Air Europa’s chairman, Juan José Hidalgo, attended a meeting on Wednesday. He confirmed they will be starting operations in the new skyTeam airline’s hub on May, 15 according to Europapress.
Thanks to the agreement reached with Aena, Air Europa will concentrate all operations in terminals 1, 2 and 3 of Madrid airport. Mainly in T3 and T2 where they will operate domestic and Schengen flights, while they will use T1 for the long haul.
The new hub will also allow Air Europa to boost connections between Madrid and Latin America, the Caribean or North America. Also, they expect to open new connections with Germany and Brazil. With these new routes, between 40% and 45% of their frequencies would correspond to European routes.
In other news, Hidalgo said between 55% and 60% of their Handling branch – Groundforce – incomes come from the services provided to the Skyteam Aliance airlines. This guarantees an important market share for their portfolio. In this line he emphasised the strength of their services on ground. They have got refurbished equipment at all airports.
On the same meeting preferente.com reports Hidalgo has got 60 million Euros ready to be invested in the expansion of the group, Globalia, in 2014.
With this he will support, amongst other stuff, the growth by 20% in operations, fleet and airline’s staff.
He also said the Madrid – Moscow and Madrid – Saint Petersburg which had to be postponed last year, will start operations in 2015. Furthermore, they are working to reach a code share agreement with China Eastern to connect with Shanghai.
He is also planning to expand entering the high speed and long haul rail transport business as soon as Renfe (the Spanish railway company) liberalises it.
Photo: Air Europa, A330 landing at Madrid airport / José Luis Celada Euba
