clickair, Heathrow”s latest arrival, is to add La Coru”a in north-west Spain, with a daily flight from 25 March. La Coru”a will be clickair”s third destination from LHR, following hard on the heels of Valencia and Seville. All services are flown out of T2.
clickair is Europe”s newest airline. Since commencing revenue service on 1 October 2006, the airline now embraces 12 routes with eight A320 aircraft. It has flown close to 500,000 passengers to date. Coinciding with a major expansion of its network, clickair has started an ambitious aircraft delivery programme ” taking at least one aircraft a month until its fleet totals 30 aircraft by mid-2008.
Unique as a LCC, all clickair flights are available through travel agents and GDS booking systems, through its Iberia codeshare arrangement. ”clickair is appealing to a new generation of business traveller, who wants to fly from London”s premier gateway, but who wants consistently low fares too,” said CEO Alex Cruz, a long term American Airlines staffman and also at Sabre. He joined clickair from Accenture, where he was managing partner of European air services. He has reservation regarding the cost of operating out of Heathrow. ”We will give it until the end of September, and then make a decision,” he said. ”Heathrow is a very expensive airport.” As alternatives he has not ruled out Gatwick, Luton or Stansted.
The airline expects to be operating on 70 routes to 55 cities by summer 2008 and is already the largest, and most visible, carrier at Barcelona. Shareholders are Iberia; Nefinsa (parent of successful Spanish regional airline Air Nostrum); Spanish construction group Cobra; hotel and resort company Iberostar and Quercus Equity, a private equity fund, part of the Agrolimen group, each with 20%.