Welcome to another news-based episode and the very first video covering notable routes!
The content here is based on a weekly newsletter written by Simple Flying’s own route development
analyst, James Pearson. If you’re interested in getting this free weekly summary too,
you can sign up through the link in the description!
As always, if you want to check out other videos covering recent news,
you’ll find them in our main channel playlist called “Simple Flying Summarizes,”
or Long Haul playlist titled “News summaries”.
With all of that out of the way, let’s look at a few notable routes
that have recently launched or resumed in the past few weeks!
Sweden’s largest airport, Stockholm Arlanda, now has three additional long-haul routes.
Between October 22nd and 24th, Finnair launched Bangkok, Miami, and Phuket,
each operated twice-weekly by 336-seat A350-900s.
Bangkok and Phuket have direct competition with Thai Airways, while SAS serves Miami.
Prompted by depressed demand to core Asian markets from Helsinki, Finnair has redeployed aircraft to
fly from Stockholm instead. Los Angeles is joining the trio of routes this month
and New York JFK in December. Bangkok, JFK, and Los Angeles were chosen because of gaps
left by the exit of Norwegian, together with SAS to Los Angeles (which ended in 2020).
Meanwhile, Phuket and Miami are popular winter destinations for Scandinavians.
Next up, Manchester to Barbados has a new operator:
Aer Lingus UK. The first departure took place on October 20th and marked the start of the airline's
long-haul service from the Northwest England airport. Using the carrier's sole A330-300,
the flight runs on Wednesdays and Sundays, with a Friday service this month.
October 24th marked the start of Austrian Airlines from Vienna to Cancun – the carrier's
new longest route. Operating on Thursdays and Sundays, it will use the 777-200ER.
Flight OS95 leaves the Austrian capital at 10:40 and arrives in Mexico 12-and-a-half hours later
at 17:10 local time. Returning, OS96 departs at 19:05 and returns at 11:30 the following
morning. It is the first time in almost 15 years that the carrier last served the Mexican resort.
Düsseldorf welcomed back Emirates' A380s on October 23rd after last serving the German airport
in March 2020. The double-decker is currently operating six-weekly but will very shortly rise
to 10-weekly. Come December 1st, it will run twice daily, the same frequency as in December 2019.
Emirates has served Düsseldorf for many years. Since 2004, the A330-200,
A340-300, 777-200ER, 777-200LR, 777-300ER, and A380 have all operated this route.
The A380 was first used in July 2015. In 2019, about 315,000 people
transited Dubai to/from Düsseldorf, with Thailand as the largest country market.
Three months after beginning Singapore to Berlin via Athens with fifth freedom rights,
Scoot launched Singapore to Berlin non-stop on October 20th. It was last operated non-stop
between June 2018 and March 2020. Interestingly, the three non-stop flights a week will coexist
with the four one-stop services, offering a total of seven-weekly flights to the German capital.
It has been a long time coming, but finally Australia's international borders have reopened
as of November 1st, with multiple long-haul flights landing in the country on the big day.
This move is primarily for Australian citizens and permanent residents, but crucially,
no quarantine is required on arrival. The first flight to touchdown at Sydney was
SQ227 from Singapore, which landed at 05:21. It was followed by QF12 from Los Angeles and
JL51 from Tokyo Haneda. At Melbourne, the honor went to SQ237 from Singapore,
which touched down at 10:10. In 2019, Singapore Airlines was the
largest foreign airline to serve Australia. The Star Alliance member and other carriers
will benefit from the Australia-Singapore travel bubble that comes into effect on November 21st,
meaning that fully vaccinated Singaporeans may travel to Australia quarantine-free.
Moving on to Qatar Airways, Moscow Sheremetyevo is now served by the carrier from its hub in
Doha. The Moscow airport has replaced long-served Domodedovo, which entered the airline's network
in September 2004. Qatar Airways operates Doha to Sheremetyevo seven times-weekly.
Moving over to Muscat, the Omani capital now has two airlines serving it from Paris CDG.
