UK low-fare carrier Jet2.com has announced the launch of a new weekly scheduled link to the Austrian city of Salzburg for winter 2013/2014 from its Belfast International Airport base following the success of its flights this winter to Geneva. The airline will offer a weekly seasonal rotation from December 21, 2013 until April 5, 2014, its 16th destination from the Northern Irish airport.

Jet2.com launched flights from Belfast International in December 2003 and has established the facility in Northern Ireland’s capital city as one of its operational bases. Its network currently consists a mix of domestic and international routes, mainly serving the leisure market in partnership with its sister venture Jet2holidays, providing a mix of seat-only and package holiday options.

“Last year we launched Geneva and it was a roaring success with all flights fully booked. This year is looking extremely good too, with record passengers. We wanted to build on this demand with the launch of Salzburg, giving ski and board enthusiasts an even greater range of fantastic ski destinations,” said Steve Heapy, Chief Executive Officer, Jet2.com.

The airline has already opened reservations for this new flight even though it does not take-off for another ten months following consultation with existing passengers. “The feedback from our ski and board customers is that they want to be able to book now for next season so they can budget and look forward to being back on the snow. I am confident that it will be extremely popular. Salzburg is the gateway to the Austrian Alps and offers our customers great value, choice and flexibility from Belfast,” added Heapy.

This will be the first non-stop scheduled air link between Belfast and Salzburg. In fact it is understood to be the first non-stop scheduled service from the Northern Irish capital into the Austrian market since the early 1980s. An analysis of this month’s flight schedule shows that Jet2.com is the second largest carrier at Belfast International by capacity, although its share of the market at 3.8 per cent is considerably below the dominant market leader, easyJet, which has a 92.6 per cent share of available seats from the airport.

Since launching operations at Belfast International in late 2003 with a single Leeds Bradford route, Jet2.com gradually boosted its presence at the airport up until 2007, but since then has reduced capacity. Last year capacity was at its lowest since the carrier’s first year of operations at the airport. In the table below we highlight the carrier’s activity at the airport and its share of the total capacity at the facility.