First flights to Akureyri after Nice Air insolvency. Birmingham will be ninth base in UK, Alicante will be fourth seasonal base.

After HiFly Malta and the "Nice Air" management had already fallen out a few weeks ago, the virtual Icelandic airline was already without an aircraft, and the logical consequence of insolvency followed a few days ago. While the aircraft continues to be in Nice Air colors and is currently in service from Riga on behalf of Air Baltic, the British LCC easyJet is now venturing into a first connection to Akureyri in Iceland. From October 31, 2023, the airline is planning two weekly flights from the company's largest station - London-Gatwick, which as of today would be the only non-stop connection with the UK.

The company is also continuing to invest in its home market and will open a station in the second largest British city, Birmingham, in spring 2024. A total of 3 Airbus A320 with 186 seats are stationed at the airport there. The biggest local competitor, however, is the British and rapidly expanding Jet2 with 13 machines stationed locally. This is extremely successful with its product "Jet2 Holidays" and so easyJet is now focusing more and more on its own tour operator "easyJet Holidays", which expects strong growth in the double-digit percentage range for this year and also travel from BHX to the most popular to offer city and beach destinations.

New routes were not officially made as part of the announcement, but the announcement was made yesterday that new connections from Paris – CDG (daily) and Lyon (3x weekly) from the respective stations there to Birmingham are to be included from the coming winter flight schedule .

easyJet will also open a base in Alicante, Spain, in 2024. After stations have already been operated during the (summer) season in the Portuguese Faro (2021), as well as the Spanish destinations Malaga (2021) and Palma de Mallorca (2017), Alicante is now the third Spanish destination. Similar to the base in Birmingham, easyJet will also station 3 Airbus A320s here and, according to its own information, offer around 2024 million seats from "ALC" in summer 1,6. This means an increase of almost 16% compared to this summer 2023, when the British airline offers around 1,4 million seats to 11 destinations. The airline started here in 1999 with a connection to London Stansted and is now the second largest local airline.