Edelweiss Air to Expand Summer 2015 Long-Haul Services

The Swiss airline, which is a member of the Lufthansa Group and an affiliate of Swiss International Airlines, is set to increase its flight offering in North America and the Caribbean, introducing three weekly flights to Las Vegas, Tampa and Vancouver instead of two.

As well as the additional flights to North America, the airline will be operating more flights to the Caribbean. Summer 2015 season will see the introduction of a second weekly flight from Zurich to Havana, after the airline initially introduced the route in May this year with a single weekly flight.

Bernd Bauer, CEO of Edelweiss said: “Las Vegas, Tampa/Florida and Vancouver have become very popular Edelweiss destinations, and we are very satisfied with the seat occupancy rates and delighted to offer our guests a third weekly flight to each of these destinations starting in Summer 2015.”

Edelweiss’ summer 2015 schedule also includes some new additions to its European offerings, with cities in Southeast Europe being added. New destinations including Banja Luka (Bosnia & Herzegovina) and Podgorica are being added and the number of flights to Pristina (Kosovo), Skopje (Macedonia) and Split (Croatia) are all being increased. Flights to Banja Luka will be launched on July 3, 2015 while services to the Montenegrin Capital will be inaugurated on July 5, 2015. Both will operate twice weekly with Airbus A320 aircraft.

The choice of flights to Greece and Turkey is also being expanded, with the Swiss airline increasing the number of flights to both Heraklion and Dalaman. Edelweiss has also added Corfu as a destination with a single weekly flight from Zurich.

Furthermore, the airline will be strengthening its existing offer in Spain and Italy with additional flights to Alicante, Palma de Mallorca and Catania.

The airline has doubled passenger numbers and revenue since 2008, and continues its expansion. The summer 2015 timetable is valid from March 29 until October 24, 2015.

As the chart above suggests, Edelweiss Air’s seat capacity has grown significantly since 2007, although it did suffer an obvious decline in 2013 with a loss of just fewer than a 130,000 seats between 2012 and 2013. However, in the past year the airline has seen an increase in seat capacity with a 56,000 increase from 2013-2014.

Poppy Marello

Poppy joined the Routesonline team after successfully completing a degree in journalism at Sheffield Hallam University. Poppy has a passion for…