Vueling has announced its intention to grow its hub at Barcelona into Europe’s biggest, emulating those seen in the Middle East, and overtaking the existing busy European hub airport of Frankfurt.
The low-cost airline will increase the number of destinations it serves from Barcelona to 100 in 2013, as it adds 28 more routes, including destinations such as London Gatwick, Frankfurt and Dusseldorf from March.
This comes on the back of Vueling adding 45 new destinations from Barcelona over the past two years. This has put the airport in second place in Europe in terms of the number of destinations served, behind Frankfurt. But it hopes to turn Barcelona into the biggest hub in Europe as it continues expanding and adding more choice of destinations.
By doing this, Vueling is increasing the number of connecting passengers at the airport, and also working at increasing the number of business passengers it carries to around 50% of all passengers.
The airline’s CEO, Alex Cruz, said he hoped to be seen as a short/medium-haul version of Qatar Airways with its base at Barcelona.
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