Romanian low-cost airline Blue Air has started its new direct service between Stansted Airport and Bucharest.
Blue Air said return flights will start from £1.50 excluding tax, and will operate twice daily on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
“‘This is a new direct link and is the first of a number of new route launches set to start from here this month,'” Nick Barton, from Stansted, said.
source: BBC
Low cost airline Ryanair will launch its new daily service from December 13th 2007, seeing the number of routes from Cork rise to six.
“‘We are delighted to announce these two new daily flights to East Midlands and Glasgow from Cork. This expansion will see Ryanair carry over one million passengers on its six routes from Cork in 2008,'” commented Ryanair head of communications Peter Sherrard.
source: Travelbite.co.uk
To offer fares as low as $1 on some flights, Spirit must fiercely control costs, which can lead to understaffing. Tight cost control helped Spirit turn a profit from operations of $22 million in the first half of 2007, following three straight years of losses. However, Spirit’s strategy appears to wager that consumers dazzled by ultra-low fares will overlook reports by passengers unhappy with its service.
source: CRM Buyer
Zoom Airlines has largely been flying under the radar screen of the big transatlantic carriers for the past couple of months, since it began its attempt to bring its own brand of low fares to the crowded London-New York market.
The latest upstart to seek to carve out a living in this lucrative but highly competitive route launched its initial once-a-day service between London Gatwick and New York JFK in June with relatively little fanfare, but it has big ambitions.
source: MSNBC
Spirit Airlines is No. 6 in the nation for the number of passenger complaints about service in August, as total complaints nearly doubled, transportation officials said.
The 88 complaints lodged against the Miramar-based low-cost airline were primarily related to refunds, baggage issues and flight problems. Spirit made up 6.5 percent of the total complaints, the Air Travel Consumer Report showed.
The rate of on-time flights at the nation’s 20 largest airlines was 71.7 percent in August, down from 75.8 in August 2006, the report showed.
source: South Florida Business Journal
Travel giant Tui Travel could dump its TUIfly.com low-cost airline brand, the firm’s finance director said on Wednesday.”‘The simple answer is yes it is being reviewed (TUIfly branding),'” Paul Bowtell told analysts and reporters.
“‘I think it’s clear for all to see that that decision, together with incremental capacity in that source market in 2007, hasn’t been successful,'” he added.
The firm is currently in the middle of a strategic review and is to detail it decisions by January.
source: Reuters
UK-based airline easyJet said it will invest 600 mln eur to create two new bases in France by 2011, at the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris and the Lyon-Saint-Exupery airport in Lyon.
It expects passenger traffic from France to rise from 8 mln passengers in 2008 to 12 mln in 2011, by which time it will have 80 destinations.
source: Hemscott
Air Berlin is to end its twice-daily flights from Glasgow to Stansted – with onward connections to the German capital, Dusseldorf, Leipzig, Nuremberg, Munster, Hanover and Paderborn.
A spokeswoman said: “‘Our last flight will be on October 31. The doubling of the air passenger duty made our UK domestic hub operation commercially difficult.'”
source: Evening Times
The launch of low-cost airline Virgin America Inc this year has triggered a fare war that has nearly halved ticket prices on some routes and could erode earnings at rival airlines.
The competition has been especially fierce between Virgin, which is partly backed and fully branded by British entrepreneur Richard Branson, and UAL Corp’s United Airlines on the transcontinental route between San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
Low-cost carriers JetBlue Airways and Southwest Airlines also have been drawn into a turf war with Virgin and responded with capacity additions and fare cuts.
source: Reuters
Iberia Lineas Aereas de Espana SA’s 20-pct owned Clickair’s chief executive Alex Cruz said the low cost unit will lead its competitors in terms of passenger volume at Barcelona’s El Prat airport by the end of November.
Speaking at a conference to celebrate Clickair’s first anniversary, Cruz said the airline aims to increase its market share in El Pratt from 13 pct at the end of August to around 15 pct at the end of November.
source: Forbes
