In the latest update of its 2017 flight inventory, Korean Air will introduce the 787-9 on its Seoul Gimpo – Jeju route between March 7, 2017 and March 25, 2017. The aircraft will serve the domestic link on a three times daily basis to ensure crew can secure required flight hours on the airframe ahead of its international debut.
In our regular Routes News series we take a look at the people that attend Routes events and find out more about them, their jobs and the current industry issues impacting them.
UK leisure carrier Jet2.com and its tour operator business Jet2holidays are to boost their activities out of their new at London Stansted Airport from summer 2017. Even before a flight has departed “phenomenal customer demand” has influenced the addition of a seventh Boeing 737-800 to its base fleet, an eight per cent capacity growth and the addition of four additional destinations to its inventory.
Barcelona seemingly has a good mix of the ingredients needed for IAG to make this new long haul low cost business work. It is a growing market in terms of demand and passenger flows are dominated by IAG airlines Vueling and Iberia providing a strong connecting feed into the long-haul operation to complement local traffic.
The new Singapore - Moscow - Stockholm flight will commence from May 30, 2017, subject to regulatory approval, and will be operated with a five times weekly frequency using Airbus A350-900 equipment.
Airbus launched the A380 a decade ago with high hopes for the rise of the super jumbo, but demand is dwindling. So what now for the future of the ultra-size market?
The new routes will connect the countries directly, boost bi-directional tourism and establish an important link for trade and business between Hungary, Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania, Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina. In compliance with the public service obligation rules, all five markets will be served on a twice weekly basis with flights commencing the first week of April 2017.
An announcement last month that LOT Polish Airlines will return its direct long-haul service between Kraków and Chicago from July 2017 after a seven year absence provides a fitting end to what will certainly be remembered as one of the most successful years in the airport’s history.
Having lived in the shadow of Icelandair’s effective European and North American network strategy since it launched services in 2012, WOW air has now exploded into the low-cost transatlantic market with a network that covers almost 30 destinations in Europe and North America. And having grown capacity by over 90 per cent in 2016, it expects to continue its rapid rise as the low-cost long-haul model continues to stimulate traffic across the Atlantic.
The airline has selected the Canadian-built airliner for its exclusive future short-haul fleet and will replace all its existing Boeing aircraft with 20 factory new CS300s by 2020. The aircraft will not just modernise the fleet and boost efficiency, but will also enhance the airline’s range of services, expanding into medium-haul markets from Riga such as Abu Dhabi, Almaty, Astana, Casablanca, Dubai, Marrakech and Tenerife thanks to its operating performance.
When British Airways first announced its plans to serve Leeds Bradford many observers so the decision as little more than as an avenue to protect the carrier’s pool of slots at the heavily-congested Heathrow Airport. However, the London Heathrow - Leeds Bradford route is currently among its best performing domestic markets with traffic up 18.4 per cent over the first ten months of 2016.
Melbourne was the original home for Qatar Airways in Australia, with the airline subsequently adding services to Perth, Sydney and Adelaide. With the growth from the original 777-200LR to the A380, the airline has actually doubled its daily capacity since the start of the route while retaining just the single flight rotation.
The airline, based in the French territory of Réunion in the Indian Ocean, is understood to be considering the launch of low-cost charter services via the European mainland into at least three US destinations. In its formal application the airline says these services will be operated using Boeing 777 and 787-8 equipment.
Around two million passengers a year fly between Australia and the UK (O&D demand for 12 months to October 2016) and the famous Kangaroo Route has been one of the most competitive air corridors in aviation history with tens of airlines competing for traffic via various points across Asia and more recently the Middle East.
This year’s summer schedule from Faro Airport was its largest ever with a massive 21.6 per cent increase in departure capacity versus summer 2015 and published schedules for next year already show a forecasted 2.9 per cent rise in departure seats on this year to over 3.5 million seats, with additional flights still expected to be added to airline flight inventories.
The budget airline has already established itself as the largest carrier in Italy and held a 22.8 per cent share of available capacity this past summer season, according to OAG schedule data. The airline’s arrival into the Naples market means that from the forthcoming summer season it will have a presence at all but one of the 14 largest Italian airports by capacity; its only exception being Linate Airport, the secondary international airport of Milan.
This will be the first time Cartagena will be linked non-stop to Europe in around ten years since AirMadrid offered flights from to the Spanish cities of Barcelona and Madrid back in the mid-2000s. Cartagena also successfully attracted flights from Italy with Blue Panorama Airlines at the start of this decade but these were purely on a charter basis.
European low-cost carrier Norwegian is set to open four new operational bases – two in the US and two in Europe – in 2017 to support the growth of its long-haul transatlantic network. The internal go-ahead for the expansion follows the final approval late last week by the US Department of Transportation for a foreign carrier permit for the airline’s Norwegian Air International business.
The European Commission has found that public funding granted by Austria to Klagenfurt airport is in line with European Union (EU) state aid rules, but as ruled that certain airport services and marketing agreements concluded between the airport operator and airlines Ryanair, Hapag-Lloyd Express and TUIfly gave the latter “an undue advantage”, which cannot be justified under state aid rules.
Data from air service development consultants, Airport Strategy & Marketing (ASM) suggests that British Airways is initially taking tentative steps into the New Orleans when it launches flights between London Heathrow and Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport next year. A demand forecast from the consultancy on the route shows expected demand outweighing available capacity from the day of launch.
The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) and the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) have joined forces and called on the UK government to lift the current ban on UK-based airlines flying to Sharm el Sheikh in Egypt. The move follows the successful reintroduction of regular flights to the Black Sea resort from other countries, including Germany and Russia.
The eight ‘new’ markets comprise Canberra, the airline’s fifth destination in Australia; Dublin, Ireland; Las Vegas, the airline’s eleventh destination in the United States; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Santiago, Chile; Medan’s Kualanamu International Airport, the airline’s third destination in Indonesia; and Tabuk and Yanbu, its ninth and tenth destinations in Saudi Arabia.
