Prior to the pandemic, Central Europe’s four busiest airports were Warsaw WAW (18.9 million passengers in 2019), Prague (17.8 million), Budapest (16.2 million) and Bucharest (14.7 million). According to ACI Europe figures they ranked 36th, 39th, 41st and 46th among all European airports. Three of them had grown by around 6% versus 2018, while Budapest […]
October 7, 2022 | Airlines, Airports, Europe, News & Analysis, Top Story
Romanian carrier Blue Air suspended operations starting on Wednesday 7 September after its bank accounts were frozen by the Romanian government. The airline says it will resume service on Monday 12 September and flights are still bookable on its website from that day forward. The airline launched scheduled services on 13 December 2004 with flights […]
September 8, 2022 | Airlines, Europe, News & Analysis, Top Story
Located in the north-east of Romania, close to the border with Moldova, Iasi Airport is dominated by Wizz Air. The pan-European carrier is currently offering non-stop flights to over 20 destinations from the airport, generating over 70 weekly departures according to Cirium schedule for August. TAROM has 25 weekly flights (all to Bucharest). Blue Air, […]
July 21, 2022 | Airlines, Airports, Europe, News & Analysis
Blue Air (IATA code 0B, not to be confused with La Compagnie which is B0) added two more routes from its main base at Bucharest on Saturday 16 April. The two new destinations are both in Portugal; Porto and Funchal (on the island of Madeira). The 3,910-kilometre Funchal service will operate weekly throughout the summer. […]
April 26, 2022 | Latest Route News +
Romania’s state-owned flag-carrier TAROM continues to operate, despite, according to local sources, not having generated a profit since 2007. According to planespotters.net, the SkyTeam member currently has 26 aircraft, 12 Boeing 737s (four -800s, four -700s and four -300s), four Airbus A318s, six ATR 72s and four ATR 42s. Of these, 10 are currently not […]
March 17, 2022 | Airlines, Airports, Europe, News & Analysis, Top Story
There are several ‘rules’ that have defined how Europe’s low-cost carriers operate. These include high aircraft utilisation and no night-stopping of crews. To satisfy both of these rules that has usually meant trying to operate three return flights (or six sectors) in a day, airport curfews permitting. As a result, you might imagine that the […]
January 14, 2022 | Airlines, Europe, News & Analysis, Top Story
In the last four weeks, we have identified 67 new routes involving European airports. These were started between 11 September and 8 October. A total of 28 airlines had something to celebrate with Wizz Air leading the way with 24 new services, nine of which were from its recently opened base in Naples. In total, […]
October 12, 2021 | Airlines, Airports, Europe, News & Analysis, North America
During the last couple of years, some €40m Euros has been spent on refurbishing Milan Linate Airport. In 2019 the airport was completely closed for three months while the runway was rebuilt and since then there have been major improvements to the airport’s only terminal building, creating a brighter and more open environment for passengers. […]
October 8, 2021 | Airports, Europe, News & Analysis
Italy welcomed almost 193 million passengers through its airports in 2019, making it Europe’s sixth busiest country for air traffic demand after the UK (300m), Spain (275m), Germany (248m), Turkey (209m) and France (201m). Last year traffic fell by 73% to just under 53m with pre-pandemic traffic in January and February accounting for 44% of […]
October 5, 2021 | Airlines, Airports, Europe, News & Analysis
Blue Air began a new 4-weekly service between London LHR and Nice on Thursday 16 September, although frequency is only 2-weekly until the beginning of October. The inaugural service on the 1,040-kilometre route (flight number 0B 4131 operated by one of the airline’s recently delivered Boeing 737 MAX 8s, registration YR-MXB) departed Nice at 14:31 […]
September 20, 2021 | Latest Route News +
Romanian-based Blue Air started flying as long ago as 2004, the same year that Wizz Air began operations. However, while Wizz Air has a growing fleet of almost 150 aircraft (with orders placed for over 200 more), Blue Air’s fleet currently stands at just 18 aircraft according to planespotters.net. That includes four 737 MAX 8s […]
September 16, 2021 | Airlines, Airports, Europe, News & Analysis
Romania’s Blue Air has targeted Milan LIN airport for growth this summer. Having launched domestic service to Catania on 16 August and international service to Barcelona also on the same day, on 23 August it launched operations from the downtown Italian airport to Paris CDG. The inaugural flight on the 645-kilometre route (flight number 0B […]
September 1, 2021 | Latest Route News +