Vueling have been expanding in the UK.

Cardiff - Alicante, Barcelona, Malaga & Palma
Edinburgh - Barcelona
Gatwick - Barcelona
Heathrow - A Coruña, Bilbao, Florence, Palma

I believe in 2012 they did operate Southampton to Barcelona which was pulled. I would not be suprised to see additional Sun routes to be added in the UK for 2014.

Maybe they may decide to open a UK base as well.

Could it not be a ghost flight to keep slots active in BCN? BA used to fly into CWL in order to keep certain slots at LHR.

On the other hand, there's no reason why a BOH to BCN couldn't work on a summer basis.

A one-off flight in the middle of the season seems unlikely to be a slot preservation exercise. In any case, even if Vueling were doing this for slot reasons, I think they could find a closer airport to BCN than BOH... ;)

I remember those flights well. It was actually BMED who were operating as a franchise of BA at the time before being purchased by bmi.

I certainly would not rule out a BOH-BCN route and if I recall correctly Vueling didn't announce their Summer 2012 CWL-ALC & CWL-PMI until mid/late January 2012.

I did find an article today that stated Vueling were to lease four additional A320 to be delieverd in time for 2013 season but unsure if this is for further expansion yet to be released or for current schedules. Source

If there is a possibility of Vuelling operating from Bournemouth this summer it might well be to another route rather than Barcelona ?

Palma , Malaga and Alicante are all good money earners and especially Alicante which was well underserved by Ryanair last year following there " Air Bridge Spat " and a very popular destination from Bournemouth

2 new routes, 2 new Countries
 

2 new seasonal routes from their Hub at Barcelona BCN to Kiev Zhulyany IEV from 28 May 2013 and to Reykjavik (Keflavik) KEF from 20 June 2013.

Vueling will be one of the first European airlines to get Airbus A320's with sharklets. :)

range with 320 sharklets?
 

So what does the sharklet do in terms of range? does it enable the airline to extend their ops further or is it simply for fuel savings? are there any A320's with sharklets doing long range flights over water from the US to Hawaii for example, as this may be ETOPS

Vueling increases capacity at Cardiff Airport for Summer 2013

Vueling has increased the Malaga-Cardiff service to 4 x weekly from 7th August for several weeks due to demand. Also there are one or two additional flights on the Alicante-Cardiff also.

Official press release

Mathers,

its not a link to the 'official' press release, is it? Its a link to your own blog.....again.
:ugh:

Mmm ... nice bit of indirect advertising as well.

Oh look, another PPRuNe thread with a link to the Wales Air Forum.

Just waiting for a link now to another official press release about scrapping B747s in Snowdonia.... :rolleyes:

Official press release....

Vueling expand Summer services - Cardiff Airport

Regardless of where the announcement came from, its still a good sign for CWL with VY being a relatively unknown Airline within the UK.
The strength of the holiday routes from CWL could lead to them looking into other markets within the UK from Spain.
SOU was tried and failed. EDI maintained BCN and a few other routes from London isn't exactly a big operation yet.
VY offers some well priced connections that could rival some of the bigger carriers.

Would like to see them on BFS- ALC. Since Aer Lingus left it, easyjet have been screwing everyone against the wall.:mad: Fares up by 80% on 2012.

Vueling are a great airline ! Im already booked on for a flight CWL-PMI in the Summer, looking forward to my first experience with them.
Online check-in is available for ALL flights from CWL this year, unlike last year, which will further add to the passenger experience.

Good to see their faith in the CWL market, AGP goes from 3x weekly to 4x weekly from the start of august until the end of the peak summer season. Also, a few ALC's have been added here and there around the easter period. A quick dummy booking would reveal that AGP is doing remarkably well ;). In fact, VY and the airport have said they are very happy with it all.

Could see more from CWL and indeed the UK as a whole next Summer !

What is the brand awareness like in Wales? What has the advertising been like?

Brand awareness is ever increasing, and a large amount of advertising has taken place, both this year and last year. The ticket barriers at both Swansea and Cardiff Central stations are plastered in the Vueling 'Escape the rain' campaign, along with advertising on buses throughout south wales, and indeed at the millenium stadium during the autumn internationals and this years Six Nations.

Also, a Visit Wales campaign has been launched recently in Catalonia to help boost the BCN route, along with a TV advert which is to be shown in Catalan.

In all fairness the hard work put in by the airport (CWL) and the airline (VY) looks to have hopefully paid off !

So now IAG cannot buy out Vueling 100%, does this leave the 737-400 replacement at Gatwick in some doubt?

I didn't think that IAG "couldn't" buy out Vueling, just that the rising Vueling share price meant that IAG's latest offer wasn't attractively priced and hence the Vueling board rejected it. Apart from negotiating posturing, I don't see any absolute reason why IAG couldn't offer a higher price if they wanted to.