Spanair announces 2008-09 winter schedule

Spanair’s 2008-09 Winter Schedule will operate 18 routes every week to the Canary Islands from mainland Spain, with 223 flights, together with 6 routes to the Balearics, involving a total of 254 flights.

With this schedule, Spanair adapts its offering to actual demand and it is adjusting to the targets set out in its Viability Plan, designed to simplify and modernise its operations, and make the company more flexible, efficient and viable by 2010.

Palma de Mallorca, 7th October 2008. Spanair has published its new Flight Schedule for the 2008-09 winter season, containing details of 57 scheduled domestic routes including the Air Shuttle service, and to a number of European and African cities under its Star Alliance membership. The schedule (see Appendix) starts on Saturday 26 October and runs to Saturday 29 March 2009. Its purpose is to focus services on the most popular and profitable business destinations.

On the majority of routes, Spanair will continue to provide daily connecting services from the Company's two hubs based in Madrid and Barcelona. With these services, passengers can fly daily to the various destinations on direct flights or alternatively via Madrid or Barcelona.

Spanish Mainland Routes

For Spanish mainland routes, Spanair provides 148 flights every week for each of its 20 domestic routes. For the Air Shuttle service, the company operates 148 Madrid-Barcelona-Madrid flights: 13 daily frequencies from Monday to Thursday; 12 on Fridays; 4 on Saturdays and 6 on Sundays.

The most remarkable aspects about the domestic flights are the following:

In general, on flights within the Spanish mainland, Spanair improves its schedules compared with the winter of 2007. There is an improvement in the times in the first frequency of the morning and in the last of the night on the routes Barcelona-Alicante, Malaga-Barcelona and Barcelona-Seville.

On the Barcelona-Bilbao route, Spanair increases its presence with a new frequency at noon. The times have also been improved in the Bilbao-Madrid route in the first frequency of the morning and the company maintains the frequencies in all the tomes slots on the Barcelona-Madrid route in order to adapt its capacity to new demands of the market.

As for the flights to Galicia, Spanair continues with its firm commitment to this Autonomous Community as an important business centre, with a special care for the business traveller, maintaining an important position in all destinations, especially to and from the Alvedro airport.

Spanair will now be the airline with the greatest number of weekly flights linking the Balearic Islands with Barcelona and Madrid, a total of 254. It will also provide the first flight of the day from Madrid to Ibiza (at 07:20) and the last returning flight at 21:05. The flight schedule between mainland Spain and the Balearics shows that the company stands by its commitment to keep Menorca as a permanent destination.

From 26 October, Spanair will be providing 254 flights from Monday to Sunday between the Balearic Islands and the two main Spanish cities. The 2008-09 Winter Schedule for the Balearics has also been extended to include two daily flight frequencies on the Barcelona-Ibiza-Barcelona route, compared to the previous one.

For connections between the Canary Islands and mainland Spain, Spanair is to operate 18 routes with 40,000 available seats every week, a move that continues to place this Spanish airline at the forefront of passenger transport to and from the Canaries. In total, Spanair will operate 223 flights every week. A daily service will also be provided passing through one or other of the two hubs that Spanair has in Madrid and Barcelona. Passengers choosing Spanair will be able to fly every day, for example, from A Coruña to Las Palmas (via Madrid) or from Valencia to Tenerife North (with a stopover in Madrid or Barcelona).

International Routes

The 12 international routes detailed in the new winter schedule will enable daily flight connections between Barcelona and Algiers, Stockholm, Banjul, Copenhagen and Munich; between Madrid and Stockholm, Banjul, Copenhagen and Frankfurt; between Bilbao and Munich; between Malaga and Copenhagen; and between Valencia and Munich. In total, 194 flights every week.

With this new winter schedule, Spanair adheres to its Viability Plan objectives, aimed at simplifying and modernising its operations, adjusting supply to meet actual demand, and achieving a more flexible, efficient and viable company by 2010.