Hello,

A new Italian low-cost airline is opening called “Ciao Fly” It seems to make sense since Ryanair seems to have been quite easily accepted among Italians. Not much is really known about them except the following:

They will operate the following routes starting the 3rd of June:

Milan-Parma-Paris Beauvais 2 daily
Milan Parma-London Luton 3 weekly
Catania-Rimini 1 daily
Rimini-Paris Beauvais 3 weekly
Rimini-London Luton 3 weeky
Rimini-Brussels 3 weekly (The Brussels airport they are planning to operate out of is Liege and not Charleroi where Ryanair operate from.)

Their website is http://www.ciaofly.com and is a little amateurish in my honest opinion.

BMI Baby:

There was an interesting article in yesterday’s FT about BMI Baby. The CEO of BMI is reported to be tired of hearing about the growing success of low-cost airlines (I wonder why *g*) In the article, he also claims that low-cost airlines will stop growing in the next 6 to 12 months and that BMI’s answer to low-cost, BMI Baby, have no plans to expand beyond East Midlands.

Ryanair:

Ryanair are seemingly doing well from their new hub in Frankfurt-Hahn, well better than I expected considering the cold reception they got on various forums with many people saying Germans would never accept Ryanair. Their load-factor was 72% in February 80% in March and bookings for the next months are looking good. One more interesting fact is that a study by the Frankfurt-Hahn airport authorities showed that over 20% of passengers travelled over 200km to the airport.

easyJet:

They will probably announce the 75 plan order within the new 2 weeks. Someone on PPRUNE (http://www.pprune.org) posted that Airbus has offered to take all of easyJet’s B737-700’s if they buy A319’s. The deal might not be too bad since there is quite a demand for a B737-700’s. But remember, those are only RUMOURS!

Jeremiah