Starting on 2 July, Billund Airport, Denmark’s second biggest airport, will expand its hub connectors to 11 airlines, when LOT Polish Airlines commences operations from its Warsaw Chopin base. Operating 12 times weekly, the Star Alliance carrier will service the route with a mixture of its E170 and E175 fleet.
“We are proud to welcome LOT to Billund and delighted that it has seen the potential in the West Denmark market,” says Kjeld Zacho Jorgensen, CEO, Billund Airport. “The airline’s schedule provides excellent connectivity to its destinations in Poland, Central and Eastern Europe, as well as all its intercontinental destinations in Asia and North America.” LOT joins airBaltic, Air France, British Airways, Brussels Airlines, Finnair, Icelandair, KLM, Lufthansa, SAS and Turkish Airlines in providing access to a major European hub for Billund’s passengers.
Indirect traffic from West Denmark to Warsaw has grown by 22% last year. “More than 22,000 Polish people live in our catchment, and 40,000 West Danes visited Poland last year,” adds Zacho Jorgensen. “We also know that the potential demand on LOT’s onward network via its hub to destinations like Beijing, Singapore and New York is around 435,000 passengers per year.”
LOT’s new service to the Polish capital joins the Danish airport’s existing twice-weekly link to Chopin, flown by Wizz Air. The ultra-low-cost carrier also operates one of Billund’s other services to Poland, a three times weekly operation to Gdansk, while Ryanair offers twice-weekly flights to Poznan. Prior to LOT’s announcement, the Polish market was expected to be Billund’s 12th largest country market, offering close to 37,000 seats during S18. As a result of this expansion the country market is anticipated to top 50,000 seats this summer.
