The Route Development Group brought its Routes Regional networking event to Porto, Portugal. Set to take place on 11-13th May and hosted by Porto Airport, the third Routes Regional Europe will see up to 600 key air service decision makers from airports and airlines all across the region convening to discuss new and sustainable routes to, from and within Europe. Within just three years the delegate numbers have doubled, making Routes Regional Europe the biggest networking event of the region’s route development industry.

This year’s airline attendance will be the most comprehensive of all Routes Regionals to date. With 120 airline delegates attending, representing some 75 airlines, this event looks to set the standard for future events. All the major Low Cost and Regional Carriers from Europe and the CIS will be present. EasyJet decided to bring a full team of eight delegates in order to maximize their time at the event. Also on the delegate list: Ryanair, Wizz Air, Jet2 and Norwegian Air Shuttle.

Compared to last year, the event will see a doubling of the number of airports from Southeast Europe – the new route development hotspot, as various Balkan states seek to join Bulgaria and Romania in the EU. Airport attendees from around Europe include PoznańŁawica Airport, Vatry Airport and Uppsala Airport. Graz Airport, Dortmund Airport, Pau Pyrénées Airport and Deauville Normandie Airport are also on the list.

“This is a great occasion for the most important aviation executives to visit Porto, while we have the chance to show them all the recent improvements made on the region. We intend to continue growing and we sincerely believe that the fact that we are able to host an event of such high prestige will help us to achieve our aims and to make the delegate’s journeyunforgettable,” said Guilhermino Rodrigues, President of ANA Aeroportos de Portugal SA, the management company of Porto Airport.

According to Boeing, continued effects from recent expansion of the European Union and the growth of low-cost airlines will drive European and CIS domestic airline traffic in the near term. EasyJet for example stated that forward bookings are slightly ahead of this time last year. Performance from a number of other airlines is still cautiously encouraging: Lufthansa produced overall excellent trading results from the first quarter of 2008. In April the Air Berlin Group increased the number of passengers transported to 2,242,575, i.e. a 6.5 per cent increase over the corresponding month of the previous year and fleet capacity utilisation improved by 4.5 percentage points to reach 78.8 per cent. Ryanair’s April 2008 traffic grew by 15 per cent over April 2007.

Mike Howarth, CEO & Founder of Routes, comments: “Despite the short-term problems besetting our industry and the difficulties in predicting future developments, there is a quiet optimism and airlines as well as airports still believe in growth prospects. Route development is not just about exploring new routes, but about looking at sustainable and smarter routes.”

This year ACI Europe co-located its SMAG ACI Europe Conference with Routes Regional Europe on Sunday, 11th May. This SMAG (Small and Medium size airports Action Group) conference focused on ‘Regional Airports: Strategies to share in the success of smaller airports’. Speakers include Olivier Jankovec, Director General ACI Europe, Gernot Kessler, Directorate General for Energy & Transport, Air Transport – Aviation Safety, European Commission, as well as Jacques Sabourin, Délégué Général, UAF, Les Aéroports Français.