Budget brigade

Korean low-cost airline traffic is booming

If you’ve never heard of Fly Yangyang don’t lose any sleep over it. This prospective South Korean budget carrier won’t be flying anytime soon, since the country’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport in late February refused to issue it with an operating licence due to “the risk of financial instability in the early stages of operation as well as insufficient safeguards for safety and consumer convenience”.

If the licence had been granted the airline – it describes itself as a “tourism convergence carrier”, whatever that is, it had aimed to launch in August, focusing on in-bound air traffic, particularly from China and Southeast Asia. It had planned to begin operations in August, bringing more tourists into its home base in Gangwon Province, an area in the country’s north east bordering North Korea.