Adria Airways will launch new flights from its base in Lodz to Paris, as it continues to expand its presence in Poland. Flights between the two cities, which were not initially planned as part of the airline's 2016 summer season operations, will commence on June 2 and run three times per week, each Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, with a Bombardier CRJ700 aircraft stationed at the airport. The service will be codeshared by Lufthansa. The Slovenian carrier already maintains flights from Lodz to Amsterdam and Munich - six and twelve times per week, respectively. The addition of the new flights are in line with promises made by Adria's new owners, 4K Invest, to continue developing the airline's operations in Poland, along with Slovenia, Albania and Kosovo.

The growth in Poland is part of a revised outlook at Adria to place less of a focus on the carrier's limited home market and to develop as more of a European than a Slovenian air carrier. The airline's former CEO, Mark Anžur, under whose tenure the carrier established bases outside of Slovenia, including Lodz last year, recently said, "Strategically we want to be a European carrier and not only a Slovenian carrier. We are embracing internationalisation. There are many reasons for this. One of them being that the Slovenian market is very limited. The Bombardier is an ideal aircraft for regional routes because it acts as an alternative to low cost airlines which can’t make a profit on certain flights with larger Airbus aircraft".

Earlier this year, Adria announced plans to launch flights from Poland's 21st largest city, Olsztyn, to Munich three times per week starting this summer. The new service is to be promoted later today and put on sale. Lodz is centrally located in Poland and is the country’s third largest city. However, it is just 135 kilometres south-west of the capital Warsaw and the opening of a motorway linking the two cities in 2012 has reduced travel time to approximately just one hour, making it much harder to generate and sustain air services from Lodz. Adria's new CEO, Arno Schuster, recently said, "We look quite positively into this year, expecting good results. Adria's strategy seems like a good fit for a regional carrier. We want to grow with our own existing network and to make it more efficient". Flight details for the new Lodz - Paris service can be found here. This summer, the Slovenian carrier will also launch new scheduled flights from Ljubljana to Cologne and from Pristina to London Luton.