This will be the only regular flight between the UK and Oakland International Airport, which is growing in popularity as an alternative gateway into the San Francisco Bay Area and certainly an ideal destination for low-cost, long-haul operators.
The market from Europe to Puerto Rico is currently massively underserved, with a significant percentage of indirect passengers already flying between the two markets. In the past 12 months this market size was an estimated 150,000 passengers, with 87 per cent having to travel indirect due to the current limited direct offering across the Atlantic.
The latest update of the airline’s inventory for the winter 2015 schedule shows that Qatar Airways will introduce an additional two weekly flights (Fridays and Sundays) on the route from December 1, 2015, while a further weekly rotation (on Tuesdays) will be added from December 15, 2015.
The airline will add two weekly rotations to the five times weekly Copenhagen – Shanghai route and a single additional flight on the six times weekly Stockholm – Chicago link from the end of October this year boosting its winter flight schedule between Scandinavia and the USA to 108 weekly departures and between Scandinavia and Asia to 50 weekly departures.
An additional ten airports worldwide have been added to the approved list of airports to offer preclearance facilities to passengers travelling to the US.
The route switch follows agreements earlier this year for SAS to dispose of two of its slot pairs at the heavily constrained Heathrow Airport for a combined positive earnings impact of $82 million. The first slot pair was sold to an unidentified carrier for $60 million, while the second was sold to Star Alliance partner, Turkish Airlines for $22 million.
Vueling’s latest uploaded schedules show the Airbus A321 entering scheduled service on July 3, 2015 operating a morning return rotation on the Barcelona – Nantes route. The same day the aircraft will operate from Barcelona to Brussels and back and then in the evening to Granada and back before operating an overnight flight to Moscow.
US major United Airlines is to switch its remaining transatlantic flights to Scandinavia to a seasonal offering after dropping winter services from its Newark Liberty International Airport hub to both Oslo and Stockholm from the start of September this year through to May 2016. The two routes are flown using Boeing 757-200 equipment on an up to daily basis.
The market from Europe to Puerto Rico is currently massively underserved, with a significant percentage of indirect passengers already flying between the two markets. In the past 12 months this market size was an estimated 150,000 passengers, with 87 per cent having to travel indirect due to the current limited direct offering across the Atlantic.
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.
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.
