Routes Update

Since Etihad Airways commenced daily flights between Abu Dhabi and Melbourne in March 2009 the airline has carried more than 900,000 passengers on the route.

The airline has witnessed significant growth, operating to a total of 260 destinations worldwide, 217 of which are international, and 43 domestic.

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.

QantasLink has announced it will start flying to Whyalla next year, on South Australia’s Spencer Gulf coast commencing April 13, 2015.

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.

bmi Regional has flown more than double the amount of charter flights this year in comparison to 2013.

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 route, which will operate year-round from June 25, 2015, will allow Central New Zealanders to fly directly to Fiji.

In its documentation filed with the US DOT, Air Busan said it “might in the future offer service with other airplanes from its fleet, adjust its proposed service patterns, and introduce service to other points in the United States, including Hawaii and the US mainland”.

The team at Routesonline and all Routes and UBM staff would like to wish season's greetings to all our colleagues and friends in the aviation business

Delivering on a brand promise of “a world class flying experience” Vistara is the first full service carrier in India to introduce a ‘Premium Economy’ class to the domestic market. It will configure its A320s in a 148-seat arrangement with 16 seats in Business Class, 36 in Premium Economy and 96 in Economy Class.

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.

A few months ago, a story was released about a British man who flew a staggering 18,478 miles in just five days to earn a British Airways Gold Card.

This week voting for the second regional heat of the 2015 Routes Awards opened, two months earlier than in previous years, and airlines from within

Regular attendees of Routes’ events will be familiar with the paper based Extra Meetings System which is available to all delegates attending the

In a record year for Routes events we review the highlights of 2014 and look ahead to 2015 and beyond

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.

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.

With the additional flights, Qatar Airways will now have four early morning departures connecting via Doha to Europe and the Americas and four early evening departures connecting to flights in the Asia Pacific region. A mix of morning and evening flights means convenient connections for passengers from Salalah to key markets in the Qatar Airways’ route network of 146 destinations.

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 deployment of the Super Jumbo will take effect from May 1, 2015 and will mean that alongside its partner Qantas, a total of seven daily A380 services will operate from Dubai to Australia from next summer.

Its latest growth for the first quarter of 2015 will see another three destinations added to its route map, further expanding the carrier’s footprint to 89 destinations in 46 countries. These comprise flights to Hargeisa (Somaliland), Chennai (India), and Nejran (Saudi Arabia).

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.

US major, United Airlines is to operate additional flights to Shanghai and Chengdu from the airline’s hub in San Francisco, during the peak summer travel season. The announcement comes in the same week as a report by OAG, which considers a China-US open skies agreement.

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.