Eastern European low-cost carrier Wizz Air Tuesday said it would start flights from Frankfurt Airport this summer, becoming the latest budget airline to add routes from Germany's largest airport. Wizz Air said it would fly to Sofia from May and Budapest from December, taking the number of German airports it flies from to 11. Low cost carriers have so far not taken major market share at Frankfurt, due to its high costs and long turnaround times. But airport operator Fraport, seeking to compensate for slower passenger number growth at main customer Lufthansa, last year signed up Ryanair, which had previously ruled out routes from Frankfurt. "The decision by Wizz Air also underscores the growing importance of Frankfurt for the low-cost market," Fraport sales executive Winfried Hartmann said. Lufthansa, which called for Fraport to lower fees after the Ryanair deal was announced, said this month it was looking at low-cost flying out of Frankfurt using its Eurowings budget brand.<br/>
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Icelandair Group reported a 2016 net profit of $89.1m, down 20% from $111.2m in net income for 2015. Revenue for the year increased 12.8% to $1.3b from $1.1b in 2015. EBITDA fell 3% to $219.8m. Icelandair reported total international passenger numbers of 3.7m in 2016, up 19.5% from 2015. International traffic was up 21.7% to 11.2b RPKs; international capacity increased 23.2% year-over-year to 13.7b ASKs, producing an international passenger load factor of 82.2%, down 1 point from 2015. Regional flight passengers for the year totaled 322,700, up 8.9% from 2015. Load factor for the year on regional flights was 69.3%, down 5.1 points from 2015. Passenger numbers climbed 15% from 2.26m in 2013 to a record 2.6m in 2014. Load factor was up 1.1% to 80.4%. The increase in passenger numbers was greatest on the tourist market to Iceland, a 23% rise year-over-year, accounting for 38% of total passenger numbers in 2016. On the Europe-North America service via Iceland, which at 50% is the company’s largest market, passenger numbers were up 22% in 2016. “The results for the year are the second best in the company’s 80-year history, and on the whole operations were successful over the year in challenging conditions,” Icelandair president and CEO Björgólfur Jóhannsson said. But Jóhannsson cautioned about a recent turn of events that could make 2017 a troubling year.<br/>
Brazilian planemaker Embraer said Tuesday that Norwegian airline Widerøe will be the first to fly its next-generation E190-E2 jet, which is scheduled to enter service in the first half of next year. Widerøe signed a firm order for three E190-E2 aircraft last month and has purchase rights for 12 more planes in the re-engined E2 family. Embraer said the order has a potential list price value of up to $873m if all orders are exercised. The airline, owned by an investor group led by Torghatten ASA, will fly the new jet in a single-class 114-seat format, Embraer said. Embraer launched the E2 program in 2013 with a firm order for the E190-E2 from International Lease Finance Corp , but it had not announced which airline would be the first to fly it.<br/>
Frontier Airlines plummeted to the bottom of national airline rankings in on-time arrivals, complaint percentage and lengthy tarmac delays in December — the result, the Denver-based carrier says, of a Dec. 16 snowstorm that led the Denver-based carrier to make changes in how it plans for and handles major weather issues. Its on-time arrival percentage fell from 87.5% in November to 62.4% in December, by far the worst performance among the carriers. Largely due to that, the rate of passenger complaints made to the DOT about Frontier jumped to 31.29 per 100,000 enplanements — six times higher than the airline’s complaint percentage in December 2015. Frontier’s troubles for the month, it says, stemmed from a snowstorm that moved quickly into Denver International Airport around 9:30 p.m. on Dec. 16. With snow accumulation piling up quickly at levels greater than those that were forecast, Frontier held planes that had been ready for takeoff, and it stranded incoming flights on the tarmac, as it didn’t have any room at its eight gates or a few publicly available gates at the airport. “In the first half of December we were doing really well. And the snow event just killed us,” Frontier acting COO Jim Nides said. “We’ve dissected this event ad nauseam because it’s a black eye, and we learned a lesson.”<br/>