Volotea will open their first base in Spain in 2015. It will be in the north of Spain, either in Bilbao, Santander, Vigo or Asturias. They are planing to establish up to five bases among the Spanish airports. The next ones would be opened in the eastern region of the Iberian Peninsula, Andalusia, the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands. Currently, Volotea‘s aircrafts spend the night at Venice, Palermo, Nantes or Bordeaux. Also Strasbourg is expected to be added to this list soon.
A year has passed since we announced that Volotea was working to open a base in Asturias. According to Preferente.com, the Volotea’s strategy for the future also takes into consideration to go public. That was confirmed by Carlos Muñoz, CEO of Volotea. “We are planning to go public, but that would be in two years from now”. Next summer, they are expecting to increase staff from 480 people to 600.
With regard to the activity, the low-cost airline expects to finish this year with 1.8 million passengers. They intend to increase operations by 30% in 2015, to reach 2.5 million passengers. Separately in Spain, they are expecting to gain customers from 233,000 to 351,000. Also, the number of routes will go from 27 to 40. To achieve all this, they would incorporate 4 Boeing 717 in the fleet, to reach 19 units. According to Muñoz, these figures confirm that this model, based on connecting small European cities, did make sense. But they do not want to grow too quickly, they are more focused on robustness.
Photo: Volotea’s B-717 take-off from Seville airport, by Wikimedia Commons – Curimedia.
