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Low-fare carrier Spirit Airlines said Thursday its traffic in August climbed 2.4 percent. Revenue passenger miles, which equate to one mile flown by one paying passenger, increased to 393.9 million from 384.6 million last year.

Ben Baldanza, president and CEO of Spirit Airlines, said, “This increase in passengers is a testament to Spirit’s popular service both in the Caribbean and in the US including new service to Boston’s Logan International Airport which began in August. Advanced bookings continue to be strong into the fall and I’m delighted to share that as of this week Spirit’s fleet transition is complete making it an all-Airbus airline with the youngest Airbus fleet in the Americas.”

Spirit Airlines, with hubs in Detroit and Fort Lauderdale, offers service to 29 cities in the United States, the Bahamas and the Caribbean.

source: chron.com

Southwest Airlines Co., Ryanair Holdings Plc and the world’s other low-cost carriers have doubled capacity in the past four years, OAG Worldwide, a travel and transportation data provider, said.Low-cost carriers are offering 46 million seats on more than 323,000 flights this month compared with 22 million seats on 169,000 flights in September 2002, Dunstable, England-based OAG said in an e-mailed statement today.

Budget airlines now account for 17 percent of all seats on sale worldwide. Discounters have been taking market share from network carriers since Southwest cut costs, slashed prices and increased demand in the U.S., and Ryanair adapted the model to the European market.

source: Bloomberg

Two major low-cost airlines, Ryanair and Easy Jet, have received the go-ahead from the Maltese government to operate new routes to the Mediterranean island.

Accepting incentives worth some $3 million a year to operate year-round services, Ryanair will within eight weeks be offering a daily service to Malta from London’s Luton airport and a thrice-weekly flight from Pisa, Italy.

CanJet Airlines, a four-year-old company that has tried to muscle business from Canada’s two big carriers, is grounding its scheduled service, blaming high fuel costs, rising landing fees and stiff competition, it said Tuesday.The move by CanJet, a unit of privately held IMP Group Ltd., leaves a gap in domestic flight services, especially in Atlantic Canada, and represents the latest in a series of failed attempts at establishing major discount carriers.

source: USA today

Ryanair shrugged off the cancellation of 265 flights last month to post a 23% increase in the number of passengers in August. The low-cost airline carried just over 4 million passengers, up from 3.3 million in the same month last year, as it benefited from new routes and more frequent flights from Dublin, Liverpool, Nottingham and Pisa. Ryanair was one of the hardest-hit airlines when the government imposed emergency security restrictions at airports last month, forcing it to cancel hundreds of flights from its Stansted base.

source: Guardian

GOL Linhas Aereas Inteligentes, Brazil’s low-cost, low-fare airline, yesterday began operating daily flights to the city of Ilhes, in southeast Bahia. The new flights will operate on the Sao Paulo (Guarulhos) – Ilheus – Salvador route.

Located 458 km from Salvador, Ilheus is the most important city in the Costa do Cacau region of Bahia. The city, which is over 470 years old, has been the setting of several novels by the renowned Brazilian author Jorge Amado (1912-2001), for whom Ilheus’ airport is named. Main attractions include the city’s beautiful beaches and Atlantic Forest Reserves. Last year, the number of passengers flying to and from Ilheus was approximately 238,075, a 13.1 percent increase over 2004.

source: PR news wire

An U.S. airline set to enter the low-cost travel market next year from a hub in Columbus, Ohio, has started looking at prospective airports. Skybus Airlines, run by a former partner in IBM Corp.’s travel consulting practice, hopes to fly to up to 25 cities in the United States starting next March.

It will model itself after European low-cost leader Ryanair, the company says. Skybus seeks to undercut discount rivals, such as Southwest Airlines, by offering “ultra-low fares,” says Chief Executive Officer Bill Diffenderffer.

Ryanair is to allow passengers on its flights to use their mobile phones from the middle of next year.
The low-cost operator will equip its fleet with the OnAir onboard mobile communication system. Passengers wanting to use the service will be charged standard international roaming rates. Passengers will be able to make and receive calls, exchange SMS messages and connect to email via satellite broadband links and a ground network to be supplied by OnAirâ??s telecoms infrastructure partner, Monaco Telecom.
source: VNUnet

Low-cost airline EasyJet  stepped up the challenge to Spanish carriers like Iberia on Thursday by naming Madrid as a base for domestic flights and a hub for southern Europe.

The airline is already the second biggest international carrier to Spain behind Iberia, shuttling 7.5 million people there last year, and from mid-February 2007 it will operate domestic flights from Madrid’s Barajas airport.

EasyJet, which is recruiting new pilots and cabin crew for the Madrid operation, said it would announce new routes in September. It already flies from Madrid to five airports on the European mainland and four in Britain, and from 11 other Spanish airports.

source: Reuters

The airline industry across the world is making progress in delivering non-fuel cost efficiencies, International Air Transport Association (IATA) airline business confidence index for June has stated.

This is despite the confidence in airline business shrinking considerably since March this year in the wake of 25% increase in the fuel prices over the period.

Amidst soaring prices, nearly 45% of the players have managed to reduce total input costs over the past three months and nearly 60% expect to witness no change or lower total input costs over the next year.

source: Financial Express