New routes launched - Saturday 20 December - Friday 9 January

British Airways CityFlyer has begun weekend only flights from London City (LCY) to Lyon (LYS) aimed at the winter ski market. Saturday flights operate early in the morning while Sunday flights operate in the early evening. One of the airline’s Avro RJ 100s operates the service. British Airways now operates to around a dozen destinations from the airport.

Swiss niche carrier Helvetic has re-launched scheduled services from Zurich (ZRH) to the Macedonian cities of Ohrid (OHD) and Skopje (SKP). Both destinations will be served for the rest of the winter season with either one or two weekly flights operated by a Fokker 100. Helvetic had wound down its scheduled services to focus on charter flights but it is now re-starting a limited programme of scheduled services to niche destinations.

Last year’s “New Routes Champion” Ryanair appears determined to hang on to the title this year as well as it has launched over 20 routes in the last three weeks. Some 13 of these are weekly (Saturday) routes to ski destinations.
There are further weekly routes from Gothenburg Save (GSE) and Stockholm Skavsta (NYO) to Klagenfurt (KLU), and from London Stansted (STN) to Lourdes/Tarbes (LDE). There are also new thrice-weekly services between Alicante (ALC) and Palma de Mallorca (PMI), Stockholm Skavsta (NYO) and Krakow (KRK), Edinburgh (EDI) and Palma de Mallorca (PMI), and London Stansted (STN) and Basel (BSL). The Stansted to Basel route used to be operated by easyJet but they have chosen to drop their daily Luton and Stansted services in favour of a double-daily service from London Gatwick which started at the end of October. Finally, Ryanair has started another route from easyJet’s biggest base at London Gatwick (LGW) to Dűsseldorf Weeze (NRN). Flights operate daily.

Transavia.com has added two further ski routes to its winter network. Rotterdam (RTM) gets a new twice-weekly connection to Friedrichshafen (FDH) in southern Germany while Brussels (BRU) is linked to Salzburg (SZG), also twice-weekly.

Wizz Air starts the new year with six international routes all involving the Ukraine. From Kiev (KBP) the airline has started serving Cologne/Bonn (CGN), Dortmund (DTM), Katowice (KTW), Oslo Torp (TRF). Cologne/Bonn and Oslo are each served thrice weekly, Dortmund four times and Oslo just twice. Meanwhile, Wizz Air is also starting international services from Lviv (LWO) to Dortmund (DTM) and London Luton (LTN). Dortmund will be served thrice weekly and Luton four times weekly. With the addition of these two international routes from Lviv Wizz Air is now the leading airline at the airport with around 38% of scheduled seat capacity followed by Ukraine International Airlines with 24%.

Source: AnnaAero