Volotea, the airline of Europe’s medium-sized cities, will put its largest-ever offer on the market this year with almost 40% more seats, 45 new routes and nearly 70,000 flights.
Volotea will offer, during this 2022, 11 million seats, or an increase of about 40 percent, compared to 2019 when it offered 8 million seats; and expects to carry between 9 and 9.5 million passengers in 2022, which is about 32 percent more than the annual record reached in 2019 when it carried 7.6 million.
In addition, the airline plans to open between 40 and 45 new routes as well as two new bases that will be added to the existing ones, and estimates to operate almost 70,000 flights compared to 40,500 in 2021 and almost 58,000 in 2019, i.e. around 18 percent more.
In terms of sales forecasts, Volotea estimates a growth of more than 20 percent compared to 2019 with some 525 million euros compared to 441 million in 2019. Likewise, the airline expects to increase its workforce in all its markets. In June 2021, Volotea had more than 1,400 employees, of which 435 in Spain and this 2022 its forecasts are to exceed the figure of 1,600 employees in Europe.
Last year, Volotea brought forward the transition to a 100% Airbus fleet, which is going to allow it to be much more efficient, improve its cost structure in the next 2-3 years and realize the increase in supply thanks to the new aircraft having a greater capacity and a longer flight range.
“We expect that from Easter onwards the sector will begin to recover from the effects of the 5th wave and that there will be a gradual growth in demand until the summer season, from April to October, by which time we expect to operate 41% more capacity than in 2019, before the pandemic. We have taken this decision after analyzing the latent demand in our markets, and after having been able to maintain since June 2020 an average seat occupancy of over 90 percent,” commented Carlos Muñoz, founder and CEO of Volotea.
In addition, in 2022 Volotea will introduce sustainable fuels in aircraft and will collaborate with manufacturers and industry so that these fuels (now difficult to access) can be developed and generalized as soon as possible. This initiative is in addition to the more than 50 sustainability actions developed by Volotea since its creation, thanks to which it has reduced its carbon footprint per passenger and kilometer by more than 41 percent since 2012.