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Start-Up Aeroitalia Adds New Milan-London Flight
The carrier plans to operate service from Milan's Bergamo Airport to London's Southend Airport.
A Boeing 737-800 in the Aeroitalia livery. (Credit: Aeroitalia).
[ Routes ]January 4, 2024 5:42 pm ET
Aeroitalia has announced it will commence service between Milan’s Bergamo Airport and London’s Southend Airport on March 25, 2024. The Italian startup airline plans to operate the flight six times weekly. It will use its Boeing 737-800 aircraft based at Bergamo and Rome’s Fiumicino Airport.
Southend Airport stated, “The new route will offer convenient connection to Italy’s fashion hub of Milan, with with leisure-friendly morning departure times attracting travelers from both ends of the route.” The carrier will introduce this new flight to London as its first to England, and it will become Southend’s 11th destination.
The airport has entered a partnership with Aeroitalia, with more routes to be added in the future, according to the release.
Southend’s CEO John Upton stated that this partnership marks a “significant milestone” for the airport, providing passengers “with a convenient gateway to the heart of Italian football, fashion and culture in Milan.”
Aeroitalia’s History
Aeroitalia was founded in 2022 to add additional airline service to the Italian airline industry following the collapse of Alitalia and Air Italy, also creating jobs for employees coming from these defunct carriers. The airline currently operates a fleet of Boeing 737-700, 737-800, and ATR 72-600 aircraft across European destinations, with plans to expand to South America and Europe after solidifying its continental network. The airline maintains bases at Bergamo, Fiumicino, Ancona, and Comiso.
The airline operates an extensive network within Italy with connections to Spain and Romania, along with seasonal service to leisure destinations in Greece:
Aeroitalia’s current route map. (Photo: Aeroitalia)
The carrier also announced that it acquired a majority stake in Romanian regional airline Air Connect in November 2023, adding the ATR 72-600 aircraft to the fleet. The airline believes that the acquisition “will allow Aeroitalia to strengthen its presence in the Italian regional market and will strengthen its feeder capacity towards the Rome Fiumicino hub.”
Aeroitalia CEO Gaetano Intrieri is “confident that this new route will become a bridge between cultures” with the addition of London to the network.
Intrieri added that the airline is “determined to continue to improve and expand our operations to always offer [passengers] high-quality services,” expressing excitement about the new partnership.
The route will now offer passengers in England onward connections to smaller destinations in Italy. Currently, Southend only offers Alicante, Amsterdam, and Paris’s Charles de Gaulle as regular destinations on easyJet, with seasonal service to Faro, Geneva, Grenoble (starting February 4, 2024), Málaga, and Palma de Mallorca.
Balkan Holidays Air also announced seasonal flights to Burgas (in southeast Bulgaria) starting June 17, 2024. With the addition of Milan, the airport will now have nonstop service on three airlines to eight countries.
Ever since he was a kid, Arya has been interested in aviation. With his entire family overseas, he has taken many family trips worldwide to places like the United Kingdom and India. He lives in Colorado but attends The University of Alabama, studying Computer Engineering with a minor in Computer Science. He hopes to obtain his PPL and eventually translate his engineering degree to working in operations at an airline.
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