Leeds Bradford Airport in talks over Frankfurt flights
30.12.08
Leeds Bradford Airport is in advanced discussions with an international airline over a new direct route to Frankfurt, the heart of Germany's financial and legal services industry, the Yorkshire Post reports. Tony Hallwood, the airport's commercial and aviation development director, told the newspaper that he hopes the service will begin in 2009 and will ‘deliver increased linkage between Yorkshire and the economic powerhouse of the European Union’.
Mr Hallwood said: ‘We are very, very hopeful we should have further news in the early part of 2009 and we are very confident we will start the service at some stage during the year.’ He added that he hopes to add new routes to Eastern Europe, in particular Hungary and Poland, and hopes to extend services from Leeds Bradford to Scandinavia, building on BMI's existing direct flight to Copenhagen.
Leeds Bradford currently has 76 scheduled and charter destinations. It introduced 12 new routes in 2008 and announced a further 6 that will start in 2009. The airport lost 4 routes in 2008 – to Cork, Shannon, Hamburg and Inverness.
Next year, Mr Hallwood wants services to Madrid and Milan to become year round and also replicate a success he enjoyed while working at Bristol airport: the introduction of a direct scheduled flight to the US. He said 2009 will see the ‘stepping up of discussions’ with US airlines with the aim of introducing a regular service from Leeds Bradford to New York ‘within three or four years’.
He told the Post that he would also like to see new routes to the Middle East for business and leisure passengers to Dubai, Abu Dhabi and elsewhere and for onward flights to Australia, Australasia and the Far East.
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