FlyMe expands outside Sweden

The Swedish low-cost airline, FlyMe, will launch 12 new routes from their base at Gothenburg (Landvetter) to a host of European destinations for the Summer 2006 season.

From 30 March, they will operate routes to Prague, London (Stansted), Alicante, Malaga, Palma (Mallorca), Rome (Ciampino), Crete, Rhodes, Amsterdam, Paris (Beauvais), Dusseldorf and Nice.

What is surprising about this announcement is that 5 of these routes are already operated by rival Scandinavian budget airline, Sterling.

Potential passengers may be interested to read the note on their site:

Be aware that we change our schedules regularly in order to adapt to the needs of our clients and to meet the current demand for departures.

This could be taken as an indication that they do not intend to launch all 12 of these routes, and will instead take bookings and decide which routes to axe (if demand is insufficient), maybe before they have even started. This was certainly a strategy employed by other emerging European low-cost airlines - for example Wizz Air.