AIRLINE TUI has launched a new route from Bournemouth Airport for summer 2026. 

The holiday group will fly weekly to the city of Larnaca, on the south east coast of Cyprus from Tuesday, May 26. 

TUI’s latest country joins Greece (Corfu, Heraklion, Rhodes, Kefalonia and Zakynthos twice weekly), Turkey (Antalya and Dalaman twice weekly) and Spain (four weekly flights to Mallorca, including two for Marella Cruises). 

This summer TUI is adding an extra 15,000 seats on its planes from Hurn, seeing a now twice weekly flights to Kefalonia in Greece twice a week to give customers the option of 10- or 11-night durations. 

And this is on top of the major investment from Jet2 as it starts its first full summer at Bournemouth Airport. 

The Leeds-Bradford Airport based operator is flying to 16 destinations in Spain, the Canary Islands, Greece, Portugal and Turkey – rising to 22 for summer 2026.

Meanwhile, TUI bosses said this week its summer bookings are down on last year, and that it would be a “challenging” rest of the year.

The company, which is Europe’s largest travel operator, said summer sales are one per cent down compared with the same point last year, with a pipeline of about 8.6 million bookings for the key holiday season.

It said UK summer bookings are at the same point compared with 2024, just under two-thirds of its total offerings sold, while in Germany bookings were down three per cent year-on-year.

It blamed the overall slowdown partly on Easter falling later this year in April, which in turn pushed consumers’ summer holiday bookings back and impacted its results for the six months to March.