'Point-to-point' Vueling breaks with tradition to launch Barcelona connections

Vueling Airlines will start connecting passengers through its base at Barcelona El Prat from July 5, a move that it expects will allow it to carry 250,000-350,000 additional travelers this year and another 1 million or more next year.

The new connectivity will provide passengers with 418 "Vueling-to-Vueling" city-pairs through Barcelona. Customers will buy only one ticket when booking the flights. Vueling will charge only one transaction fee and connect baggage at no additional charge despite its aim to increase ancillary revenue.

Vueling is BCN's largest airline, with a 24% share of passengers carried in the first quarter based on data from Aena. BCN is Vueling's largest base, with 43 routes in Spain, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Some 65% of its passengers fly in or out of the airport. 

The LCC's new transfer function coincides with the airport’s aspiration to build a hub and will come at virtually no additional cost to the airline, CEO Alex Cruz insisted. "We maintain our guideline that we will achieve CASK ex-fuel of 4 euro cents for the current financial year," he told this website during a briefing in Barcelona. "There will be no changes to our scheduling. We remain fundamentally a point-to-point airline. [The new connectivity] is an add-on that will run on top of our main premise that a short-haul operation cannot survive today without obsessing on having the lowest cost structure." As a "new-generation" carrier, he added, "we won't stop implementing 'traditional' products/services as long as we don't break the first premise."

The sole additional fixed cost will be transfer counters at the airport, according to Cruz. El Prat's new Terminal 1 features a new baggage handling system that will facilitate the transfers. Vueling will offer a number of "advantages" to passengers having to wait more than 2 hr. between flights.If the connection is between 2 hr. and 4 hr., customers will have free Wi-Fi access, discounts in stores and restaurants and free access to a playground area. If the connection exceeds 4 hr., passengers also will enjoy discounts at the airport's Wellness Spa, hairdresser and a VIP area.  

Vueling expects that most of the demand for the new connectivity will come from passengers in France, Italy, the Netherlands and some Central European countries en route to Spanish destinations.