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Vueling and British Airways have signed an interline agreement whereby all passengers that land in Barcelona with the British carrier will be able to connect directly to the 74 destinations offered by Vueling from its hub at El Prat.
Vueling has established the airport at Barcelona as one of the best connected short haul hubs in Europe, making the airport and its facilities extremely attractive to airlines.
Vueling, the new generation airline, has signed an agreement with British Airways by which, through travel agencies (interline) all passengers flying with British Airways to Barcelona will be able to connect to any of the 74 destinations that Vueling operates from its hub at the Catalan airport.
With this agreement, Vueling consolidates its goal to position El Part as it primary connections hub and reinforces this line of business as one of the company’s strategic developments. In 2011 El Prat consolidated itself as the European airport with the highest growth: 17.8% up on the previous year. Vueling, the leading airline at El Prat, was responsible for part of this important growth, focusing not only on scheduling new destinations but in having a wide range of daily frequencies on business routes and delivering a Premium product at competitive prices.
In 2011, Vueling transported 972,000 connecting passengers, six times more than in 2010, the year that the company started linking Vueling-to-Vueling flights at El Prat. Of this total, more than 700,000 were passengers connecting at El Prat, both for Vueling-Vueling as well as Vueling-Iberia. For 2012 the goal is to reach one million connecting passengers at El Prat.
New agreements with other airlines
In July 2010, Vueling launched Vueling-to-Vueling connections through El Prat. In just six months the airline carried 170,000 passengers, but most importantly without affecting its controlled cost structure.
Since then, connections have become a strategic line inside Vueling’s business as it adds new passengers. In a year and a half and through its operations in Madrid and Barcelona, Vueling demonstrated that it is able to develop new alliances with other airlines and become their flight feeder, opening its wide range of options from El Prat.
In 2012 after agreements with Iberia and now with British Airways, Vueling expects to sign between two to four new agreements with other airlines. These alliances consolidate one of Vueling/s goals for this period: to bring traffic and new capacity to the company via growth and international expansion.
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
