As part of the new plans flights will be available from Birmingham to Dubrovnik on Sundays and Split on Saturdays from May 3rd, from Exeter to Alicante, Dubrovnik, Faro, Malaga and Palma de Mallorca, and from Southampton to Alicante, Dubrovnik, Faro, Malaga, Palma de Mallorca and Split.
London Gatwick will also serve Aberdeen, Belfast, Guernsey, Inverness, Isle of Man, Jersey and Newcastle.
source: travelbite.co.uk
Spanish low-cost airline LTE says it is suspending services because it cannot cover the cost of operating.A statement on its Web site Friday says the 20-year-old company with bases in Palma de Mallorca, the Canary Islands and Milan, Italy is “‘doing everything to minimize the impact of this suspension of services on its clients and providers.'”
The company which runs flights from Spain to England, Italy and Saudi Arabia, has 300 employees and a fleet of seven Airbus 320s.
source: International Herald Tribune
Hungary-based budget airline Wizz Air has announced on Friday that it will open the London Luton – Kiev Boryspil route starting from 17 December 2008.
Wizz Air is the first low-cost airline to operate an international route to Ukraine.
The new service will initially be operated four times a week, going up to daily as of 28 March 2009.
source: Porfolio
German leisure carriers Air Berlin and TUIfly are in advanced merger negotiations, industry sources said yesterday.
The two carriers are understood to be undergoing due diligence by external auditors at this moment. Details of the planned combination ” which is likely to take place under the Air Berlin roof ” have yet to emerge and neither company is prepared to comment officially.
The sudden turn of events comes after separate and exclusive talks to combine TUIfly, Lufthansa affiliate Germanwings and Thomas Cook’s leisure carrier, Condor, failed. A merger of the three carriers would have created a third large German airline roughly equivalent in size to Air Berlin, but with financially powerful shareholders Lufthansa, TUI and Thomas Cook. The combination would also have taken the three airlines off their parents’ balance sheets, a move the three groups have been trying to accomplish for several years.
source: Aviation Week
Iceland Express, the low cost airline providing cheap flights to and from Reykjavik, has released its summer timetable for 2009. The new schedule sees the airline increase its destination list to include 19 major European cities.
Iceland Express passengers are already able to book cheap flights to Iceland from new destinations such as Cyprus, Geneva and Krakow.
source: IceNews.is
Ryanair was last night stunned to hear a Spanish court backed an online travel agent against its policy of only accepting flight bookings from its own website.
Yesterday, a court in Madrid sided with Spanish online travel website Rumbo, who in August applied for an injunction to prevent the low-cost carrier from going ahead with its plans to cancel flight bookings made through third-party websites.
Madrid’s Mercantile Court No 1 granted Rumbo’s application and has banned Ryanair from cancelling tickets booked by passengers through the Spanish website.
source: belfasttelegraph.co.uk
Budget airline Jet2.com is dropping its Belfast to Barcelona route, but is adding Croatia and Cornwall to its destinations.
The airline is ending the Barcelona service from 26 October due to competition on the route. Jet2.com said customers who have booked flights to Barcelona in 2009 would get refunds or a free destination change.
source: BBC
Low-cost airline Ryanair will allow mobile calls on its flights from next month, but users could end up paying £2 a minute.
The Irish carrier is launching a trial which will see 14 of its 166 planes fitted with the technology needed to enable mobile calls back to land.
But the development will come at a cost with OnAir, the company behind the in-flight calls, predicting a price of up to £2 a minute.
source: Metro.co.uk
EasyJet has scheduled additional flights to three holiday destinations next month following the demise of XL Leisure Group.
Extra flights have been added from Gatwick to Las Palmas, Gran Canaria; Dalaman in Turkey and Arracife in Lanzarote.
source: Travelmole
A senior official at Ryanair, the biggest discount airline in Europe, said Tuesday that the airline would ground more planes than usual as it prepared for a “‘very difficult winter.'”Howard Millar, the chief financial officer said he expected more carriers to go bankrupt in coming weeks as economies slow.
Millar said Ryanair would ground 14 aircraft at London Stansted airport, the Dublin-based airline’s main hub. That is twice as many as were grounded during the winter last year.
source: IHT
