Corporate Travel Analysis Reports For Europe/MEA

After a false start last year the tiny island of St Helena in the middle of the South Atlantic ocean will finally welcome its first scheduled air links next month when South African carrier Airlink introduces a new weekly flight connecting St Helena to both Johannesburg and the Namibian capital Windhoek. The long-distance flight will be operated using an increased gross weight version of the Embraer E190 seating 76 passengers (six in business class and 70 in Economy); the aircraft will also be used to add a monthly service between St Helena and the island of Ascension.

When a small island airport in the North Atlantic, serving a population of 50,000, says it is likely soon to overtake a mainland airport in the country of the governing Kingdom (and in its second biggest city, Aarhus) that is a clear demonstration of the island's growing popularity with visitors.

British Airways (BA) is introducing a new service called Premium Transfer Drive at London's Heathrow Airport to ensure that customers who are at risk of missing their connection are able to catch their onward flight. The new scheme applies to customers travelling on a UK domestic flight, who are connecting on to either a short-haul flight in Club Europe, a long-haul service in Club World (long haul business class) or First, or who are Silver or Gold Executive Club members.

While many European airports are having a purple patch right now Lisbon Airport's sustained growth, especially in 2016 and the first five months of 2017 is testimony to some of the benefits at least of privatisation.

The ambitious network growth strategies among the Gulf hub carriers - based on sixth freedom rights via their respective hubs - is continuing to drive capacity growth between Europe and the Middle East. The number of non-stop seats available between the two regions has almost tripled over the past ten years rising from 33.2 million in 2007 to 96.1 million this year, according to historic schedule data and latest flight inventories from OAG.

If you were to ask most people to point to Luxembourg on a map of Europe, many would fail to correctly identify the small land-locked country. Sandwiched between Belgium, France and Germany and just under 1,000 square miles (2,585 square kilometres) in area, it may be home to a population of just 600,000, but is among the wealthiest countries in the world when measured on a gross domestic product (GDP) per capita basis.

European flag carrier SAS Scandinavian Airlines has entered into a cooperation agreement with the management and board of Aarhus Airport in Denmark to introduce "a large number of international routes to European cities". The additional flights, which add to an existing link to Copenhagen and a seasonal leisure link to Malaga, will expand the airport's traffic by "more than 50%," boosting annual passengers beyond 500,000.

In the first of a regular new series, The Blue Swan Daily offers a capacity snapshot in time and looks at the month ahead to highlight some of the key network trends across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Asian carrier Cathay Pacific has confirmed an anticipated expansion of its European network, facilitated by the arrival of its new Airbus A350-900 airliners. The Hong Kong-based carrier is to introduce new direct links to Brussels, Copenhagen and Dublin in summer 2008, albeit it appears its recently launched flight to Dusseldorf may be dropped to support the revised network.

Further strengthening its already solid presence in China, Finnair has announced the opening of a new year-round route between Helsinki and Nanjing, China, becoming the second European flag carrier and third European operator to serve the second-tier market.