Budget airlines at Luton Airport are offering travellers access to “hundreds” of skiing resorts and snowy pistes extending “literally thousands of kilometres” on special “ski routes” into the Alps, the Pyrenees and the Balkan Mountains in Eastern Europe.
easyJet, which has called Luton its home since 1995, is selling tickets to the French city of Grenoble and, on the other side of the Alps, Turin in Italy. The airline also has a route to Geneva in Switzerland, which should prove popular with fans of the Chamonix and Megève resorts on the Franco-Swiss border.
Hungarian airline Wizz Air‘s ski routes take you from Luton to Sofia in Bulgaria this winter, opening up the resorts of Pamporovo and Bansko to skiers and snowboarders. The airline is perhaps best known for its routes to Poland, and has its largest UK base at Luton, around double the size of its hub at Robin Hood Airport.
Girona in Northern Spain might seem like an odd choice for a skiing holiday, given the country’s ‘sun and sea’ credentials, but the city is the cornerstone of Ryanair’s winter offerings from Luton Airport. Girona enjoys both the heat of the Mediterranean and the chilly slopes of the nearby Pyrenees Mountains on Spain’s border with France.
The ski resort of La Molina, which is 99 years old this year, is located within an hour’s drive of Girona Airport.
Finally, Thomson Airways are providing their ski routes, flying to the Alpine city of Salzburg in Austria. Salzburg is located close to the resorts of Flachau, Bad Gastein and Mayrhofen, known for its “hair-raising” black run, Hara-kiri, named for the mode of suicide favoured by Japanese samurai.
“We aim to cater to the snow sports enthusiast,” Luton’s business development manager, Simon Harley, explained. “Our flights to ski destinations are available between November and March, providing passengers with an extensive choice of winter sports holiday options at convenient flight times.”
