Low Cost Boom and Interesting News

I don’t know why but over the past couple of weeks, Germany seems to have all these new low cost airlines. Ryanair have a base at Frankfurt Hahn, Cologne/Bonn is to be the new base of Virgin Express, Hapag Llyod Express and Germanwings. Germania also operates low cost flights from Berlin Tegel to Cologne and Frankfurt.
Germanwings has announced that it will fly from Cologne to London Stansted, Barcelona, Berlin Tegel, Madrid, Milan Malpensa, Nice, Paris Charles de Gualle, Rome Fiumincino, Vienna and Zurich. Hapag Llyod (HL) Express has hinted to serve from Cologne to Milan, Dresden, Berlin and London. I wonder why 3 low cost airlines have decided to operate bases at Cologne?
Air Berlin has also announced plans for it’s City Shuttle budget airline with flights from Berlin, Dortmund, Paderborn, Dusseldorf, Munster, Hamburg and Nuremburg and will operate to London Stansted, Milan, Barcelona and Vienna.
In other low cost news, Norwegian have started their services from Oslo to Bergen, Tromso and Trondheim. Stavanger services will start next week.
GoodJet is rapidly expanding by adding new flights to Alicante from Oslo, Malmo, Gothenburg and Stockholm. It has also changed it’s operations from Stockholm Skavsta to Stockholm Arlanda. It also plans to start flights from Stockholm to Gothenburg and Malmo.
Back in England, easyJet have started their routes from London Gatwick to Alicante and Madrid. The merger with Go is still going through and they also plan to buy dba (Deutsche BA) – Another low cost airline operating German Domestic Services and Munich – Malaga services. A New route is to be flown from East Midlands to Geneva by easyJet.
Buzz is dropping it’s Rouen service due to poor loads and also it’s Grenoble to Toulouse route. Buzz is starting a new service to Amsterdam from London Stansted replacing KLM uk and is also reintroducing it’s winter routes to Chambery and Geneva. Jerez is also going to be served in Winter. Gerona is to remain a summer only service. Frequencies to Paris are increased to 5 a day, Frankfurt and Dusseldorf from 3 to 4 a day. There are also rumors of KLM merging buzz with the dutch low cost airline Basiq Air.
Ryanair is increasing frequencies with London Stansted to Milan Bergamo going from 2 to 3 times a day amd Rome Ciampino going from 3 to 4 a day. A new route is also being introduced from London Stansted to Strasbourg.Rumors are of Ryanair operating a new base in Sweden next year. Or maybe Denmark and Norway aswell?
bmibaby are still expanding with growing success at East Midlands and Cardiff and plans to open a new base next year – rumor being Glasgow.
As I said, the Go merger is still going through with easyJet and go have recently announced new routes from Bristol to Venice and East Midlands to Venice and Barcelona – more competition with bmibaby!
Air Lib Express in France is still going strong and has announced new services from Paris Orly to Mezt/Nancy, Lannion and Annency. Metz/Nancy is also being linked with new routes to Nice and Toulouse. These new flights are to be operated with ATR-42 aircraft.

I know some of this news may be a bit old but I thought it would be nice just to put it all together

regards
dan777