturer. The lessor will supply three A330-200s from 2014 and the five A350-900s in 2017.
The number of Northern Ireland residents using Dublin Airport increased by eleven per cent to more than 570,000 last year, growing about twice as fast as average passenger numbers at the airport.
As first revealed by The HUB at the end of last month, UK low-fare carrier Flybe is to inaugurate five new routes from London City Airport from the start of the winter schedules in late October 2014.
With this expansion Wizz Air will grow its Polish fleet to 16 Airbus A320 aircraft in the summer peak of 2014: five based aircraft in Gdansk and Katowice, four in Warsaw Chopin Airport and one aircraft in Poznan and Wroclaw.
European regional carrier Etihad Regional has launched a twice-weekly service linking Geneva in Switzerland, and Toulouse in southwestern France, its first year-round route to France from its Swiss base. The inaugural service, operated using a 50-seat Saab 2000 touched down at Toulouse’s Blagnac Airport at 4:40pm on April 17, 2014.
Irish budget carrier Ryanair has announced a new link between Paris Beauvais and Figari Corsica operating from June 2, 2014 to October 24, 2014, initially operating four times weekly, increasing to six times weekly in August.
