Aegean Airlines and Greek airports in world's top-20 for fastest growth

More than 3,100 new services across 173 countries were launched by 359 airlines in 2015, according to the latest figures in the New Route Database reported by Airline Network News and Analysis. Less than half of these were already operated by at least one other carrier, while around 1,760 were entirely new routes.

European carriers topped the list of airlines across the world for new services, with Ryanair and easyJet leading, having both launched 99 new routes in 2015. Both airlines thrived in a year marked by various terrorist incidents, with Ryanair breaking the 100 million-passenger barrier with a total passenger lift of 101.4 million, while easyJet reported passenger numbers of 69.8 million during 2015.

The Spanish budget airline Vueling was a surprising third in the rankings, with 90 new routes launched last year, followed by Wizz Air (85 new services) and the American low-cost carrier Southwest Airlines (77 new services) making up the top five.

Other budget carriers among the top 10 for new routes included Allegiant Air in the US, Russia’s Pobeda (a subsidiary of Aeroflot), the Barcelona-based Volotea, Greece’s Aegean Airlines and the Berlin-based Germania, while China Southern and China Eastern were the only Asian airlines to make the top 20.

Airports in Russia, China, Spain and Britain were among the other countries to welcome the most new services, ahead of Germany, Italy, France and Greece, in descending order of new routes.

Japan, Canada, India, Mexico and Thailand were the other leading non-European nations that received the highest number of new flights.

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