The new summer flight schedule came into operation from Sunday 26th March at Vaclav Havel Airport in Prague, and it will stay until 28th October 2017. During summer season it is possible to fly from Prague directly to 154 destinations worldwide, including nine new destinations. At the same time, the number of flights increased on 20 lines, compared to last year.
Because of the increasing number of flights and total capacity of planes, the top management expects more than an 8% increase in the number of passengers this year. Prague airport announced 143 direct flights before the last summer season. During that season two new lines were opened, to Chinese Shanghai and Chengdu, the airport spokeswoman, Marika Janouskova, said.
“After a very successful, record year in 2016, we managed not only to keep a wide offer of destinations, but we also enlarged it with nine new places,” Vaclav Rehor, chief of Prague Airport management stated.
In the summer season, Czech Airlines will start regular direct flights to Danish Aarhus, Swedish Malmö, or Italian Verona. One of the new destinations in the flight schedule is of the company Icelandic Reykjavik, where low-cost airlines Wizzair also plans to fly.
Typical destinations for summer vacations also made it to the list of new places, for example Spanish Almeria or the island of Menorca was added to the regular flight schedule of Czech low-cost airline, SmartWings.
Unlike last year, Norwegian Airlines will also expand the offer with other Norwegian cities. A new regular line to Stavanger will be added to regular lines to Oslo and Bergen. Ryanair will add to the European destinations menu with regular flights to Sicilian Trapani.
British airline Flybe is a new company that will start to fly to London Southend airport from 8th of May from Prague Airport. From 22nd May, a new company, Georgian Airlines, will establish a regular direct line between Prague and its home city Tbilisi, two times a week.
The airlines will increase the transportation capacity at dozens of current lines, with big increases planned, for example, on flights to Burgas (44%), Zurich (44%), Barcelona (23%) and Tel Aviv (22.5%).
At the same time, the airlines plan to send bigger planes to Prague. The high-capacity Boeing 747-8I from Korean Air will start operating on the Prague-Seoul line for the whole summer flight season. Last year, this plane, with a capacity of 368 seats, could be seen only during peak season from July to the end of September.
During this season, most of the lines from airlines will be heading to Italy (17 destinations), United Kingdom and Spain (14 destinations in both). France, Russia and Greece follow, with ten destinations connected with Prague with regular, direct flights.
The largest number of flights go to Moscow, Paris and Amsterdam, Prague Airport stated.