Polish no frills airline Centralwings cuts number of destinations

Centralwings, the low-cost arm of the Polish national airline carrier LOT, which noted significant losses last year is now cancelling dozens of unprofitable flights, Gazeta Wyborcza writes.
Since April 1 Centralwings will serve only one route from the mid-western Polish city of Poznań to Rome. The connections to Paris and Edinburgh will be put on hold. New flights to Amsterdam and Manchester which were supposed to take off in April were cancelled.

Similar actions are undertaken countrywide. Flights from Warsaw, Gdańsk, Kraków, Szczecin, Wrocław disappear from the departure boards. – We were forced to cut the flight schedule in April – Kamil Wnuk, Centralwings spokesman says in a Gazeta Wyborcza interview. – We are currently updating the schedule. Only flights from the reduced schedule which we are able to provide will be available on our website.
Last year the company owned by LOT noted a loss of PLN 73 million. – We are not going to withdraw the company from the market. Together with the owner we are working on a plan of development. However we are experiencing a shortage of planes and we are still waiting for new craft. We will receive two new Boeings 737 by the end of April and another one by the end of May – Wnuk says.
The company’s development plan is supposed to be ready and approved by LOT before the end of March, that is before the summer flight season starts. – I believe that after a poor April we will be able to restore most of the connections in May and June – Centralwings spokesman tells Gazeta Wyborcza. He admits however that some of the unprofitable connections will be permanently cancelled.

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• ● In December 2009 and January 2010, as in previous months in the second half of 2009, the Polish economy stood out against other countries in terms of GDP growth. Poland’s economic growth was higher than projected and higher than in other European countries.
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• In 2009 construction output increased by 3.7%.
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• Retail sales increase in most product groups.
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• On the Warsaw Stock Exchange, stock prices were very volatile in January 2010.
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• At the end of December 2009 the registered unemployment rate (claimant count rate) amounted to 11.9% versus 11.4% in November.
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• At the end of January the president signed the 2010 budget bill into law. The bill was adopted by the parliament on December 18.
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• In the fourth quarter of 2009 the Polish economy turned out to be more resistant to the global crisis than had been projected and than the economies of Polish neighbours, something which boosts optimism in forecasts for 2010 and the next years.
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Retail sales up again in June
Retail sales growth in nominal terms accelerated in June to 6.4% y-o-y from 4.3% y-o-y in May. The increase was higher than expected. In real terms, retail sales growth accelerated to 4.5% y-o-y from 2.0% y-o-y. June was a consecutive month with retail sales figures stronger than expected, which indicates that consumption is recovering after it slowed significantly at the beginning of the year. Private consumption is driven by an improvement on the labour market coupled with a rise in disposable incomes. In Q2 2010 retail sales grew by around 3% y-o-y in nominal terms and around 1% y-o-y in real terms. On the basis of retail sales and industrial production data, it can be estimated that the GDP growth rate was close to 3%.

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