• New airline will end first year with 14 aircraft and 500 employees.
  
• Tickets for domestic flights including Balearic islands to start at 25€.

Iberia Express, Iberia’s new unit for covering short- and medium-haul routes, begins operations on Sunday, March 25, with flights between Madrid and Palma de Majorca, Alicante, Malaga, and Seville.

A total of 17 destinations will be served during the summer season, including Vigo, Santiago de Compostela, Granada, Minorca, Ibiza, Fuerteventura, Lanzarote, and La Palma in Spain, and also Dublin, Naples, Mikonos, Riga and Amsterdam.

The new airline, wholly-owned by Iberia, made its debut in Madrid today at a press conference hosted by the Iberia CEO Rafael Sánchez-Lozano and Iberia Express CEO Luis Gallego.

The new Iberia unit is designed to restore profitability to short- and medium-haul routes, operating initially with four A320s on domestic and European routes. By the end of the year the company is expected to have fourteen A320s and a staff of some 500 people. The new company will strengthen the Iberia group’s Madrid-Barajas hub and contribute to the growth of its long-haul business.

At the press conference, Iberia CEO Rafael Sánchez-Lozano stressed that Iberia Express “will be a success story that adds value to the Iberia Group. It will restore profitability to short- and medium-haul routes, add new destinations and connections, and feed traffic to the long-haul network where Iberia is focusing its growth strategy.”

Iberia Express CEO Luis Gallego pointed out that “Iberia Express will have the best of Iberia and new attributes associated with the ‘express’ concept”. The new airline will be managed independently, but will use Iberia’s maintenance and other services.

Gallego said “the containment of costs will allow Iberia Express to grow and compete with the low-cost operators”. The new airline will offer customers more affordable fares while maintaining the levels of service now provided by Iberia. Domestic flights including travel from the Spanish mainland to the Balearic Islands will now start at just 25 euros.

Iberia, Madrid, March 23, 2012

The board of the oneworld airline alliance today admitted Iberia Express as an affiliated member.

The board of the oneworld airline alliance today admitted Iberia Express as an affiliated member, effective when the new airline launches its operations.

oneworld, to which the Iberia parent has airline has belonged since 1999, has eleven airline members and nearly a score of affiliated members, including Iberia's franchise partner Iberia Regional Air Nostrum, which also joined the alliance in 1999.

Iberia Express is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Iberia and will operate the short- and medium-haul flights currently handled by the parent airline, plus some new routes. It will cover point-to-point traffic and serve as feeder for Iberia's long-haul flights to/from its Madrid hub.

The new airline will offer both economy and business class seats, initially in four Airbus A320s, but this number will rise to 13 aircraft by the end of the year. All the aircraft will be transferred from the current Iberia fleet.

Meanwhile airberlin has also become a member of oneworld today, and its Austrian Niki unit was also admitted as an affiliate member. This was announced at a press conference given in Berlin by the airline alliance.

airberlin and Niki serve more than 160 destinations in 45 countries. The incorporation of the German carrier, the world's sixth largest by number of passengers, adds nearly 70 destinations to the oneworld total, now adding up to some 800 cities in 150 countries, with more than 8,750 flights each day operated by a total of almost 2,500 aircraft, and annual revenues of nearly 100,000 million dollars.

airberlin joins oneworld three months before its move to the new Brandenburg airport in Berlin, which will open on June 3 with an initial capacity to serve 27 million passengers per year. Iberia and its oneworld partner airlines will use this new airport, Europe's most modern, sharing VIP lounges and other services to offer comfortable connections to travellers.

Iberia, Madrid, March 20, 2012

Iberia adds flights and capacity on routes affected by Spanair cease of operations

The airline is increasing seat supply between Madrid and Barcelona, Bilbao, La Coruña, the Balearics Islands and the Canary Islands, as well as Copenhagen.

Following last week's cease of operations by Spanair, Iberia is increasing its supply of flights and/or seats on several of the routes on which it had coincided with the carrier:

Madrid-Barcelona: Iberia has added three daily flights, which will be expanded to four in the summer season for a daily total of nearly 70.
Madrid-Bilbao: An increase in seat supply of up to 31% in the busiest months, with one extra daily flight and larger aircraft at peak travel times. For now Iberia will operate 11 daily return flights, from 06:55 h. until 21:45 h., with good connections to all other Iberia destinations.
Madrid-La Coruña: Up to 27% more seats starting in March, on three daily return flights, two of them using larger aircraft. The first flight departs at 06:45 – and the last takes off at 21:20 h., offering good connections to Iberia destinations in Europe, the Americas, Africa and the Middle East.
Madrid-Canary Islands: Flights to the main Canary Islands grow by 20%: Iberia has scheduled one additional flihgt on the Madrid-Gran Canaria and Madrid-Tenerife routes. As of March 25 it will increase capacity to the islands of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura.
Madrid-Balearic Islands: In the high summer season Iberia will operate up to five daily return flights to Palma de Majorca, two to Ibiza, and one to Minorca.
Madrid-Copenhagen: Iberia will use larger aircraft to increase seat supply on this route.

Passengers affected by Spanair’s cease of operations have now until midnight on Friday, February 3, to purchase Iberia tickets to Spanish mainland and island destination with special fares for travel through May 30.

The fares range from 60 to 90 euros (plus airport taxes), depending on the destination.

Iberia, Madrid, January 30, 2012

Iberia continues to grow strongly in Panama, and today launches a fifth weekly flight between Madrid and Panama City. The Spanish airline now reaches the Panamanian capital on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Thanks to its flights to other cities in the region and connections with local airlines, Iberia can book passengers to and from Panama City on any day of the week.

On some of the flights Iberia operates the largest aircraft in its fleet, the Airbus 340/600, with 100 seats more than the A340/300s normally used on the route.

Thus in 2012 Iberia will offer a record total of 145,000 seats on the Panama route, a 33% increase from last year, which also saw a large rise in seat supply from the 77,000 of 2010.

Demand on the route rose by 35% in 2011 to some 90,000 passengers, and the passenger load factor exceeded 80%.

Iberia's Central America Manager Maria Esther Fernández noted that “no other Iberia route grew as strongly as Madrid-Panama, meeting our highest expectations”. She added that "our aim is to continue to grow, and as soon as possible to offer flights every day which, along with the improvements to both tourist and business class seating sections, will enable Iberia to offer a product that is hard to beat."

Two-third of passengers go to other cities

Iberia's market share on the Spain-Panama route climbed to 69% in 2011, and its share of all Europe-Panama passenger traffic came to 34%. For Iberia's premium Business Plus class the figures were even better, at 87% and 43%, respectively.

Most passengers on the Panama route fly to or from other cities in Spain, Europe, or the Middle East. Only 33% begin and/or end their journeys in Madrid, while 23% fly to or from the other 31 Spanish cities served by Iberia, and 44% fly to/from one of the 54 Iberia destinations in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

The other Spanish cities supplying the most traffic to the route are Barcelona, followed by Vigo, Valencia, Santiago de Compostela, and Bilbao. Outside of Spain, most of the Panama-bound traffic flies to or from Italy, France, Israel, and Germany.

Iberia began to fly to Panama on April 7, 1971 using a DC-8 that covered the Madrid-Santo Domingo-Panama-Guatemala route. Now it operates five non-stop Madrid-Panama City flight per week in Airbus A-340s, in which the Business Plus section give passengers 220 cm. of space between rows and seats that unfold into completely flat beds.

Iberia, Madrid, January 16, 2012