News: First Warsaw flights from Birmingham take off next month
Flights > News > # 1209 (07/03/2007)
Budget airline Norwegian is launching the first flights from Birmingham to Warsaw next month.
The new route takes off on April 17, and for the first few weeks will have three weekly departures – Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. From May 6 a fourth flight will be added, but the schedule will change to Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays.
There are currently no other airlines operating flights to the Polish capital from Birmingham or any other Midlands airports. Poland is one of the most rapidly expanding aviation markets in Europe, and other airlines will no doubt be watching the progress of Norwegian’s Warsaw flights with interest.
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Comment:
At last, Birmingham gets some long overdue flights to the Polish capital, but only after losing flights to two other European capitals (Berlin and Madrid) last week. As we've already seen at nearby Coventry and East Midlands, there is plenty of further potential for cheap flights to Poland from the Midlands. Last year saw Sky Europe launch twice weekly flights to Krakow from Birmingham, but the airline has pulled out almost all its operations from Warsaw, complaining about slot restrictions at Poland's main hub airport.
Meanwhile, Norwegian has been able to set up a base in Warsaw, from where it already operates flights to Dublin. It might need to engage in a substantial marketing effort to ensure that Midlands based travellers know that a Norwegian budget airline is giving them the opportunity to travel to Warsaw, rather than Oslo or Bergen (two destinations which we hope are still high on Birmingham airport's wish list). However, as with most routes to Poland outside Krakow, we expect that the majority of traffic will be originating at the Warsaw end, where Norwegian is already well established.
