Airline News - Europe.

Jun 25, 2007

Air France

Air France will launch a new twice-daily service between Birmingham and Lyon beginning September 3 this year, operated by a Britair Bombardier CRJ 50-seat aircraft. Air France already offers six daily flights from Birmingham to Paris Charles de Gaulle. With departures from Lyon at 09:00 and 15:25 and from Birmingham at 11:30 and 16:40, a day trip from France is practical. Due to the one hour time differences it is not possible in the other direction. Lyon is also served by British Airways from Heathrow and easyJet from Stansted. Jun 21, 2007

Air France

Air France has come back into Bristol with a three-times daily ATR 42 service following Flybe decision not to continue with the BA Connect flights. Air France competes with easyJet, whose twice-daily timings are more suited to the leisure market. Jun 21, 2007

Air France

Air France will launch a new twice-daily service between Birmingham and Lyon beginning 3 September this year, operated by a Britair CRJ 50-seat aircraft. Jun 20, 2007

CSA Czech Airlines

CSA Czech Airlines has a new fare structure that divides tickets into five categories featuring a variety of benefits and restrictions: Business Premium, Business, Economy Premium, Economy and Value Special. The new Economy Premium package offers free rebooking or cancellation, increased loyalty program benefits and the right to check in at business class counters. Jun 20, 2007

Finnair

Finnair increased Helsinki-St. Petersburg frequencies to 20-times-weekly thanks to the award of three additional flights covered by a codeshare agreement with Rossiya. It also flies daily to Moscow Sheremetyevo in cooperation with Aeroflot. Finnair CEO Jukka Hienonen recently said that there are 13 Russian cities with more than 1 million people that Finnair would like to serve if it can secure permission. "Of course we can't fly to all of them, and it still isn't easy for us to get more traffic rights into Russia," he said. Jun 18, 2007

Finnair, Finncomm Airlines

Finnair and Finncomm Airlines signed a codeshare agreement under which Finnair will place its code on Finncomm's service from Helsinki to Tallinn and eight domestic destinations. Privately held Finncomm carried 400,000 passengers last year. Jun 19, 2007

Flystar, Astraeus

Astraeus, the London Gatwick-based airline established in 2002, is a new scheduled-services brand and accompanying online booking engine has been launched. Astraeus, now majority owned by Icelandic interests. "Flystar" will be the name applied to the carrier's new and growing scheduled services operation. In the short term all aircraft will remain Astraeus branded but the Flystar name will become progressively more prominent across the fleet as scheduled services and online booking are rolled out. "Our initial destinations were to points in West Africa and the Middle East, which have proved tremendously successful - but more recently we pioneered the first direct UK services from London-Gatwick and Manchester to the Cape Verde Islands, and such was the take-up, that we introduced a second weekly flight, with plans to introduce services to a second island, Boa Vista, on July 10. Jun 22, 2007

Lufthansa

Lufthansa is returning to Frankfurt - Buenos Aires from Sunday 28 October after pulling off the route in February 2005. It will become the longest non-stop flight on the Lufthansa network with a scheduled time of around 13.5 hours. Jun 21, 2007

Spanair

Spanair announced a summer increase in its Canary Islands service including the following new weekly flights: Seville-Lanzarote, Bilbao-Fuerteventura, Seville-Fuerteventura, Santiago-Fuerteventura, Granada-Tenerife Sur and Pamplona-Tenerife Sur. During the summer it will operate 38 routes from 13 Spanish cities to five Canary destinations. Jun 18, 2007

Swiss European

Swiss European is also broadening its network this summer. Nonstop service to Salzburg was introduced on June 4, with Cirrus Airlines offering up to three flights a day under a codeshare agreement. And service between Zurich and Italy has also been expanded: Air One began offering daily codeshare flights to Naples and Catania at the beginning of May. Swiss European now operates its own nonstop services to 43 European destinations; and a further 16 points within Europe are served by Swiss in collaboration with codeshare partners. Swiss European is a brand of Swiss International Air Linbes. Jun 22, 2007

ZZ

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