A look at the Swiss regional airlines industry

                                                                                                    Picture: Skywork

While preparing for an upcoming trip to EBACE, Europe's executive aviation fair, that takes place in Geneva this May, I had a look at the aviation industry in Switzerland....and was amazed to find out that Wikipedia lists no less than 20 airlines in the country!...it's true that some of them are small charter or helicopter operators and that the list also includes the Swiss operation of Easyjet...

However, one thing that caught my attention is the several regional airlines operating out of the country, mostly with turboprops: there is Skywork, a growing airline based in Bern, that I already had the chance to write about, and also two airlines with curious names that I would never associate with Switzerland: Darwin Airline, based in Lugano and Baboo, based in Geneva (the latter was recently bailed out by the former). I guess the "raison-d'etre" of these airlines is to provide direct services from Swiss secondary airports, both domestic and internationally. Switzerland is certainly a small country and has no large metropolis, but when taking into account the cost of trains (at least for those that do not enjoy an type of special discount) these turboprops become competitive even when flying relatively small distances.

By the way, also in Switzerland you can fly what I guess is one of the shortest domestic services anywhere in the World (if you know of any other that is shorter, please, let me know): Zurich-Basel (92.5km or about 1h drive!)

Meet Volotea: Spain's new airline

After months of rumors, we finally have a public announcement: Spain's new startup airline is called Volotea.

You have to be brave to start a new airline in Spain in the current economic climate, but its founders have done it before and their ability to pull an airline off the ground is beyond any doubt: Carlos Muñoz and Lázaro Ros were the founders of Vueling (now under Iberia's wings) whereas Román Pané used to be a manging director at Futura (a now-defunct Spanish charter carrier). They are backed by CCMP Capital (investor also in JetBlue).

There is not much information about the scope of the project and its planned roll-out, but all points towards the new Barcelona-based airline operating a regional network in Spain, along the lines of UK's Flybe or Finland's Blue1. This market niche, relatively shielded from the two LCC giants, has seen significant corporate activity recently, with Flybe's leading the way.

Volotea will be competing with Air Nostrum (that operates regional flights on behalf of Iberia) and with Spain's still growing high speed rail network.

If you wish to see what Volotea's livery will look like there are some pictures on airliners.net (renewed chances for all those, like me, still waiting to fly for the first time on a Boeing 717!)

And of course, there is a Twitter account too, although it does not seem to have any public activity yet...