Routesonline looks back at an eventful second half of 2017 which included the 23rd World Routes taking place in Barcelona, the failures of Monarch and Air Berlin, and Airbus' A380 celebrating a decade of commercial flight.
Balázs Bogáts, head of airline development at Budapest Airport, explains how thinking out the box helped to secure routes to the US and outlines the Hungarian airport's future long-haul ambitions.
It was believed that Air China, one of the ‘Big Three’ in the country, was considering taking a considerable minority stake in LOT Polish Airlines. The Eastern European carrier has now denied this, claiming that any link with the Chinese carrier would be “simply commercial cooperation.”
The forthcoming UK Brexit vote should be used by the European Union (EU) as an opportunity to have an entire rethink over the political bloc’s problems. Speaking at the Routes Europe 2016 Strategy Summit, in Kraków, Poland, LOT Polish Airlines CEO Rafal Milczarski said he believed the UK’s voters will decide to stay in the EU on June 23. However, even if the decision is made to keep things the same, he urged Brussels not to treat it as a vindication of the current set up.
The aviation sector in Poland plays an important role in the country’s economy and its network connectivity is unrecognisable today to that when the country joined the European Union in 2004, around 15 years after the end of communist rule. Routesonline investigates how point-to-point connectivity has helped put the country’s developing regional cities on the network map.
The Polish flag carrier will introduce two additional weekly frequencies to both Chicago and New York from late October 2016 as it aims to become the leading carrier in New Europe (Central and Eastern Europe).
It has been a massive couple of years for LOT as it continues its restructuring to return the Star Alliance member to sustainable profitability. Its future was effectively safeguarded last summer when the European Commission formally approved its restructuring plan and ruled the PLN 804 million (around €200 million) of state aid granted to the carrier lawful in terms of the provisions of EU legislation.
Every month Routesonline provides an update on the current schedules of five latest aircraft programmes, highlighting the routes the types are being deployed upon.
The SkyTeam alliance member will debut the aircraft on a weekly service to New York from April 12, 2015 and will also deploy the aircraft on a three times weekly route to Montevideo from April 13, 2015. The arrangement will enable the carrier to offer an enhanced service on both routes, while it will support the Polish carrier’s over capacity as it continues its business restructuring.
LOT has been in financial difficulties for several years, reporting significant losses and negative equity, but in 2013 it recorded for the first time in five years a net profit of PLN 26 million, instead of almost PLN 200 million loss envisaged in the Restructuring Plan presented to the European Commission. This was its first annual net profit since 2007.
