Aviation Daily, June 25, 2015

Allegiant Air announced that this fall it will add four new routes to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, all with less-than-daily service. Allegiant will start Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on Oct. 1, and Akron-Canton, Ohio, on Oct. 2. It will begin Rochester, New York, on Oct. 9, and Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Dec. 16. Allegiant—which will fly to 16 cities from Fort Lauderdale by December—will be only airline flying nonstop on all of the new routes. Rochester is a new market for Allegiant.

“The industry has clearly shown there is no need” for such an aircraft, Spohr told Aviation Daily in an interview at the Star Alliance Chief Executive Board (CEB) meeting. “Passengers are demanding more and more point-to-point directions; they will only connect at hubs when it is necessary or cheaper.”

The airline will be the 28th member of the alliance. It is filling a gap left by the departure of TAM, which switched alliances to Oneworld as a result of its merger with LAN Airlines to form the LATAM Group.

The airline, announced as a new Star Alliance member at the group’s Chief Executive Board meeting, could have access to 10 Airbus A350-900s on order by its parent Synergy Group, which also controls 52% of Avianca Holdings in Colombia.

The announcement demonstrates JetBlue’s commitment to Boston, from where it operated only 54 daily departures as recently as 2008. By January 2016, JetBlue will reach 118 daily flights, and by summer 2016, it expects to have 140.

Air Canada seeks a Rouge fleet of 25 widebody aircraft, and while it has enough 767s at mainline that it could transfer over, the airline has decided that not all of the aircraft will make the switch.

The cutback to just 12 aircraft per year comes despite signs of increasing health in the international freight market and a yet-to-be-finalized deal with cargo-operator Volga-Dnepr, announced at last week’s Paris Air Show for up to 20 aircraft.

Delays with the NextGen airspace modernization program should not be used as a reason for privatizing U.S. air traffic control, says Edward Bolton, head of the program, who is concerned the spin-off of ATC from the FAA could disrupt the progress now being made.

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