Volotea Celebrates 9 Millionth Passenger

Passenger 9 millionth, Claudia Colasuonno; her parents Pietro Colasuonno and Giovanna Andriola; the CEO and Company Founder, Carlos Muñoz; Verona Mayor, Flavio Tosi; Verona airport President, Paolo Arena, and Volotea Cabin Crew.

Volotea, the airline of mid and small‐sized European cities, on Thursday celebrated its nine millionth passenger since its launch in 2012, during an event at Verona airport in Italy.

The nine millionth customer was 4-year-old Claudia Colassuono and her parents, who had arrived at Verona airport on Thursday morning from Bari. They were given a special prize: free flights to fly to all destinations within Volotea routes from Verona for one year.

“We are very pleased to celebrate the nine millionth passenger”, said Carlos Muñoz, CEO and founder of Volotea. “We are honored by the Italian passengers welcome, especially in one of our latest bases, Verona, where we launched the base in November 2015.”

According to Muñoz, in 2017 Volotea will add three or four new routes and will increase capacity by 10-15 percent with a third aircraft that will be based in Catullo airport.

Volotea currently offers 13 destinations departing from Verona distributed in five countries: Greece (Santorini), Spain (Ibiza and Majorca,), Moldova (Chisinau), Albania (Tirana) and Italy (Alghero, Bari, Brindisi, Cagliari, Catania, Olbia, Palermo and Naples).

The airline currently has eight bases in Venice, Nantes, Bordeaux, Palermo, Strasbourg, Asturias, Verona and Toulouse. In 2017 the airline will launch its ninth base in Genoa.

This year the low-cost airline is operating flights to three new countries — Portugal, Malta and UK — in addition to the 10 countries it flew to last year (France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Greece, Croatia, The Czech Republic, Israel, Albania and Moldova), offering a total of more than 38,000 flights, with 196 routes to 72 cities, in 13 countries.

Volotea transported 2.5 million passengers in 2015 and forecasts between 3.3 and 3.5 million in 2016, which represents an increase of 35-40 percent. In addition, the company expects to reach 10 million passengers accumulated by the end of this year.