At a conference held this morning, Ten Airways has launched the Fly Romania brand under which will operate several domestic and international flights. From the company, the following spoke: Cătălin Buţu, general manager of Ten Airways; Ovidiu Tender, majority shareholder of Ten Airways and Roxana Badea, PR Manager.
Fly Romania will officially start its activity on 15 May 2014. In addition to the domestic races already announced by us, Bucharest - Tulcea and Bucharest - Timisoara, the airline will cover several destinations in Italy, Spain, Germany and Turkey.
"For starters, we will launch several routes that will cover both classic destinations with a well-defined demand, such as Bucharest - Timisoara, where we propose a single fare of 69.90 EUR / segment, as well as unique or seasonal destinations, such as the race Bucharest - Antalya, operational since June. In the future, we intend to expand our routes and are already in advanced discussions with several airports in order to serve new destinations, both domestic and international. ", points out Cătălin Buţu, general manager of Ten Airways.
Flights on the route Bucharest - Timisoara they will have a daily frequency except for Saturday, and Bucharest - Tulcea will be operated three times a week. International routes will be covered as follows:
Bergamo with two weekly flights from Tulcea, Verona with three weekly flights from Timisoara and Bucharest, Genoa with three weekly flights from Bucharest, Barcelona with three weekly flights from Bucharest, Frankfurt with three weekly flights from Bucharest and one from Tulcea and Antalya weekly run from Bucharest starting in June.
For domestic routes, the tariffs will be unique, respectively 69.90 EUR / segment for Bucharest-Timisoara and 49.90 EUR / segment for Bucharest-Tulcea, while fares on international routes start from 29.90 EUR / segment.
Fly Romania is positioned between low-cost and full-service, offering a wide range of services included in the ticket price: hold baggage of 20 Kg, cabin baggage of maximum 7 kg, catering on board. Water, juices, coffee and sandwiches will be served on the internal routes. And hot preparations will be served on international routes. Alcoholic beverages and duty free products will be charged.
The flights will be operated by MD-82 / 83 aircraft belonging to Ten Airways. The aircraft are quite old, but the carrier assures us for their proper functioning. These models are still in the fleets of airlines such as American Airlines (to be removed from 2018) and Delta Air Lines, but not for long.
Below you have the operational program:
From my point of view, the news is good because this operator is also launching on scheduled flights. I saw people optimistic and eager to achieve great things with Fly Romania. Cătălin Buţu, general manager of Ten Airways, estimates a traffic of 100 passengers in the first year of activity (000 on internal routes and 30 on external routes). I like the idea of flights to / from Tulcea, the airport in this area having a great potential in the conditions in which the International Airport "Mihail Kogalniceanu" Constanta is poorly trafficked. In the future, they plan to improve the fleet with slightly newer and different aircraft. We're betting on the Boeing 000.
There will also be flights between Guinea-Bissau (West African state) and Lisbon, possibly even earlier than 15 and 2014. I did a short simulation and found prices from 611 EUR round trip and the frequency will be 3 weekly flights.
Rates are loaded into the system, and tickets can be ordered from flyromânia.com.
I wish them as many full flights as possible and hopefully everything will work according to schedule. I know a lot of people are skeptical, but it's good to wait for the first flights, see the evolution and then draw the conclusions. During this year, I will also fly on these aircraft and return with more details.