Low-cost airline Zoom will offer daily flights from London to New York from June 21, with prices starting at £129 one-way, the budget carrier announced today.
Zoom has been operating from UK regional airports to a number of Canadian destinations for three years. The airline has been given permission to operate from Gatwick as an official UK carrier to the US alongside British Airways and Virgin Atlantic.
India’s Jet Airways said on Thursday it had agreed to buy Air Sahara for INR14.5 billion rupees (USD$340 million), about 34 percent cheaper than an earlier deal it had abandoned.
The price includes INR5 billion that Jet had paid its smaller rival last year as a bank guarantee pending an acquisition, as well as INR4 billion that Jet will pay on or before April 20, said Harish Salve, a legal counsel for Jet.
The balance will be paid in equal, interest-free annual installments from March 2008 to 2011, he told reporters.
source: Airwise
The Polish low-cost airline, Centralwings, has commenced a new scheduled flight between Shannon and Katowice. It has also introduced a new, twice-weekly service from Cork to Warsaw.
Prices start from 4.99euro each way, excluding one single fixed passenger charge of 24euro,.89 cent which includes tax. There is a 20 per cent discount for children aged between 2 – 16 years old, and infants under the age of two, travel free.
source: limerickpost.ie
Irish low-cost airline Ryanair Holdings PLC seeks to transport 9 million passengers in Spain this year, Sinnead Finn, the company’s head of sales and marketing for Europe, said Wednesday.
Ryanair began operations in Spain in 2002 and now operates 127 routes out of 19 Spanish airports. Last year, Ryanair upgraded Madrid to a base airport and added regional flights from the Spanish capital. Ryanair also uses Girona, in northwest Spain as a base airport.
Competition among low-cost carriers in Spain has heated up recently, after U.K. carrier EasyJet PLC, Ryanair and Spain’s Vueling Airlines SA have increased flights and added new destinations.
source: Marketwatch
Budget airline Norwegian Air Shuttle had 100,000 more passengers this March, an increase of 28 percent compared to this time last year.
Norwegian expanded its routes last year, and its eleven new routes from Poland have pulled the results down.
On domestic flights Norwegian has had a 77 percent cabin factor, up one percent point from March 2006. The cabin factor on Norwegian’s international flights fell two percent points, to 78 percent, largely due to unfilled flights to and from Poland.
source: Aftenposten.no
AirCell has announced early details about AirCell broadband for business aviation. AirCell broadband is an exclusive new highspeed data system set for release early next year.
AirCell broadband will offer business aircraft operators true high-speed connectivity at a cost, weight, and complexity that is substantially lower than any system available now or in the foreseeable future. It is based on the same proven technology that drives the newest generation of ground-based mobile wireless devices.
source: shephard.co.uk
Flights between London and New York could be a third cheaper following the Open Skies Agreement struck by regulators in the US and Europe. The deal, announced last month, throws open the door on unlimited airline competition for flights between Europe and the US from March 2008. Its effects are already being felt as speculation mounts about a takeover offer for BMI.
Deregulation of transatlantic flights will trigger a fierce marketing battle on business routes from Heathrow to New York. Meanwhile, small operators will line up to launch a new round of leisure services from London to US cities and prices will be pushed down. The established players will not take this lying down.
However, observers say that deregulated Open Skies across the Atlantic are unlikely to lead to the sort of rock-bottom prices seen in Europe from no-frills operators such as Ryanair and easyJet, triggered by the deregulation of European airspace in the early 1990s.
source: Marketing Week
A man hijacked a Turkish airliner carrying 180 passengers and crew on Tuesday but gave himself up to authorities after it landed in Ankara.
Anti-terrorist police took the man away from the jet at Ankara airport, the Anatolia news agency said.
News reports said the man had wanted the plane to go to Iran.
source: turkishpress.com
Low-budget airline easyJet has announced that passenger numbers rose by 12.3 per cent during March.
According to today’s figures, 3.1 million people flew with the airline last month, compared to 2.8 million in March 2005.
But despite the significant increase, easyJet’s load factor, the proportion of seats being filled on their flights, fell by 1.9 percentage points to 84.4 per cent.
On a 12-month rolling basis the no-frills airline added that passenger numbers went up by 11.7 per cent to 34.5
source: clickajob.co.uk
American Airlines, the world’s largest airline, says it can boost revenue by $94 million a year by tailoring some of its services to the growing number of women travelers.
The airline, a unit of AMR Corp., this week unveiled a version of its Web site for women (http://www.aa.com/women). The site aims to increase the number of women booking flights on American by 2 percent or more, said an AMR executive on Tuesday.
source: Reuters
