LONDON, Feb 16 (APM) - AstraZeneca is planning to set up a scheduled flight that will connect staff in the company's Cambridge headquarters in the east of England, with Gothenburg, Sweden, its other major European hub.
The Sunday Telegraph (B10) said this is "one up" on Google which shuttles its staff around San Francisco in branded buses and Goldman Sachs running ferries to connect its Manhattan and Jersey City offices.
Starting in March, a 32-seater service run by Scandinavian airline Sun Air will make the one-hour flight from Cambridge to Gothenburg's Landvetter airport four mornings a week from Monday to Thursday and return in early evening.
It will be the only scheduled flight from Cambridge Airport, which is mostly used for maintenance, the paper added.
AstraZeneca will pay for 20 seats on each flight, but the remaining 12 will be open to the public. As Gothenburg is home to many life science ventures, AstraZeneca hopes other Cambridge scientists will find the connection useful. It will be an economy service, but AstraZeneca staff can use the business lounge.
AstraZeneca's chief executive Pascal Soriot told the paper the idea of the air link was to make Cambridge and Gothenburg behave like one giant research hub. The company has about 1,000 staff in Cambridge but this will expand to 2,500 by the time the city becomes the company's global headquarters in 2016. Another 2,400 staff are based in Gothenburg.
The Sunday Telegraph said the new service cuts out a 30-mile journey to Stansted Airport and check-in time. Cambridge Airport is a 15-minute drive, or cycle, from the city centre.
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