As of May 1, passengers can fly direct between Toronto and Dusseldorf, Germany. Lufthansa, one of the world’s largest air carriers, is offering service to Dusseldorf six times a week, allowing passengers the convenience of 35-minute connections to more than 50 popular European destinations including Barcelona, Budapest, Moscow, Munich, Paris and many others.
source: Aviation.ca
With flights to India driving its growth, Nordic carrier Finnair is adding one more flight to India in June, even as it awaits permission from the government to add more destinations in addition to Mumbai and Delhi.
“‘Currently we have 12 flights a week between India and Helsinki. By June, we will fly daily from New Delhi and six times a week from Mumbai,'” Taina Tornstrom, the director for Indian subcontinent for the airline, told reporters.
Bangalore and Chennai are some of the Indian cities that Finnair is keen on starting new services to. The airline is also tapping the traffic to Europe from India, with Helsinki as the base.
source: The Economic Times
From July, the airline will operate twice-weekly flights to Toronto departing on a Monday and Wednesday, with the weekly flight to Vancouver departing on a Thursday.
The summer programme has started offering a full scheduled service with fares from as low as £329 return including all taxes to Toronto and from just £429 return including all taxes to Vancouver.
Lori Burke, marketing manager of Zoom Airlines, said: “We are delighted to be doubling our frequency out of Cardiff to Toronto this summer. The increase year-on-year in passenger numbers since we first started operating from Cardiff in summer 2005, has been exceptional.
source: icnetwork.co.uk
The first ever direct flights between Edinburgh and New York were launched today.
Delta Air Lines will start the year-round service connecting the Capital to John F Kennedy airport from tomorrow.
UK commercial director Armin Venencie said: “‘We are delighted to offer our customers from Scotland the opportunity to fly nonstop to New York, the world’s largest travel market and leading financial centre.'”
source: Scotsman
clickair and Germanwings will make selected flights between their respective countries available to each other’s passengers following the ratification of an online marketing agreement. The partnership is aimed at increasing the number of destinations offered on their respective websites.
Effective immediately, passengers browsing clickair’s website for flights from Barcelona to Germany can select clickair’s own destinations (Frankfurt, Berlin and Munich) but also Stuttgart and Cologne, whereupon they are redirected to Germanwings’ website to complete the transaction.
source: Peanuts!
British travellers already thinking twice about flying to Europe this summer as the falling value of the pound cuts into their travel budget received more bad news yesterday with indications that the era of cheap flights may be drawing to an end.
Soaring fuel costs have put airlines under financial pressure which, analysts say, will inevitably be passed on to passengers through increased ticket prices, fuel surcharges and baggage check-in fees. The warnings follow a wave of airline bankruptcies in the UK and the US, and crippling oil price rises which have seen the cost of fuelling a transatlantic flight quadruple since 2000 to $44,000 (£22,100). The pressure on the airlines has been most acute this year as the global oil price rose from $80 a barrel to nearly $120.
source: Guardian.co.uk
Scandinavian airline group SAS AB on Tuesday posted a first-quarter net loss of 1.08 billion kronor (euro115 million; US$181 million ), citing higher fuel costs and growing competition, and said it would slash 1,000 jobs to reduce costs.
The result was down from a net loss of 18 million kronor in the first quarter of last year.
Sales in the first three months of 2008 rose to 12.83 billion kronor (euro1.37 billion; US$2.15 billion), from 11.89 billion kronor in the same period last year, SAS said.
“The negative earnings trend we experienced in November and December last year continued in the first quarter of 2008,” Chief Executive Mats Jansson said.
source: Forbes
Ryanair today raised the cost of putting bags in the hold and checking in at airports as the high cost of oil forced airlines to scrabble for extra revenues.
Passengers on Europe’s largest budget carrier will have to pay £16 per bag for a return trip and £8 to use a check-in desk per return journey from next Monday, amid widespread fears for the financial health of the aviation industry.
The cost of fuelling aircraft has soared this year as the global oil price has climbed from around $80 a barrel to nearly $120. Fuel accounts for a quarter of airline budgets and the resulting financial squeeze has triggered a wave of bankruptcies on both sides of the Atlantic, amid warnings from some analysts that major carriers could go to the wall or be forced to merge with rivals in order to survive.
source: guardian.co.uk
A senior American Airlines executive said on Tuesday that London’s Heathrow was the worst airport used by the company in Europe.
Don Langford, head of customer services Europe for the airline, said its base at Terminal 3 had suffered from a lack of investment and was “‘a bit of a dump'”.
“‘I would have to say that Heathrow is in many ways the worst of all the airports that my company flies to in Europe,'” he told the BBC.
source: Reuters
Budget airline flybe, formerly known as British European, today signed an order for £520 million worth of new planes, some of which will be based at Edinburgh.
The contract, with Bombardier Aerospace of Canada, involves 17 firm orders for Q400 turboprops and an option to take a further 20, making it the largest aircraft deal signed so far this year. The first of the planes will arrive in June this year, with the other 16 over the next three years.
source: Evening News
