Yet again, mainstream aviation media has hyped the coming of new airlines from faraway places, with interviews of airlines that haven’t even obtained a license yet. As a matter of fact, mainstream aviation media interviews airlines that start up over a year later. The so-called 14 Latin American start-ups of 2021, turned to 0, as the only one that started operations (ITA, based in Sao Paulo, Brazil), has already been grounded for internal restructuring. A similar example is Canarian Airways, which started flying in July, but subsequently suspended operations a few days later, before restarting on November 11th.
However, some airlines did start operations, especially in Europe and the USA, but many of those were supposed to start up last year, such as Breeze Airways. And, yet again, the airlines that were supposed to have started up this year, are now predicted to start up next year. Similar examples, outside Latin and South America, include Yashodhara Air (Ramechhap and Pokhara, Nepal), whose launching of operations has been moved from 2022 to 2023, Green Air (based in Karlsruhe, Baden, Germany), whose launch flight from Weeze, north Rhine Westphalia, has been delayed from the beginning of next year to at least February 2022 and Gambian FlyWestAf, which was supposed to start in May this year, but from which we haven’t heard much since, apart from that it is envisioning an Algerian subsidiary too. These delays are, of course, interesting, as we know from the past that most planned carriers never begin flights. So why is it that they are created, if their objective isn’t to be an airline?… (food for thought).
On the more positive side, many carriers have started operations, such as ETF Airways, Fly Air 41 and World2Fly.
ETF Airways, which started in July, has been the sensation of the year, placing itself in the growing eastern European tourist market (to which Turkey and Western European is moving), having already carried more than 100’000 passengers, and concentrating itself in Dubrovnik. Although it is geared towards tourism along the Adriatic Coast, it began operations by flying between Pristina (capital of Kosovo/city in south-western Serbia) and Helsinki (capital of Finland), which is said to have been for the purpose of creating a viable transportation link for the Albanian and Kosovan diasporas with their places of origin. Such a system has been successful with the Kosovan diaspora in Switzerland, as ChAir operates regular flights between Pristina and its base in Zurich, partially for that purpose too.
Fly Air41, based in Zagreb but a subsidiary of Germany’s Sundair, is managing package deals for flights from Bremen, Düsseldorf and Leipzig to Zagreb. However, at least one of its aircraft, 9A-BER (probably standing for Berlin), and Airbus A319, is in Sundair livery, and also operates flights for Sundair from Germany to non-Croatian destinations, reports indicating its operating route as being on Sundair’s Leipzig-Corfu route. The airline’s 3rd aircraft, 9A-SHO, an Airbus A320, began flights on a route between Zagreb and Düsseldorf on November 19th, and is not in Sundair livery. This airline seems to be a good prospect, as its parent company, Sundair, is now Germany’s 3rd biggest charter airline (after Condor and TUI Deutschland, in terms of fleet and number of destinations), although one can never be too sure, as we have seen with Germania and other German charter airlines in the past.
As for World2Fly, a Spanish airline headquartered in Mallorca but based out of Madrid, its rapid expansion in upcoming 2022 will consist of 10 new destinations in South America, Africa, the USA and Uzbekistan, which will be added on to the current 3 destinations. The airline operates 1 Airbus A350, and formerly possessed an Airbus A330, with which it flew its launch flight on the 19th of June this year, but this aircraft has was shifted to World2fly Portugal in October, a new subsidiary of World2Fly. World2Fly is owned by the Iberostar group (hotels and tourism), and is currently flying to one destination in Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Cuba. This airline is rapidly expanding too, such that it could see itself competing with Air Europa (also a Spanish airline, now owned by IAG), especially with regards to the Dominican Republic (where Air Europa is firmly implemented) and Mexico.
We can see that the industry is growing towards South America and Eastern Europe, away from Western Europe and the USA. Numerous American airlines, especially those that focus on the Northwest such as Trans States Airlines and Compass Airlines, have ceased operations recently. However, Asia is often an ignored topic, which we will write about in our next article, and our final article of 2021, which will included two separate analysis of the movement in price of the Easyjet and Asiana Airlines stocks. 27th of December 2021.
Aeronews24 