This week: Emirates firms Dreamliner and A350 orders; Gulf Air and SpiceJet sign cooperation agreement; Norwegian hires a new CEO; Air Astana puts faith in Max jets and more.
The return of KLM into London City comes at a time that capacity on the Amsterdam route is at its highest level. Amsterdam continues to be a hugely popular route for the airport, last year seeing a six per cent of passenger growth and becoming the second busiest route in terms of passenger numbers.
The Highlands and Islands make up half of Scotland’s land mass of 15,000 square miles and are home to a tenth of the country’s population. Regular, hassle-free access to the world from airports like Inverness is vitally important to the increasingly young and entrepreneurial population who live and work there. Half of inhabitants are under 44 and the region is home to 21,000 businesses, according to Highlands and Islands Enterprise.
KLM will introduce a daily service to Valencia from its Amsterdam Schiphol hub, its first flights on the city pair since May 1993. These will initially operate on a twice weekly schedule from April 23, 2016 but will revert to a daily operation from May 16, 2016. The route will be flown using mainline Boeing 737-800 equipment.
Dubbed the E175+, the variant KLM ordered has a different winglet to the baseline aircraft to increase fuel efficiency. Embraer revealed in March 2014 when the first aircraft was rolled out that the winglets and other streamlining for the mid-generation upgrade would help to keep the aircraft competitive until the next-generation ‘E2’ models enter service in 2018 and which will reduce fuel burn by 24 per cent versus the original aircraft.
The carrier will introduce new scheduled services from Amsterdam to Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK; Krakow, Poland and Montpellier, France from May 18, 2015 with flights to be operated by its KLM cityhopper regional business.
