Low cost airline and holiday group Monarch has launched a string of new routes from Birmingham Airport, starting with flights to Valencia.
The first flights to Spain’s third biggest city have taken off, along with services to Rhodes and Naples and Split. A further route, to Rome, opens up on Thursday (June 29).
Monarch is the only airline to fly to Split and Valencia from Birmingham with both destinations new to its summer 2017 network and holidays are also on sale to all of these destinations. The inaugural Valencia trip was kicked off in style with customers on the flight treated to a glass of bubbly and slice of paella themed cake – Valencia proudly claims to be the home of the traditional Spanish rice dish. On arrival at Valencia Airport the plane was greeted by the traditional arch of water from fire tenders.
Monarch’s chief commercial officer Ian Chambers was joined by David Winstanley, Birmingham Airport’s chief operating officer at check-in with customers excited to head to the Spanish city.
Ian Chambers said: “We are delighted to add even more flights and holidays to four new destinations to our Birmingham programme for summer 2017. These new routes join Porto and Stockholm which we launched earlier in the year. Monarch is the only airline to fly to both Split and Valencia from Birmingham Airport.
“We’re really pleased to be flying a greatly expanded programme from Birmingham for the summer with more city and beach destinations. It’s also really exciting to welcome the Boeing 737 NG aircraft to the fleet for the busy summer schedule ahead of the first of our new 737 Max 8 aircraft arriving in April next year.”
David Winstanley added: “Monarch offers a fantastic selection of popular European routes to our passengers from Birmingham Airport. It’s great to see them expanding this choice further for our summer holidaymakers.
“Valencia, Split, Naples and Rhodes are all steeped in history as well as being popular coastal destinations with fabulous ports and beaches. We are confident these will be very successful routes.”
Monarch is also welcoming a Boeing 737 NG aircraft to its fleet at Birmingham. The aircraft’s first flight will be the inaugural flight to Rome this week. Whilst at Birmingham it will also be a used for flight crew training purposes ahead of the delivery of the first brand new Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft arriving in April next year.
Flights to Valencia will operate twice a week on a Thursday and Saturday. Flights to Rhodes operate once a week on a Wednesday and the new flights departing to Naples are on Monday and Friday. The new destination of Split operate twice a week on Tuesday and Sunday.
