low-cost

Air France management can certainly breathe a sigh of relief. Its Boost project, i.e. the launch of a low-cost airline which was one of the cornerstones of its Trust Together growth plan, has received the backing of its pilots. On 20 February, 58.1% of them voted in favour of its creation, for a total of...

It was a predictable little revolution, but in 2016 the low-cost carrier Ryanair finally became Europe's leading airline with 116.8 million passengers, overtaking the Lufthansa group (Lufthansa, Swiss, Austrian and Eurowings) with its 110 million passengers. The third carrier to reach the 100 million passenger mark in 2016 was the IAG group, made up of...

Who could have imagined a few years ago that a low-cost carrier would add a helicopter transfer service to its range of services? Yet this is the latest news from easyJet on the French market. It is the official announcement of an agreement with Monacair for the...

In 1988 - just over 25 years ago - Nantes airport was handling just one million passengers. It wasn't until 2005 that the two million passenger mark was reached. Since then, in the space of a decade, Nantes has multiplied its traffic by 2.5. Last year, the airport managed by...

Singapore Airlines, through Budget Aviation Holdings - its subsidiary which manages its low-cost airline division - will streamline its offering under a single brand. Tigerair will merge these activities with Scoot, SIA's other low-cost subsidiary, keeping only the latter's name. While Tigerair was concentrating on...

WOW air is strengthening its service between Paris CDG and Reykjavik. From 27 March 2017, the Icelandic low-cost carrier will switch to twice-daily service from Paris in March 2017, with an additional flight taking off in the evening. Other routes to London Gatwick and Amsterdam Schipol will also see their frequency increased to two daily flights. This switch to...

The refreshing thing about the English language is that effective, 'impactful', even terribly marketing neologisms flourish all year round. In the hit parade of new start-ups in the business travel category, bleisure has featured prominently for several months now, if not a few years. This clever contraction of 'business' and 'leisure' sums up the mix in eight letters...

Were you surprised by the results of the study on bleisure that Transavia has just published? Hervé Kozar - Yes, we were surprised by the results, which are very instructive. Business travellers from small companies and start-ups have adopted a different behaviour. When I mentioned bleisure, I was thinking of the...

With 1.83 million passengers a year, Salzburg is Austria's second busiest airport, behind Vienna. The hub, located just a few kilometres from the border with Upper Bavaria, is set to quickly reach the two million passenger mark thanks to the creation of a Eurowings base. The arrival of the low-cost carrier will boost traffic...

First there was the Scandinavia-Thailand route, with Norwegian Air - which serves Bangkok from Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm; then Cologne-Bangkok and Cologne-Phuket with Germany's Eurowings. Next year, it will be the turn of Scoot, a subsidiary of Singapore Airlines, to take the plunge and land in Athens. Lee Lik Hsin, CEO of Budget Aviation Holdings...

Until now, Switzerland has been one of the few countries at the heart of the European continent not to belong to the European Union. On the other hand, the Helvetic Confederation is aware of its dependence on the EU, as the country shares common borders with four EU countries, not to mention economic exchanges with the EU. In 2014, 55%...

A new airline alliance has just been created in Asia. On Monday 16 May, the CEOs of eight Asian low-cost airlines signed an agreement to found Value Alliance, the first model of its kind for the low-cost air transport segment. Modelled in part on the major alliances...

Can HOP! Air France be considered a hybrid airline? Hélène Abraham - I don't know what a hybrid airline means. According to the Larousse definition, hybrid means "composed of disparate elements". Air France-KLM's short-haul business in France is made up of disparate elements for its fleet - 100 aircraft ranging from the ATR 42 to...

At the end of an eventful 2015, marked both by the terrorist attacks and - internally - by its transformation into a rail company, Thalys is entering 2016 with new ambitions. The carrier is introducing a new low-cost service, called IZY, to face up to the growing competition on the Paris-Brussels route, while taking care...

Singapore Airlines' acquisition of a 90% stake in Tiger Air marks a turning point in the SIA group's strategy to win back the Singapore market. While Singapore Airlines had been losing market share to Gulf carriers for several years, and especially to low-cost carriers, the multi-brand strategy initiated in 2006 with the acquisition of Tiger...

In Paris (+3%) as in the provincial airports (+3.3%), the growth of French airports led to a record year last year: 181 million passengers were welcomed in 2015, according to the annual results of the Union des Aéroports Français. However, the industry association is calling for this performance to be "put into perspective", given the figures...