15th June 2010
New routes launched during the last week
(Tuesday 8 June – Monday 14 June):
The United States dominated the world’s route launches this week, which is detailed in our top story, but a major political breakthrough for flights between Taiwan and mainland China resulted in three airlines launching the same route. The total of 65 new routes involved 60 airports in the US, followed by Germany, China, Spain, the UK and Italy, each with four to six airports featured. Read all about it and see the fantastic photos, including rock stars and three national football teams.
Here it is: Analysis, pictures and trivia on over 130 new routes that have started during the last seven days, involving over 40 airlines. Sorry if we’ve missed any. Please let us know and we can include them next week.
We found 15 airlines who this week took the plunge and started (or in some cases re-started) new routes. These include new domestic services in Australia, Russia and the USA plus international routes involving Brazil, Croatia, Germany, India, Italy, Malaysia, Morocco, Netherlands, Panama, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Ukraine, USA and Venezuela.
Things are starting to calm down a bit as we move into the peak summer season period. But we still found airline starting over 30 new routes this week including Air Arabia Maroc, AirAsia Indonesia, Armavia, Blue Air, China Eastern, easyJet, firefly, flydubai, Levriero Fly, Lufthansa, Ryanair, Turkish Airlines, Volaris, Wind Jet and Wizz Air. 
Nearly 40 new routes identified this week from airlines including Air Arabia Maroc, airberlin, AirTran, Allegiant Air, B&H Airlines, bmibaby, Cimber Sterling, easyJet, Finnair, Germania, Germanwings, Jet2.com, jetBlue, Oren Air, Transavia.com, TUIfly.com and US Airways.
A slightly quieter week this week but still another 20-plus routes were launched by Air Arabia Maroc, Air Canada Jazz, AirTran, B&H Airlines, Cebu Pacific, Flybe, germanwings, Kingfisher, S7, Southwest, Sun Country, Ural Airlines, US Airways, WestJet, Wizz Air Ukraine and Zambezi Airlines. Four of these routes are to a new US airport which shares its name with the boss of a global airline brand. 
Morocco has a new low-cost airline. With two A320s the airline launches routes to four countries in the next fortnight. Who will be its main competitors on the selected routes and how many other routes might it start with its existing fleet? 
Recession? What recession? The world’s airlines unleashed another 70-plus new routes this week featuring Aegean Airlines, Air Arabia Maroc, Air India Express, Air Malta, airBaltic, airberlin, Air Transat, Allegiant Air, Austrian, Blue1, Cebu Pacific, China Eastern, easyJet, El Al, Etihad, Flybe, Flyglobespan, Germanwings, GOL, Helvetic, Iberia, Intersky, JAT Airways, Jet2.com, LOT, MyAir.com, Northwest, Norwegian, Ryanair, TAAG Angola Airlines, Turkish Airlines, VLM and WestJet. We have photos! 