Blue Air expects 10% more passengers in 2009

Low-cost airline Blue Air, controlled by businessman Nelu Iordache, will go through a consolidation period in 2009, which will see its traffic up by 10%, below the level of the last few years, to around 1.3-1.4 million passengers. “For this year, we expect a lower growth than we have seen so far, because we start from a different base,” said Gheorghe Racaru, Blue Air manager, who specified that the lower growth rate estimated has nothing to do with the financial crisis. According to Racaru, the low-cost market will rise by 12% in 2009, approaching 300 million euros. Blue Air’s growth rate slowed down last year, when it amounted to 30%, to 1.2 million passengers, after 2007 and 2006 saw the company double its number of passengers as well as its revenues. Blue Air has thus secured the leading position on the market, and aims to preserve it this year, as well, despite competition from Wizz Air, which announced it was planning to carry 1.7 million passengers to and from Romania in 2009, 80% more than last year.