Volotea plans to open six new routes and base seven Boeing 717s at Venice Marco Polo airport from April 2015.

The Spanish low-cost carrier will add routes to Strasbourg, Prague, Athens, Zakynthos, Thessaloniki and Alicante to bring its total destinations served from the Italian gateway to 30.

Volotea chief executive Carlos Munoz says part of the motivation behind the expansion of the airline’s operations at Venice was Air One's decision to withdraw from routes to the Sicilian cities of Palermo and Catania.

Innovata schedules show all new six routes are currently uncontested.

It marks further expansion in the Italian market which will also see Volotea launch services from Naples to Crete, its ninth route from the southern Italian city. The airline will fly twice-weekly on the service from 30 June. It forms part of growth, which also includes increased frequencies on existing flights, which will increase capacity from Naples by nearly a third next year.

Source: Cirium Dashboard