Winter flights 2012/13 - Part I

Rhodes local officials are trying for a while now to secure winter international flights and their efforts seem to be paying out since Transavia expressed their interest to include Rhodes on their winter schedule.

Transavia is a low-cost airline, daughter company of Air France/KLM and flies out of Netherlands to many destinations. Their main base is Amsterdam which is one of Europe's biggest and busiest hubs meaning that if no other airlines will fly to Rhodes during the winter there will be at least the option for connecting via AMS.

In time and after the deal is official, we will examine Amsterdam airport and the connections it offers based on airline winter schedules and Transavia's Rhodes service. In case there will be no other airline flying to Rhodes during the winter, local officials should seek along with Transavia the best possible schedule that will allow connections from other European countries and probably fill in the plane easier. Maybe an evening flight from AMS and an early morning flight from RHO would work that way, so locals could offer Transavia a good deal on overnight stay of aircraft and crew.

Besides Transavia deal, we think that it's really important to secure winter flights to/from the UK too. Options here vary as Easyjet, Monarch and Thomson could include Rhodes on their winter schedules and/or even Aegean could be talked in to open the winter market. One or two weekly flights to London and a weekly flight to Manchester would be ideal for the beginning.

Anyway, we keep a close eye on the matter and will further update whenever news are available.