Romanian low cost airline Blue Air decided to open its second external operational base in Cyprus, after Cyprus Airways announced it will suspend activity next month, reports local Wall-street.ro.

Blue Air will operate two new regular flights from Larnaca, Cyprus, to Athens and Thessaloniki in Greece. The airline will operate daily flights to Athens and 3 flights per week to Thessaloniki, starting January 19.

“These two new routes inaugurate Blue Air’s second external operational base, after we opened last year the operational base in Torino, Italy. Larnaca base comes to support the Bucharest-Larnaca route, but is also as a solution for passengers who used the two routes operated by Cyprus Airways (to Athens and Thessaloniki  e.n.),” said Gheorghe Racaru, general manager Blue Air, cited by Wall-street.ro.

Blue Air last year started its first route outside Romania, when it launched flights from Turin to Catania, both in Italy. Until then, all of Blue Air’s flights had been to and from Romania.

Blue Air carried 11.5 million passengers in its 10 years of operation, recording over 188,000 flight hours. It operates 11 aircrafts and plans to increase the fleet in the coming years.

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com