Continental Airlines yesterday announced that Oct. 27 will be its first day as an official member of Star Alliance. Separately, it said it will operate daily Houston Intercontinental-Edmonton flights beginning Nov. 1 aboard a 737-500.
Ryanair yesterday announced that it will close nine of its 10 routes to/from Manchester and switch them to "lower-cost competitor" airports such as Nottingham East Midlands, Leeds Bradford and Liverpool on Oct. 1, citing MAN's refusal to lower its charges.
Australia and New Zealand are expected to move toward common air travel borders this week, cutting red tape and airfares. New Zealand Prime Minister John Keys and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd are expected to announce Thursday the streamlining of arrivals and departures that may see transtasman flights operating from domestic terminals and elimination of departure taxes and duplication of quarantine, customs and security checks.
Southwest Airlines yesterday launched its Boston service, which will comprise five daily flights to Chicago Midway and five to Baltimore. Royal Air Maroc will launch twice-weekly Casablanca-Dubai service on Oct. 27 using 767-300ERs. RwandAir yesterday added a fifth weekly Kigali-Johannesburg flight.
V Australia, the long-haul subsidiary of Brisbane-based Virgin Blue, announced a major expansion of its route network focused around Melbourne and Brisbane. It will launch twice-weekly Brisbane-Phuket service on Nov. 22, followed by weekly MEL-Phuket on Dec. 3. It will commence twice-weekly MEL-Johannesburg flights on March 13. It currently operates three 777-300ERs between Sydney and Brisbane and Los Angeles and will add an MEL-LAX service on Dec 1. It is due to take its fourth -300ER by early October, will add a fifth in September 2010 and has another two on order plus eight options.
ASIG said it was selected by a consortium of 32 airlines at Washington Dulles "to provide operation and maintenance of the jet fuel facility which supplies all of the carriers serving IAD."
CSA Czech Airlines will commence seasonal twice-weekly Prague-Tashkent service Aug. 19 under a codeshare agreement with Uzbekistan Airways aboard an A319. Bahrain Air will launch twice-weekly Bahrain-Baghdad service from Aug. 28. American Eagle will launch service from Miami to Harbour Island (thrice-weekly), Treasure Cay (four-times-weekly) and Governors Harbour (four-times-weekly) Nov. 19 aboard 66-seat ATR 72s.
ASIG was selected by JetBlue Airways to provide cabin cleaning services at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International. ASIG also provides JetBlue with aircraft refueling services at FLL.
The fallout over last week's incident in which 47 passengers were stranded overnight on an ERJ-145 operated by ExpressJet Holdings continued yesterday, with House of Representatives Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James Oberstar (R-Minn.) claiming that more than 415 flights had "taxi-out times of three hours or more" in the US in the first half of 2009.
Jet Airways launched daily Mumbai-Jeddah flights using a 737-800. It now operates to seven cities in the Gulf region including Kuwait City, Bahrain, Muscat, Doha, Dubai and Abu Dhabi. On Aug. 16 it will start daily service to Dubai from Hyderabad and add a second daily flight to its Mumbai-Bangkok route. Alaska Airlines will launch daily Portland-Chicago O'Hare service Nov. 16 aboard a 737. Flydubai will launch thrice-weekly Dubai-Djibouti service Sept. 1.
