In six weeks time, Europe’s aviation community will meet at Routes Europe, taking place 12-14 May. Over 100 Airlines are expected to attend Routes Europe in 2013 and already almost 200 airline delegates representing 96 carriers have registered to attend the event confirming that this year is set to be the biggest gathering yet of Europe’s key decision makers.

Now in its 8th year, Routes Europe is the only network planning forum for the entire European region and the 2013 event, hosted by Budapest Airport, will take place in Budapest, the beautiful historic capital of Hungary. Routes Europe brings together over 800 delegates from airports, airlines, tourism authorities and other industry stakeholders from across Europe to discuss air service development.

“The large number of airlines and the seniority of the delegates attending Routes Europe in Budapest, demonstrates the value that the event can offer to Europe’s largest airlines,” says Paul Winfield , Airline Relations Director for Routes. “Being able to source key data and intelligence for new routes, and being able to meet their existing partners to ensure the success of existing routes under one roof is invaluable,” he added.

The Low Cost and Regional sectors will be well represented in Budapest with Low Cost Carriers easyJet, Norwegian, Wizz Air, Germanwings, Air Berlin, Volotea and Vueling amongst those registered to attend, including senior representatives from airlines such as Wizz Air, whose CEO, Josef Varadi will attend, and Jet2.com’s recently appointed CEO, Steve Heapy . The regional market is also well served by carriers including Skywork Airlines, Cityjet, Darwin Airline, Eurolot, Flybe, Blue Islands and TAROM.

For airports wishing to meet with European network carriers, attendees include Air France, British Airways, Iberia, Lufthansa, SAS, CSA Czech Airlines, Turkish Airlines and Swiss International Airlines, whilst out of region presence comes from American Airlines, China Southern Airlines, Air Transat, Etihad Airways and Emirates. The CIS market is also well represented with confirmed attendance from Aeroflot, S7, Rossiya and UTAir. The event will also see a first time attendance from Reykjavik based WOW Air along with out of region carriers UPS, SriLankan Airlines and Nordwind.

In addition to the Face-to-Face meetings at the core of the event there will be a strong programme of airline briefings taking place in Budapest including Lufthansa delivered by Director of Network Planning, Dr Sebastien Hollmeier and CCO of Darwin Airline, Christian Schneider amongst others.

Routes Europe continues to grow at a tremendous rate in terms of airline participation with airlines afforded the time and choice to meet airports, not just to discuss potential new air service development but also to meet existing airports to discuss route performance.