If you attended this year's Routes Europe look out and see if you can see yourself on our event highlights video, if you didn’t then sit back and watch as three days of meetings and networking are condensed into just three minutes.
The Rt Hon Patrick McLoughlin MP, Secretary of State for Transport, declared the extension to London Southend Airport’s terminal officially open on April 7, 2014, while the airport was actively seeking to further expand its network at the Routes Europe forum in Marseille, France.
At lunchtime today the forum will be officially handed over to Aberdeen City and Shire, the host of the 2015 event, at a ceremony that is due to be attended by Lord Provost of Aberdeen George Adam, Aberdeenshire Provost Jill Webster and Aberdeen International Airport managing director Carol Benzie.
Pau-Pyrenees Airport in southwest France hopes to take advantage of the strong business flows within its catchment and the obvious yield benefits that offer to secure new direct air connectivity.
WestJet Airlines continues to study the introduction of widebody aircraft into its fleet, but an executive of the carrier revealed in this year’s Routes Europe Strategy Summit in Marseille, France that the carrier has never been closer to formalising a deal.
It has been a tough few years for the airport, Hungary’s largest air gateway, following the collapse of national carrier Malev in February 2012, but the past year, during which it hosted the previous Routes Europe forum, has seen it continue to back fill the lost capacity and introduce links into new markets.
Passenger traffic at Dublin Airport is continuing to grow faster than the European average, building on its strong performance during 2013. Passenger numbers at Dublin are outpacing the total European average and are significantly ahead of the average for airports within the European Union.
Routes Europe 2014 kicked off with the hard-hitting Strategy Summit in Marseille on April 6, 2014. The motto of the day could be described as “plus ca change”, as around 20 high-level speakers from Europe and beyond attested to constant change in all parts of the aviation and tourism industry.
This year’s Routes Europe was formally launched in Marseille, France yesterday afternoon by an enlightening keynote address by Frédéric Gagey, chairman and chief executive officer, of European flag carrier, Air France.
As we enter the second century of commercial aviation, after the first commercial flight on January 1, 1914 between St Petersburg, Florida and Tampa, there are signs that in Europe the aviation market is about to enter a period of sustained growth, with not only positive capacity increases, but also respectable levels of traffic growth.
Dublin Airport will have 850,000 extra seats available this summer, a five per cent increase in capacity compared to last year. A total of 15 new services, comprising 12 short-haul routes to continental Europe and new long-haul routes to San Francisco, Toronto and St. John’s, Newfoundland will begin in the summer season.
Delegates at this year’s Routes Europe were able to take the opportunity to tour Marseille on a touristic train yesterday morning prior to the opening of the event.
More than 3.48 million people passed through Aberdeen International Airport in 2013, beating the previous record high of 3.43 million in 2007, before the economic downturn. But, the airport has no plans to rest on its laurels but use this as a platform for further development.
Air Serbia, the national airline of Serbia, has reported positive developments for the five months since its launch in October 2013, outlining network and fleet growth and the creation of new jobs in Serbia.
Air France last week introduced a new three times weekly link between its Paris Charles de Gaulle hub and Brasília International Airport in Brazil’s capital city. The service commenced on March 31, 2014 and is operated by a Boeing 777-200 equipped with 309 seats.