This follows Air France commencing the 3,470-mile (5,585km) service
on October 24th with three weekly flights using the 279-seat 787-9. This frequency is one more
than Oman Air's current offering, although both carriers will be thrice-weekly in December.
Air France is presently routing to Muscat via Dubai,
but non-stop on the way back. This will revert to non-stop in both directions from December 18th.
Muscat hasn't only welcomed Air France in the past week. On October 31st, it also received the
first flight of Wizz Air Abu Dhabi from, well… Abu Dhabi! Now operating thrice-weekly using 239-seat
A321neos, the short 237-mile (381km) route leaves the UAE at 06:35 and returns at 09:30.
Wizz Air competes directly with Etihad and its lower-cost affiliate, Air Arabia Abu Dhabi.
Looking ahead to the first week in January, Wizz Air and Air Arabia
will still have three flights apiece, but Etihad will move up to 14 times-weekly.
Over in Canada, Montréal to Delhi has launched, with Air Canada operating
the 7,017-mile (11,293km) link three times-weekly using 298-seat 787-9s.
The type is its most common widebody, with 30 fully-flat business seats.
Booking data shows that Montréal-Delhi had ~41,000 round-trip point-to-point passengers in 2019.
It's not often the A340-300 is used nowadays, but that is what happened when Swiss leisure
operator Edelweiss launched Zurich to Muscat and Phuket, both running twice-weekly.
The 3,178-mile (5,114km) link to Muscat leaves Switzerland at 13:15 and arrives at 22:45.
It then departs Muscat at 01:50 the following day, and returns at 06:15.
SWISS operated the route (via Dubai) for many years until 2020. Oman Air will resume Zurich
twice-weekly service from December 1st, rising to once-daily from the start of summer 2022.
Moving to an Indian airline, Vistara has inaugurated its Delhi to Paris CDG service,
with France's main airport becoming the airline's third route across Europe this winter,
joining London Heathrow and Frankfurt. Operating on Wednesdays and Sundays,
the service uses the 299-seat 787-9, with 30 seats in business, 21 in premium economy,
and 248 in regular economy. Vistara is one of three airlines
on the airport-pair, joining Air France (four-weekly) and Air India
(three-weekly). In 2019, Delhi-CDG had almost 225,000 round-trip point-to-point passengers.
Next up, Budapest has welcomed the relaunch of Jet2 from Manchester, a route the carrier
has operated since January 2005. Served on Mondays and Fridays using 737-800s,
a third-weekly service will operate on December 23rd in time for Christmas.
Manchester competes head-to-head with a five-weekly Ryanair offering.
In 2020, Budapest’s Christmas Market was voted the most beautiful in Europe. It’s not
much of a surprise that Jet2 will also have Christmas flights from Leeds and Newcastle
to Budapest in December, while another route (Birmingham) will resume in March.
Over in Latvia, ultra-low-cost carrier Ryanair has opened its new base in the capital city of Riga.
The airline will base two 737-800s there but it’s just one of multiple new bases for the carrier,
joining the likes of Agadir, Billund, Stockholm Arlanda, Treviso, and Venice Marco Polo.
This winter, Ryanair has 33 routes from Riga, more than double the 15 it had in winter 2019.
It has 857,000 seats from Latvia’s capital,
half airBaltic’s volume, for a 30% share of the airport’s total. London Stansted, Berlin,
Dublin, Milan Bergamo, and Stockholm Arlanda are the ULCC’s top-five routes out of Riga.
Finally, New York JFK to Delhi now has service by another operator: American Airlines.
With seven flights a week, 777-300ERs are used with 304 seats,
including eight first-class seats and 52 in business.
Between these cities, American competes directly with a three-times-weekly Air India service.
In 2019, the market was the largest between the US and India, with 253,000 round-trip passengers.
Well, as usual, we weren’t able to cover everything in this video,
or go into as much detail as we would have liked. But as with
all of our videos, there’s a more detailed corresponding article on SimpleFlying.com.
Check out the links in the description to learn more- and, as always,
share your thoughts on this video and any of the new routes we covered, by leaving a comment!