French airline Europe Airpost will resume its scheduled summer service between Dublin Airport and Halifax, Novia Scotia in July 2016 and will extend the season into October, a Dublin Airport official confirmed to Routesonline on the sidelines of the World Routes Strategy Summit in Durban, South Africa.

The direct flight to Halifax will operate from the beginning of July until the end of October, boosting Canadian tourism to Ireland further and offering another choice of destination in North America for Dublin Airport customers.

Europe Airpost has been operating at Dublin Airport since 2010 and is the only charter airline that has an aircraft based year-round in Ireland.

The scheduled service to Nova Scotia will again operate weekly from Paris Charles de Gaulle to Dublin and then continue to Halifax, Nova Scotia with a 130-seat Boeing 737-700 aircraft.

Dublin Airport Managing Director Vincent Harrison said Dublin Airport was pleased that Europe Airpost had decided to expand the service in 2016 with a significantly extended season.

“Halifax, Nova Scotia is one Dublin Airport’s 19 long-haul destinations and adding this new service earlier this year contributed to Dublin becoming Europe’s fastest growing airport for long-haul services in 2015. We look forward to welcoming the Halifax service back next year with an extended duration into October.”

Speaking at World Routes, Mr Harrison added that Dublin Airport was hopeful of further expansion in its fast-growing transatlantic market for 2016. “We had 15 North American destinations this summer and we’re expecting to grow that for 2016 and also see some additional capacity on existing services. Europe Airpost’s decision to expand this new service in its second year of operation is further evidence of the very strong market at Dublin for new routes.”

Dublin Airport, which is celebrating its 75th birthday this year, has scheduled services to 167 destinations. It welcomed 23 new routes and services in 2015, and six new airlines began operating to and from Dublin. So far this year, Dublin has experience very strong passenger growth across all segments of the market with passenger numbers up 15% to 16.8 million in the first eight months of 2015.

Europe Airpost, which is a subsidiary of the Irish-based ASL Aviation Group, is being rebranded as ASL Airlines France as ASL Aviation Group combinines and rebrands its four European airlines under the same name.

Air Contractors, Europe Airpost, Farnair Switzerland and Farnair Hungary will begin operating under the ASL Airlines brand as part of its ‘Platform for Growth’ strategy for continued growth in passenger and cargo operations.

“Our intent is to have a new strong single brand that will play a major role in helping us to achieve our vision and mission and reflect our corporate values in our business”, said ASL Group chief executive officer, Hugh Flynn.

“This strong single brand will make it considerably easier to use the aircraft of the European fleet across the individual countries to meet customer demand and this increased fleet flexibility and consequent competitiveness will enable us to grow our business,” he added.