Posted on 18 February 2012

Demand for skiing holidays and properties is rising according to a whole series of reports. There is also evidence of this in the rapid growth of flights to skiing destinations, which had petered out during the financial crisis.

On 16 December 2011, British low cost carrier Bmibaby began operating twice-weekly flights from East Midlands (EMA) to Chambéry (CMF), located in the French Alps, between Lyon, Grenoble and Geneva. The following day the airlines launched flights from Belfast City to Geneva on the Swiss/French border. The airline already runs flights to Geneva from both Birmingham and the  East Midlands, but Chambéry is a new destination for the low-cost carrier.

Just a few days later the airline relaunched its coverage of the East Midlands to Toulouse route on 23 December. Toulouse in southern France is known for being the gate way to the French ski resorts in the Pyrenees on the border with Spain. Bmi, which is now run by Lufthansa stopped flying the Toulouse route in 2005, having covered it since 2002 but it is now back on.

December’s dreaming of a white Christmas must have given the airlines a desire to cover skiing destinations, as Easyjet also launched 2 new skiing flights in December, both from the UK to Alps resorts. Both launched on 17th December and both flying twice weekly the routes were from Luton to Salzburg in the Austrian Alps, and from Dublin to Grenoble in the French Alps.

This is continued into this year by low cost carrier Norwegian, which also launched new flights to Grenoble. Norwegian launched three new services to the French Alpine destination, a once weekly from Copenhagen, and twice-weekly flights from Oslo  and Stockholm Arlanda.