Sterling to expand at Malmo

Sterling will launch five new routes from Malmo next year, including flights to London (Gatwick), Alicante, Barcelona, Florence and Nice. These flights will begin from the end of March 2008.

Also from 30 March, Sterling will begin flying from Copenhagen to Murcia and Valencia, and from Stockholm (Arlanda) to Florence, Rome (Fiumicino) and Murcia.

Tickets are available to purchase for these new flights at www.sterling.dk.

Wizz Air to open base at Poznan

Wizz Air will begin flying four new routes from Poznan from 31 January 2008. This will make Poznan a base, bringing the number of routes they operate there to 7. The new routes will include flights to Doncaster, Glasgow (Prestwick), Malmo and Oslo (Torp).

Three new routes from Katowice

Wizz Air continue to expand their operation at Katowice with the announcement of three new routes. From 29 May 2007 they will fly daily to London (Stansted). From 14 July they will fly to Malmo and from 02 October they will fly to Brussels (Charleroi) (both three times per week).

Ryanair modifies flights from Marseille

Ryanair will add new routes from Marseille from 17 January 2007. They will begin flying from Marseille to Malmo, Hamburg (Luebeck) and Gothenburg (Saeve), but have removed from sale all of their flights from Marseille to Morocco. They have also removed Moroccan flights from Frankfurt (Hahn), but will launch a route from Frankfurt (Hahn) to Malaga in January.

Wizz Air to launch new Gdansk flights

Wizz Air will add two new routes from Gdansk in mid-July 2007. They will begin flying between Gdansk and both Malmo and Doncaster.

FlyMe to launch nine new routes

Scandinavian low-cost airline FlyMe will launch nine new Swedish routes from March 2007. These include flights from Malmo to Nice, Alicante and Bologna (Guglielmo Marconi); Stockholm (Arlanda) to Rome (Ciampino), Alicante, Nice and Lulea; Gothenburg (Landvetter) to Bologna (Guglielmo Marconi) and Athens.

Ryanair expansion at Madrid airport

Ryanair will make Madrid their 18th European base, and from 22 November 2006 will begin flying 14 new routes. They will begin flying to Dublin, Shannon, Eindhoven, Faro, Oporto, Marseille, Paris (Beauvais), Billund, Brussels (Charleroi), East Midlands, Oslo (Torp), Bournemouth, Gothenburg (Saeve) and Malmo.

This expansion at Madrid may come as a surprise, given that only 2 weeks ago easyJet announced that they would expand their operation from Madrid from February 2007.

Massive Ryanair expansion at Girona

Ryanair will add 17 new routes from their Girona base in February and March 2007. These new routes include flights to the Canary Islands and North Africa, with flights to Tenerife (North), Fuerteventura and Marrakech. They will also add flights to other European cities, including Bristol, Newcastle and Durham Tees Valley in the UK, Oporto and Faro in Portugal, Trapani, Bologna (Forli), Pescara and Verona (Brescia) in Italy, Gothenburg (Saeve) and Malmo in Sweden, Aarhus (Denmark), Oslo (Torp) (Norway) and Altenburg (Germany). Flights are on sale now.

Wizz Air to connect Malmo and Kaunas

Wizz Air will launch a new route between Malmo and Kaunas on 27 March 2006.

Ryanair to launch 16 new routes from Dublin

From April 2006, Ryanair will base 5 new aircraft at Dublin airport and will launch 16 new routes. They will also increase flight frequencies on 8 other routes from Dublin.

The new routes from Dublin will include Kaunas, Bratislava, Krakow, Wroclaw, Poznan, Malmo, Gothenburg, Venice (Treviso), Milan (Orio al Serio), Salzburg, Oporto, Valencia, Marseille, Nantes, La Rochelle, Hamburg (Luebeck) and Karlsruhe-Baden.

Ryanair will also launch a flight between Dublin and Humberside, which will become the first low-cost route from Humberside airport.

Wizz Air moves in on Kaunas

Wizz Air will launch a route from Warsaw to Kaunas on 01 December 2005. Following a similar model to their recently announced new route to Sofia, they are offering flights to Kaunas from 6 additional airports.

Wizz will offer connections to Kaunas from London (Luton), Paris (Beauvais), Stockholm (Skavsta), Dortmund, Liverpool and Malmo (Sturup). This will involve a change of aircraft at Warsaw (and collection and re-checking of baggage).

While airlines are aware that many passengers may ‘unofficially’ transfer from one flight to another, perhaps interchanging at a major hub such as London (Stansted), most of the low-cost carriers do not endorse this behaviour for cost-saving reasons. Wizz Air appear to be embracing it, and it will be interesting to see how this area of their business develops.

Wizz Air to make Kaunas a base?

Following the announcement by Ryanair a few weeks ago that they would begin flying from London (Stansted) to Kaunas in Lithuania, it is highly likely that Wizz Air will begin operations there.

7 new routes from Kaunas are suggested, including London (Luton), Paris (Beauvais), Stockholm (Skavsta), Warsaw, Dortmund, Liverpool and Malmo (Sturup). We await an official announcement and details of launch dates.

Wizz Air quietly scraps new routes

We reported in July that Wizz Air would launch new routes on 15 September 2004. It seems they will still launch many of those routes, but today routes from Malmo to Gdansk and Katowice disappeared without trace. These routes were due to begin on 15 September.

This isn’t the first time that Wizz routes have disappeared from their schedule prior to their launch without any official announcement.

Wizz Air expansion

The Hungarian budget airline Wizz Air have revealed a number of new routes which they will begin flying from 15 September 2004. These include Warsaw to Dortmund, Brussels (S. Charleroi) and Malmo. In fact, Malmo becomes a new hub for Wizz, also with new flights to Katowice, Budapest and Gdansk. In addition, they have announced a new route from Budapest to Milan (Orio al Serio).

It also seems that Wizz’s planned route from Prague to Budapest has also been cancelled without a trace of information.

In line with other budget airlines, Wizz have raised their hand luggage allowance to 10kg, currently putting their hand luggage limits on a par with Ryanair, but not as large as easyJet’s ‘as much as you can carry’ policy.